Customer Reviews

The Official Guide to Wine Snobbery (A Cult Classic)

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The book is written as an autobiographical story about Bernstein's quest to reach the upper ranks of wine snobbery. He covers what to order and when (and how to go from impressive to daringly impressive w/out spending too much) paring wine with food, what to do with the cork, how to taste wine without looking dumb, best names for wine ever, etc.

This book is great for beginners because it's a great way to learn, or for someone who already "knows it all" when it comes to wine because it's so funny. I've bought this book as a gift for several people and they always comment on it months later. While I suppose you could learn to become quite a wine snob, it's easier to laugh at them. I also noticed that my confidence around wine improved when I realized that the main thing a "real wine snob" did was ignore all "rules" about wine with confidence.

This book is out of print and I managed to get a used copy as a gift to a friend. I first read it a few months ago, also a few months after I first got interested in wine. This is great reading for anyone into wine tasting, even only remotely. It not only gives you quite some information about French wines (occasionally American ones), but also teaches you how to be snobbishly cool with the whole thing with scathing humor. You'll laugh as you read through and recognize as well as make fun of your own snobbery in the future.

The Official Guide To Wine Snobbery by Leonard S. Bernstein is an amiably and expertly written guide to everything from how to properly hold a wine glass, to matching foods and wines, to popular controversies surrounding wines and their tasting, and a great deal more. Informed and informative, The Official Guide To Wine Snobbery is an enjoyable, accessible, 160-page instructional guide which is especially recommended for non-specialist general readers with an interest in the pastime and culture of wine tasting.

This witty little gem will guide the aspiring wine enthusiast past the pretensions of wine snobbery towards an informed appreciation of wine. It's a beginner's primer that will save the reader from the occasional social faux pas and knock the real wine snobs down a peg

Leonard S. Bernstein shares "snobbish" information without insisting we be a wine snob. As a collector of wine books, I found Bernstein's book one of my all time favorites. He is masterful in weaving personal experiences with bits and pieces of useful wine information. I will give this book as a gift to many of my "co-tasters".

I neither know nor care about wine, but I found this book enormously entertaining.

Hilarious. This book will teach you all the rules you'll have to follow, and all the affectations you'll have to take on, to pass as a wine snob. At the same time, though, you'll really learn about wine. This book was first published in 1981 and it also offers a glimpse into gourmet snobbery before good food was democratized and celebrity chefs took over. The illustrations are just as funny as the prose and they will both remind you of real wine snobs you know. Every aspiring wine connoisseur should read this book.