Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia: Fourth Edition, Revised (Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia)

Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia: Fourth Edition, Revised (Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia) | Tom Stevenson | Best Appellation book around

books:

Sotheby's Wine Enc...

	Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia: Fourth Edition, Revised (Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia) Tom Stevenson DK ADULT, 2007 - 664 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

The essential insider's guide to every major wine-growing region in the world, this book offers dozens of helpful Top 10 lists covering a broad range of topics, including Best-Value Producers, Greatest-Quality Wines, and Most Exciting or Unusual Finds. The book is a must for every wine serious enthusiast who wants to keep up with the constantly changing and ever-expanding world of wine. AUTHOR BIO: Tom Stevenson has been writing about wine for nearly thirty years and is the author of more than 20 books. He's been nominated Wine Writer of the Year on three occasions and received the coveted Wine Literary Award, America's lifetime achievement award for wine writing.

for more information click here

Sothebys wine encyclopedia

Great book, with a wealth of usefull information. This is my go to, when I nead precise info.

Best Appellation book around

This is the third edition of this book I have purchased. It only gets better and better.

For information regarding appellations, grapes, and wine in general, I prefer this as my number one book.

Great reference tool

I am a gigantic nerd, so this book is great, but for normal people that just want the information...it might have too much minutia.

Not an encyclopedia - a useful secondary atlas

Warning: despite the title, this book is NOT an encyclopedia. It is not a general compendium of wine related knowledge. Do not expect to find articles on topics like "shiraz," "brettanomyces," or "tannins." It is in no way comparable to The Oxford Companion to Wine.

This book is essentially a wine atlas; it is directly comparable to Johnson & Robinson World Atlas of Wine. The first 50 pages of both books are devoted to general articles on topics such as "Terroir," but the bulk of the book (550 pages) is arranged geographically by region. The regional headings correspond almost exactly to those in the Atlas. (As with the Atlas, the focus is on the old world. France alone gets over 200 pages of the 550, while the Americas (North and South), Australia and New Zealand combined get just under 160 pages. These are roughly the same proportions as the Atlas.) One major difference between Stevenson's book (which I refuse to call an "encyclopedia") and the Atlas is that Stevenson's book has few maps, and the maps that it does have are very general. No doubt this is why the book is not called an "atlas" despite its geographic organization.

As an example, consider the treatment of Barbaresco (which I happened to be drinking when I first opened this book). There are 39 pages on Italy, which begins with a 4 page overview of the country as a whole, focusing on the DOG system. The general content seems to be very well done (I am not enough of expert to say whether it is accurate). It is then divided into subregions. Northwest Italy gets 9 pages, of which 2 are general, with a paragraph each of the main regions, such as Piedmont. The bulk of the section are capsule descriptions of all of the various appellations. Because of the number, these descriptions are individually very short. The longest description, that of Barolo, is one-third of a page. Barbaresco gets three sentences. The capsule descriptions themselves seem to be very well done, with a considerable amount of information packed into a few sentences (though again I am not enough of an expert to say whether the information is accurate). The descriptions are followed by a list of preferred producers which, in the case of Barbaresco, is almost as long as the description itself. Essentially every entry has such a list of producers. While most are proportionately shorter than in the case of Barbaresco, they nonetheless form a substantial part of the total text. With that said, the Atlas uses pictures of wine labels for much the same purpose; these are more attractive, but they take up more space for the amount of information content.

Compare this with the Johnson & Robinson Atlas. Northwest Italy gets 8 pages, with 2 pages of that discusses the minor regions, followed by 2 pages for Piemonte generally, 2 pages for Barbaresco and 2 pages for Barolo. About half of the coverage consists of maps. This is a major difference between the Stevenson work and the Wine Atlas; as the name suggests the Wine Atlas has excellent detailed maps, while the Stevenson book has fewer and less detailed maps. Another difference is the major regions get more coverage in the Wine Atlas; Barbaresco gets a full page of text in the Atlas, as opposed to three sentences in Stevenson's book. You might think that the minor regions would get correspondingly less coverage in the Atlas, but this is only partially true. The difference is that Stevenson's book treats each DOC or distinctive vini da tavola as with a separate section, while the Atlas treats them as part of a sub-region. So, the region above the town of Novara has six different DOCs - Gattinara, Lessona, Bramatera, Boca, Colline Novaresi, Ghemme and Sizzano - each of which gets a separate brief description from Stevenson, while they are treated together in a couple of paragraphs by the Wine Atlas. The Atlas approach is more efficient as it generalizes about the region, with a phrase or two about most of the sub-regions. But there is some extra information in Stevenson's work; we learn, for example, that Colline Novaresi requires at least 40% Uva Rara, while there is no mention of this in the Atlas, whose authors (according to Robinson's preface) made a conscious decision to omit discussion of regions which they felt would not be of no practical interest to most wine drinkers.

So, the Wine Atlas has far better maps, and better treatment of the major regions, but doesn't provide quite as much detail on the minor regions as does Stevenson. What about total information content? Stevenson's book has 550 pages devoted to regional description, while the Atlas has significantly less - around 325 (as noted each also has about 50 pages of general text). Since the Atlas also has far more space devoted to maps, and substantially more photos as well, one might suppose that there is just more text in Stevenson's book. But on the other hand, Stevenson's book has a lot of blank space because of the layout, with the distinct heading for each region.

Finally, an important difference is that the Atlas is much easier to read. It is possible and indeed enjoyable to read through the Atlas' page on the minor regions of Northwest Italy and gain some appreciation of these regions and their relationship to one another and the major regions. Much of the same information is found in the Stevenson book, but it is much more difficult to piece together. The information about the area near Novara is found in two contiguous paragraphs in the Atlas, while it is found in seven separate paragraphs spread over six pages in the Stevenson book. Furthermore, because of the lack of a map, it would not be apparent to the non-expert that these are in fact closely related regions (unless you are looking at the Wine Atlas at the same time). So, the information is there in the Stevenson book, but you won't get a picture of region in the same way that you would from the Atlas.

In summary, Stevenson's content is good; as compared to the Atlas he provides some extra information on minor regions and even when he covers the same region he provides a different perspective from the Atlas. Nonetheless, I strongly prefer the Wine Atlas, partly because of the maps, but primarily because of the superior readability. When I'm lingering over a glass of wine in the evening I often pick the Wine Atlas to read about the region the wine came from, or even about a random region that I might want to sample. I cannot imagine doing the same with Stevenson's book. I might turn to Stevenson's book as a reference, particularly if I wanted grape variety information about a minor region, but it is not a book that lends itself to idle curiosity. On the whole, Stevenson's book might be a useful secondary reference for wine enthusiasts, but the Wine Atlas is a clear first choice.

for more information click here

Great reference book, but not a practical book

I've learned a lot about wine from reading this massive tome. The different types of grapes, how to 'taste' wine like a pro, the dozens of different wine-growing areas in France and California (most other countries/states are dealt with in far less detail.) How to invest in wine and how to store it.

As a practical guide to selecting/buying wine, this wasn't quite what I was looking for. Far too big to cart to the liquor store, it's of no help when standing in front of a shelf of wine, trying to decide which bottle to buy. All you can do is painstakingly copy down the names/vintages on the shelf, go home, consult the book, and try to determine which, if any, are recommended. (The reverse -- jotting down a list of a dozen recommended wines doesn't work, since the odds of ANY of them being on the shelf is pretty low. I'm sure that the vast majority of European/South American/Australian wines in the book aren't available at ANY liquor store in America.) Prices aren't even hinted at, except rarely when he mentions that a wine is 'affordable' or 'luxurious.'

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

products you might be interested in