Category: review

Rebecca Gibb is a Master of Wine and an award-winning wine journalist, who spends her knowledge of wine and researching for writing to educate us on the history of wine tampering from Roman times to the present.  Her newest book is “Vintage Crime: A Short History of Wine Fraud“, which could be a historical thriller set in Europe in the…

Grant Reynolds is a sommelier in the USA who worked for top restaurants that cared about the wines they served.  This helped push Grant to travel to Europe to meet with winemakers and learn more about exceptional wines. Grant’s “The Wine List” is his accounting of what he asserts are the most remarkable vintages of wines going back to the…

If you are a wine lover like me, you probably like to go on vacation to areas that grow grapes and make wine.  Lonely Planet has produced the second edition of their Wine Trails book where they outline 52 perfect weekend trips in different wine regions around the world.  The book does not go into depth for the different wine…

Mandy Naglich is an Advanced Cicerone & Certified Taster and wants you to learn how to really taste your food and drink.  Her journey to learning about tasting happened through being a brewmaster and Cicerone which then spread to everything else that you can eat and/or drink.  I think many people that review food or beverages start in one category…

Having an adult beverage while bowling is common, although many people you will see may have a beer.  But in some cases, you may see a cocktail.  In part we have cocktail culture expanding everywhere, but I hope we see cocktails spread into the bowling alleys, thanks to the movie, The Big Lebowski, and now this book, The Unofficial Big…

I recently noticed the book, “New Mocktails Bible” by Editors of Fox Chapel Publishing and decided to read and review it for you.  Hopefully, this book will find its way into many mixologists’ libraries of drinks.   I drink wine, beer, and alcohol-based cocktails, but sometimes I am with other people that don’t for various reasons, such as diabetics, athletes in…

Karen MacNeil is the author of two editions of her Wine Bible and now has come out with the third edition where she expands the book to cover new chapters of Great Britain, Croatia, and Israel, adding a revised Great Wines section for each country and region, plus expanded chapters on France, Italy, Australia, USA, and South America, plus much…

The more you taste wine and learn about grapes, viticulture, and vinification methods, you will likely drift toward more wines that highlight terroir.  Author, Joe Campanale, with Joshua David Stein, take a deep dive into Italian wines from small artisan producers using indigenous grapes and artisanal methods.  In the Acknowledgements at the end of the book, Joe Campanale notes, “My…

Mike Veseth, is the editor of The Wine Economist online and is also a prolific publisher of books combining the topics of wine and economics.  From his website, I note he has published: Wine Wars (2011), Extreme Wine (2013), Money, Taste & Wine: It’s Complicated! (2015), and Around the World in Eighty Wines (2018), plus several other books economics-related.  Wine…

Steven Laine is a fiction writer with WSET III, FWS, IWS, SWS, CWS, and Champagne Academy credentials.  He writes his fiction around some aspect of wine.  His previous novel, Root Cause, covered what could happen if a new type of louse was attacking vineyard vines, like phylloxera did in the 1800s.  Steven brings his knowledge of wine and food into…