A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Usually, I feel as though reading about wine instead of drinking it is a bit like going to the Playboy mansion bound, gagged and blindfolded. But that's never been the case for Tyler Colman's writing, whether it's his books or his blog. This is fun, inspiring stuff that'll make you excited about wine, not send you running, screaming from it."-- Eric Arnold, author of First Big Crush: The Down and Dirty on Making Great Wine Down Under

"Here is an approach to wine sure to open a lot of people's eyes to a lot of pleasure. It replaces the numerical scoring system with some strongly flavored common sense. And it answers the question: what is the best way to enjoy wine."-- Kermit Lynch, wine importer and author of Adventures on the Wine Route and Inspiring Thirst

"To me, nothing says 'summer' like a big, sweet, alcohol-rich glass of Amarone alongside a briny bowl of linguine and clams. I'm just kidding. That would be disgusting. This is Tyler Colman's point and it's a good one: Wine is all about place and context. Lots of books give you the 'whats' of wine, but this one gives you the 'whens,' 'wheres' and 'whys' as well."-- David Lynch, co-author of Vino Italiano and The Wine Snob's Dictionary

"A Year of Wine offers a unique way to enjoy and appreciate wine. As a world traveler I will follow Tyler Colman's advice next time I'm enjoying the sunset on the Caribbean coast of my native Venezuela or looking at the beautiful red roofs of Florence, Italy. Choosing the perfect wine for a special occasion is like selecting the perfect pitch to hit an RBI double with men in scoring position." -- Bobby Abreu, starting right fielder, New York Yankees

Product Description

A lively and informative guide to a year of wine enjoyment and appreciation from acclaimed wine expert and blogger Tyler Colman, aka "Dr. Vino"

In A Year of Wine, award-winning educator Tyler "Dr. Vino" Colman, whose wine blog was hailed by Food & Wine magazine as "one of the seven best," views winter, spring, summer, and fall through the glass of his favorite impact-resistant stemware, pairing each month with its perfect ports, Pinots, and bubblies -- and offering good value recommendations for them all. Throughout, Colman reminds readers to try to pair their pours with context, which is wildly underrated when it comes to enjoying your favorite bottle. And while people tend naturally to drink lighter, more refreshing wines during the warm months and heavier, more serious wines during the winter months, Colman takes the seasonal approach a step further by offering innovative recommendations and enlightening facts that will allow readers to impress their friends for twelve months straight.

Is there a perfect wine to serve with chips and salsa on Super Bowl Sunday? Which bottles will help you drown away your tax- day blues without blowing your new budget? Colman answers these questions and much more as he pairs wines with each season, occasion, and moment. Recommending thoughtful and affordable wines for special celebrations and everyday enjoyment, offering tips on beginning a wine collection or spring cleaning the one you have, exploring how to drink with the smallest possible carbon footprint, and explaining how to maximize your wine experience when you dine out, Colman makes wine easy to understand and, most important, to savor.

Colman also shares the secret gems of his favorite wine tourism destinations -- where to find the best wine shops in Paris, which Portuguese vintners still crush grapes with their bare feet, and how you can take a ten-tasting-room tour with one stop in a tiny Oregon town -- and turns to some of the country's top sommeliers for their take on wine appreciation as well.

Perfect for both seasoned wine enthusiasts and oenophobes, A Year of Wine is an innovative approach that will encourage readers to drink outside the bottle.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment (November 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416948155
• ISBN-13: 978-1416948155
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #190,486 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #42 in	Books > Cooking, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Wine > Buying Guides
  #78 in	Books > Cooking, Food & Wine > Special Occasions > Seasonal

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Drinkers of Fine Wine, January 2, 2009

By	Katie Osborne (Portland, Oregon and the sunny Caribbean) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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If you're young and new to wine this is an excellent book for you. If you're a seasoned hand, you know, a psuedo wine assoholic, you'll find some useful info here as well. I guess I fall somewhere between the two, I enjoy a big Bordeaux or a super Napa Cab on a cold winter's day. Actually in the summertime too if I'm being well and truly air-conditioned. As for white wines, for the last several years my hubby Dub and I've been drinking exclusively chardonnay on hot summer days and with salmon in the winter, but now we're branching out.

I don't know if I'd agree about remembering a great bottle of wine as not being so great in unpleasant circumstances, because when the times are bad I find that an excellent Bordeaux makes them seem not quite so bad.

Also, before reading this book I'd have to say I was a bit of a wine snob. I was really limiting myself. Now I've learned something I think I knew, but somehow forgot. Anybody can drink a fifty dollar bottle of wine, all you need is fifty dollars. Now I try a lot of less expensive (I don't want to say cheap) wines, buying them from Trader Joe's or Grocery Outlet. I'll buy one of several bottles, go home, bag 'em, number the bags (usually with a couple friends over) then taste 'em in those stemless glasses Mr. Tyler doesn't like.

When we find a real winner, and we sometimes do, we go back and buy a couple cases. You'd be surprised how many excellent wines we've found for three to five bucks that we would have overlooked. For that reason alone, for inadvertently pointing out to me that I'd become sort of a wine snob, this book is worth five stars. I've been drinking fine wine for a long time now and I thought I knew it all, but this refreshing and exciting book taught me that I'd just begun to scratch the surface. But that's okay, I've got tough fingernails and a lot of scratching left to do.

Reviewed by Captain Katie Osborne

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well rounded view of wine through a year - interesting and light read, March 1, 2009

By	L. C Glover "Varied Interests" (Half Moon Bay Ca, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

Tyler Colman, aka "Dr. Vino", does a very nice job of covering the major types of varietals and key wine regions in the world in this book. The book takes the point of view of matching up wines with the seasons which makes sense as people tend to like certain styles and flavors based on the season.

The style of writing is easy reading but does have plenty of useful content for a wide range of people's wine knowledge. Each seasons/months entries include recommended wines, wineries, regions and some useful trips to enjoying wine such as how to chill a bottle of wine in 5 minutes. He also has entries from various sommeliers for each season/month so you have several points of view on the topics being discussed for the season. He includes most of the latest topics in the wine world -- retail, production and collecting.

The books makes me want to read "Dr. Vino" blog regularly and I make wine for a living! The organization of the book is well thought out and visually appealing to read.

If you are interesting in get a well-rounded overview of the wine world and what varietals are hot right now, I would strongly suggest that you read this book with bottle of your favorite wine! Who knows you might get inspired to try some new wines!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Make some room on the shelf, this book is a keeper!, January 14, 2009

By	K. Miller (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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For all the wine books I've read or flipped thought this one resonates with me. It's not a book for the absolute beginner and it's not a book for the wine sommelier but if like most people you drink a couple of bottles of wine a month this is aimed at you. It's a good book if you are interested in learning a bit more about the array of bottles on the shelf in your favorite wine store.

The book is organized to take you through a year of wine drinking. It's set up by month and season with a push toward drinking what makes sense for the time of year, the meal, the occasion and the crowd. It's not a book to answer XYZ fish = ABC White Wine but helps you through thinking about what would you like to serve, who's drinking it, what time of year, day, are you eating inside or outside and makes it seem easy.

The book reads like a collection of articles or blogs and as such it isn't a book that I think most folks will read in one sitting. I think you pick it up flip though, read a couple of the things that catch you eye and put it down. I did appreciate the list of wine terms in the back and some of the lists of what wines are good in certain regions cheat sheet Dr. Vino provides.

Overall I found it to be a good book and have added it to the stack of reference cookbooks in the kitchen, I'm sure it won't disappoint!