Touring In Wine Country: Tuscany [Paperback]

Maureen Ashley (Author)

Book Description

Series: Touring in Wine Country | Publication Date: March 16, 2000

Starting and finishing in Florence, this guide explores the delights of Italy's best-loved wine region, Tuscany, and unveils the secrets behind its esteemed winemaking traditions. Carefully planned wine routes, marked on detailed vineyard maps, lead the way through each of the region's many wine enclaves. Tours can be followed as a whole or simply dipped into, and every section is complete with lists of recommended wine producers and interesting estates, hotels, restaurants and wine shops. - Includes detailed, full-colour vineyard maps and recommended wine routes. - Recommends producers and cellars to visit. - Unveils the delights of the local cuisine. - Suggests local hotels and restaurants. - Highlights nearby cultural sights. - Series editor: Hugh Johnson.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Maureen Ashley, Master of Wine, is a specialist in Italian wines and writes regularly for several of the UK's major wine magazines. She is consultant to the Italian Trade Centre and lectures and gives tutored tastings on Italian wines throughout the UK. Her enthusiasm and love of Italy's culture, countryside and the Italian way of life permeates all her writings.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Mitchell Beazley; Updated edition (March 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1840002476
• ISBN-13: 978-1840002478
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,159,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not For the Detail Oriented!, June 16, 2001

By 

Diann Nickelsburg (Virginia Beach, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Touring In Wine Country: Tuscany (Paperback)

Touring In Wine Country: Tuscany provides a richly illustrated overview for anyone considering a tour of the towns and vineyards of Tuscany. It is disappointing, however, in its lack of detail. It would be easier to navigate your way by following the author's narrative than by attempting to read the maps, which are almost completely useless. There are recommendations for shopping and restaurants, but this information also is quite condensed, written in small pale type, and rather vague as to price range.

A far more useful book is A Traveller's Wine Guide To Italy, by Stephen Hobley.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful guide for Tuscan food & wine touring, August 20, 2000

By 

M& K. Pugh (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Touring In Wine Country: Tuscany (Paperback)

This is a very helpful book. We have similar guides in the series for Burgundy, Alsace and Rhone. I highly recommend them. Our experience in Italy is that wine tourism per se is much less formal than France, Germany and US. That means the traveller must be a lot more curious and self sufficient. Bring along a fullscale Michelin road atlas and be prepared to ask a lot of questions. Try to learn an little Italian. It goes a long way. People were uniformly friendly and went way out of their way to draw local maps, add add'l restaurants to your list and even call wine makers for tours (on your behalf). Wine makers (such as Tenuta dell'Ornellaia) who otherwise don't open their doors to the public. Buy the book if you plan to tour wine regions in Tuscany!

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wishing it had more information, July 18, 2000

By 

MATTHEW W BARRY - See all my reviews

This review is from: Touring In Wine Country: Tuscany (Paperback)

Just returned from Tuscany and used the book extensively. Here's what I found. THE GOOD POINTS: The hotel and restaurant recommendations were excellent (although one particular hotel in which I stayed based on the book, which was called a "Haven" was just ok). Each city and chapter was broken down nicely with fine points and attractions that I used extensively. THE BAD POINTS: Although there were many, many wineries, and their phone numbers, and maps detailing the countryside in which they were located, the SPECIFICS were horrible. Never on any of the highlighted routes on the maps does it POINT OUT where these wineries are actually LOCATED, and on several occasions I was lost beyond belief trying to find them (even though I had made appointments). That made for a very frustrating wine tour, and considering this is a wine tour book, it needed to be more specific.