Two new wine guides have appeared just in time for the holiday wine-book-gift-giving season. Informative and interesting, they present us with two very different ways to think about wine and buying it. Perfect for a comparative review!
The Wine Curmudgeon’s Guide to Cheap Wine by Jeff Siegel (a.k.a. The Wine Curmudgeon) 2013 (also available as Kindle e-book).,
Complete Wine Selector: How to Choose the Right Wine Every Time by Katherine Cole, 2013.
These books remind me of the parable of the hedgehog and the fox that served as the inspiration for one of Isaiah Berlin’s best known essays. The fox knows many things, the story goes. But the hedgehog knows One Big Thing!
The Complete Wine Fox
Complete Wine Selector is the fox in this story. Gosh, it sure does deliver on its promise to be complete. There is just so much useful and interesting information packed these 250+ pages. Sue and I were both impressed.
And it really does focus on choosing wines, providing both general principles and specific recommendations. Cole builds the book around the idea that people should learn about styles of wine and not just focus on varietals, appellations, etc . The ten wine glasses on the book cover represent the ten wine styles that she analyzes in the book, including crisp, lean whites; rich full-bodied whites; light, refreshing reds; sparkling wines and rosés; continuing down the list until we reach fortified wines.
The idea of thinking about wine in terms of style is very useful even if it is not really new. Hugh Johnson stakes a claim to it in his foreword to the book and I have seen many restaurant wine lists that focus on style versus grape or country of origin. There is even a chain of stores called WineStyles organized along these lines. Cole’s comparative advantage is in the execution of the wine styles strategy, taking us from general principles to specific wines and wine recommendations very effectively.
The final pages of the book present more general background information, such as how wine is made, how it should be served and stored, good places to buy it and so on. Interesting and good to have, but the stories behind those ten glasses on the cover are what you are here for. Like the fox of the famous fable, this book knows many things and organizes them in a way that will delight many readers.
My only real criticism is that the graphic design sometimes seem to overwhelm the book’s content, although I acknowledge that some readers (especially those under 30 years of age) will disagree. Trying to fit content into design-determined boxes sometimes results in text that is hard to read. And sometimes images seem to just fill a designed illustration space rather than usefully illustrate a key concept. On the other hand many of the graphics (such as the detailed wine label illustrations) are really good, so perhaps I am being too picky (Sue didn’t object to the design at all).
I loved Cole’s previous book on biodynamic viticulture in Oregon. I’m happy to have her new wine guide on my bookshelf!
The Hedgehog Curmudgeon
Jeff Siegel’s new book is the hedgehog. Although Jeff knows as much as any fox about wine, his book digs deep into a single topic — his One Big Thing — cheap wine. Like Rodney Dangerfield, cheap wine “can’t get no respect” and Siegel aims to change that.
Some people treat cheap wine as if it were a contagious disease, but not Jeff Seigel. He knows that bad wine (of any price) is a curse and good wine, especially if it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, is a blessing. Cheap wine today is the best in history. Celebrate!
The table of contents gives you an idea of how the story is developed.
- Why cheap wine matters
- Cheap wine’s long and winding road
- The revolution in cheap wine
- Understanding cheap wine
- How to buy cheap wine: The basics
- How to buy cheap wine: Advanced course
There is a lot to like in this book — lots of fascinating stories. I like the strong sense of history that comes through and the appreciation that the rise of quality cheap wine was in a way the triumph of technology and business competition over entrenched attitudes among consumers and industry politics that resisted change. This book is about more than cheap wine, you see, although Siegel takes care never to stray too far from his hedgehog focus.
There are many twists and turns on the path that Siegel chooses and, as I look at my notes, his hedgehog touches on a lot of topics that Cole’s fox also explores. No surprise there, I suppose — they inhabit the same wine forest even if they focus on different elements of it. Both are interesting books that you should consider if you are looking for wine guide that wants to shake up your way of looking at things!