Customer Reviews

Great Tastes Made Simple

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With this book Immer provides still more useful information for people interested in making wine part of the dinner table. Quite an accomplishment, considering her "Great Wines Made Simple" was for me the most useful wine volume ever encountered. Here, Immer moves beyond the beverage and provides the reader with her accessible theories about how food flavors connect to wine flavors. For someone like me, someone interested in home entertaining and striving to give a guest a memorable dining experience, this book moves past anything else I've read concerning the wine arena.

Unlike other authors who provide esoteric descriptions of wines-- descriptions they don't seem to realize may vary according to the individual inclinations of the taster-- Immer acknowledges the variety of preferences amongst diners. She does not come from an attitude of "informing" readers of her Vast Knowledge; rather she lends teaching tools that enable readers to form their own intelligent opinions of what works and does not work for their particular tastes. A natural educator, she alternates between easily-digested theories, theories often summarized in simple chart form, and hands-on, effective experiments. Her experiments are the most pragmatic kind: tastings. In this way, she promotes an understanding of flavor combinations in a way that is most visceral-- through the mouth.

Her theories make sense, and they work-- I know because I've tried them! Her reading inspired me to spend way too much on sample wines and test them with various foods. Because she is not merely presenting a list of try-this-wine-with-that-cheese, pair-Wine-A-with-Recipe-X, but rather because she is giving us readers categorical theories about why some wine styles connect to certain types of foods, we can develop our own menus based on what foods we are interested in and what wines please our palates. In this way, her book can sit on the shelf beside such theory-driven volumes as "Culinary Artistry," Peterson's "Sauces," Gold's cookbooks, and Schneider's "A New Way To Cook." Immer puts the reader in the creative position rather than calling for imitation with an encyclopedia of recipes.

What is still more appealing about her approach is that she is dedicated to making wine a part of everyday dining. She acknowledges good flavor combinations at every level of cost, time, and creativity. Her enthusiasm for her subject is contagious. It might tempt a reader to obtain her third book, the "Wine Buying Guide." But while Immer's "Wine Buying" guide is fine, it is an example of the "old guard" of wine information: a guide that lets the reader get lost in the forest for all the trees. For me, "Great Tastes" provides a far superior way of thinking, because it empowers me to make choices based on the information on the wine label rather than in a wine guide.

A real Immer fan, here Andrea is over the top with what many of us really need, how to match great food with great wine. Immer is well trained and experienced with both, and here she combines her normal passion for her subject matter along with clarity and creativity.

This work encourages one to experiment with important contrasts, looking for earthiness vs. spiciness, and the acidity and richness of wine with the food.

This she accomplishes with great text along with Tasting Charts featuring "Matching Food ... with Wine Styles to Try." There one will find unusual combos which we would not normally even attempt, but here are great recommendations to venture out into the world of wine and find new combos.

Even the tougher combos, e.g. Sweet and sour are covered, as she provides a great chart on this mathcing, getting one such as myself to try stuff like Dry Muscat and Viognier which I never would have attempted on my own.

This book is like "Wine Water Wings" which allows one to venture out into deeper wine water to find that ultimate taste explosion with excellent food.

Will become a great companion!

I loved this book, I bought it because I was going to do a wine tasting for friends and I wanted to provide tasty snacks that would also compliment the various wines. This book guided me in a total understanding of how to pair wines with food and she takes a lot of the complication out of it. I am no longer fearing the wine list in a restaurant!!!

I thought the style of this book was too "chatty" & overall was not as enjoyable as other books I've read on the topic. On the plus side, I think her comments in general were accurate & the tables she provided were very informative. I guess I just didn't like her writing style.

If you love wine and entertaining as I do, this is a great book. The beginning has a great section on understanding wines and the recipes I've found to be great and love how she matches them up with wine for great entertaining! If you love wine and entertaining and building your knowledge, this is a great book!

Andrea Immer always has an interesting, informative book to share with her readers. Being one of a very few female Master Sommeliers makes her remarks more extensive. Explaining labels, areas that grapes are grown. Help in paring foods has the underlying love of wine in so many uses. Definitely worth reading.