Customer Reviews

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Wine: New and Improved: How to Buy, Drink, and Enjoy Wine

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It is hard to imagine a more down-to-earth wine book than "The Wall Street Journal Guide to Wine" by John Brecher and Dottie Gaiter. Long the authors of the popular "Tastings" in the aforementioned newspaper, John and Dottie dispense what I can best call "grandmotherly" advice on wines - joyful, nonjudgmental, wise, and wonderfully helpful. They make wine newbies feel welcome, but provide enough down-home wisdom that even aficionados will come away satisfied.

What they bring to their column every Friday in the Journal translates to their latest book (an update of their 1999 version.) The same approachable writing style and sheer pleasure they so masterfully embue in their wine tastings follows in the book. And rarely do authors manage to pierce the literary plane and become real people, but John and Dottie come off in their book as those fun next-door neighbors every one of us has known at some time in our life.

The book could not be more simple in its layout. The authors discuss popular white grape varietals, then reds, and some other specific types of wines (like Sauternes, Champagne, etc.) Most chapters consist of a specific grape varietal discussion, recommended wines of that varietal, and a page or two of general wine tips. This pattern repeats throughout the book (with few exceptions) and covers about thirty grapes/types of wine.

This book is not meant to be encyclopedic in nature. John and Dottie simply ask you to come along and enjoy a glass of wine with them, dispensing simple, but usable advice on how to enjoy the trip. Some might downgrade the rating for being so simplistic, but a readthrough would dissuade this. Other references are available that cover the specifics missing from this book. But as the authors are more interested in evangelizing wine drinking - and specifically the mere enjoyment of wine in a stress-free setting - you won't (and don't) need to know the intricacies of French Bordeaux or the details of the difficulties of truly knowing what's in that bottle of Chilean red. (Consider Karen MacNeil's "The Wine Bible" in that case, particularly if you are new to wine.)

The only lack of the book is that it recycles some anecdotes from the "Tastings" columns, but this is more than made up for by the sheer joy John and Dottie bring to the subject of wine.

You can't go wrong with "The Wall Street Journal Guide to Wine". It's truly about as escapist as a book on wine can be, while providing helpful wisdom that goes down as pleasingly as a chilled Oregon Pinot Gris on a sunny summer day.

Well written. Enthusiastic. Informative. Read it through once and Dorothy J. Gaiter & John Brecher's excitement about wine will rub right off on you. You will want to buy, taste and describe what you're tasting. These are not wine snobs. They just want you to enjoy the wine you like, even if it comes in a box. As they say, if you taste two wines blindly and you like the cheaper one, "you don't have a problem, you have a bargain!" I reccomend this book to anyone who likes to drink wine. If you don't really know anything about grapes but want to learn to APPRECIATE WINE, buy this book. All the other books I've looked at overwhelm you with history and wine making lessons, I just want to drink and enjoy. THIS BOOK WILL HELP YOU ENJOY DRINKING WINE. It was a great first wine book for me.

This book is a must read for any wine lover.
Dottie and John have been enjoying wine all their life together.
They have been writing about their passion in the Wall Street Journal since 1998 when their "Tastings" column first appeared.
Through the last 4 years they have helped thousands of us to navigate the confusing maze of wine culture, demystifying wine and helping us to enjoy wine with life's experiences.
With their enormous literary experience, they are able to communicate to the novice, intermediate and expert wine lover alike.
This is their third book and it is a more comprehensive guide to wine enjoyment. The book is organized into chapters by grape/variety and each chapter is like a short story full of wonderful wine experiences and finishing with "wine notes" describing wines by vintage, price range, flavors and food pairings. They write about a wide spectrum of wines from White Zinfandel to first growth Bordeaux. Also included in the book are answers, to their most frequently asked questions from their readers, which I have found to be very helpful. For example -- how to find the right wine store, what wine do I take to a friend's house, what is the correct temperature to serve the wine, what wine do I serve with dinner, when do I decant and many more....
Dottie and John have made the fun of wine come alive through their personal descriptions and experiences. This book is another chapter in their wonderful efforts to help us all ENJOY Wine and Life!!!

This is one of those wine books that is fun-to-read. It helps making the intimidating subject of wine appreciation much less scary. Gaiter and Brecher bring a few decades of wine tasting experience and the perspective of years of happy partnership to the book.

This book is not a reference book like many others in this genre. Rather, it is more of a user's guide to different wines that brings the joy of tasting and exploring wines to the reader. The book offers lots of good, common-sense advice on "simple" tasting procedures, on how to buy wine, on how to taste and enjoy wine, and other topics. It also offers a healthy perspective on wine rituals, skewering some of the more pretentious in the process.

One of the things that we enjoyed about this book is that it offers a broad perspective on what to expect with different wine varietals. It covers everything from Barbera (from the Piedmont region of Italy) to Zinfandel, the "native" grape of California. These varietal sections have been improved in the second edition (we've read both versions) and now includes one on sauvignon blanc which has always been one of our favorite white wines.

Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys wine or would like to enjoy wine.

This book was not only informative and easy to follow but it was fun as well. Gaiter's and Brecher's ability to cut through the fuss and confusion of the many issues in wine (age, vintage, wineries, red vs. white, storage, to name a few) without getting stuffy or long-winded was a welcome change (from the many other wine enthusiasts, experts and writers I've come across). I found the writing witty, the information useful and the layout accessible. It was a quick read too. I found myself taking notes, and then using them while visiting some local wine shops. Their anecdotes make you want to plunge in and have your own wine tasting, cross-country train experience or winery tour. I especially loved the advice about celebrating with wine: not to wait for an occasion to open a (special bottle) but to open the bottle and create the occasion. This book is good for the novice (or anyone who doesn't think he knows very much) or the connossieur.

Very readable and fun review of wines and the wine experience. Not overloaded with minutia, but packed with information. Lots of practical information.

This book contains a good amount of information about many different styles of wines, from red burgundy to rose to vintage champagne. Each chapter is devoted to a different style, and contains a description of the idiosyncracies of each style, along with a short list of recommendations. Less usefully, it contains personal anecdotes about the authors' experiences with the wines.

It is in these anecdotes that the authors' pretentiousness comes out. They meanly point out and make fun of the mistakes their acquaintances make while ordering wine at fancy restaurants. They halfheartedly reassure the reader that is OK to hunt for affordable wines, while at the same time subtly poking fun at people who prefer wines they consider inferior. Reading the book, I get the impression that the only people they respect are CEOs of large financial corporations and accounting firms, because every other one of their "wine anecdotes" involves a corporate male with a lot of money.

In short: the authors know a lot about wine, but they fail in their attempts at hiding just how much they look down on what they consider to be bad wine.