Customer Reviews

Parker's Wine Bargains: The World's Best Wine Values Under $25

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Parker started off in wine reviewing with an eye toward consumer value. He exposed wines that were well-known but ultimately inferior products and championed other wines that were excellent but obscure. Since then his ratings have been much argued over and his influence has been both decried and heralded. Well, whatever.

This is a book built on his original reputation, showing us wines that were good whether we had heard of them before or not. With a price cutoff of $25, this is not as "low priced" as some of the other wine bargain books out there, but I think the book is an excellent resource for wines that are both excellent on a budget and really good wines that happen to be inexpensive (often because no one had heard of them before). Parker tastes a lot of wines and has strong opinions on them, and both of those attributes help this book.

I would also note that the price ranges listed (and the $25 limit on wines for the book) represent some sort of nominal industry pricing and in my experience many of the wines are available at retail for randomly lower prices. And take the price of this ephemeral book as a small cost of avoiding a dodgy bottle of wine. (Note that the Parker tasting scores do NOT appear in this book. Just recommended wines, approximate prices, and some text about the wine.)

This book is Robert Parker's attempt to crack the inexpensive wine market, but it's a sloppy one, riddled with typos and mistakes, poorly organized, and filled with wines that are impossible to find for the average consumer. Plus, he looks for cheap wines that are made in a fake-expensive style: lots of oak chips, etc. He completely ignores red burgundy and gives short shrift to provencal rose, which is one of the best value styles in france. That's because Parker doesn't get rose, or burgundy. He likes his bordeaux and his big, dumb napa cabs.

Parker should stick to reviewing expensive wine -- that's his niche.

I ordered this for my son who is starting to get interested in wine (my wife and I are long time collectors).

My brief scan before I gave it to him tells me it is a good starter book for the novice.

Very comprehensive. However, many of the wines listed are not in our local and favorite wine store. Trying to carry the book around and figure out which oen are available is cumbersome.

Table of Contents is greyed out - so you can't go to a specific part of the book. You can still do a search, but I like to browse the Table of Contents. A bit difficult to use this way. The actual book is good, though. Please consider adding the ToC. Thanks!