Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: 25th Anniversary Edition by Kevin Zraly

From the Publisher

Let’s pop a cork and drink a toast to America’s very best, most popular wine course! Windows on the World Complete Wine Course is celebrating its silver anniversary, and this classic volume now has new, updated material that wine lovers will savor.

For this new edition, Kevin traveled to eighty wine regions in twenty countries, tasting more than 4,000 wines and meeting 500 winemaking professionals. To assure that he had all the latest wine-producing news, he recently visited vineyards in Austria, Hungary, Greece, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, and Argentina. Plus, he has updated Wine-Buying Strategies, best vintages, wine lists, and labels. As always, the book includes Wine Basics, Tasting Wine, Matching Wine and Food, Frequently Asked Questions About Wine, and a Selected Glossary. Zraly goes region-by-region, with the wines organized from simple to complex. By following Kevin’s order, readers will experience the best wines and a wide diversity of tastes, styles, regions, and countries.

It’s not only a comprehensive and bargain-priced hands-on wine education, and a superb catalog from which to start a wine cellar or find the right bottle, it’s also an inexpensive way to get the knowledge Kevin imparts in his outstanding course. This is clearly the wine guide against which all others are judged.

Publishers Weekly

The silver anniversary version of this perennial bestseller by legendary wine personality Zraly still emphasizes consumer enjoyment and user friendliness in the pursuit of education and appreciation. The DIY edition of his now-legendary class tackles the wide world of vini- and viticulture with a sense of humor, erudition and modesty, and includes expanded material on wine regions beyond France, Italy and California. The 25-year benchmark provides frequent opportunity to look back over changes in grape growing and winemaking over the past quarter century. While the book's frequently busy layout may reflect changes in traditional media and information acquisition—large sections are laid out like FAQs—it allows room for a broad range of information without oversaturation. Tasting work sheets and self-administered questionnaires are included, while sidebars include lighter material, such as wine-related quotes and other assorted trivia. Among the handy visuals are wine-growing maps and wine labels included not merely for aesthetic appreciation but for useful comparisons in areas with complicated classifications like Burgundy. Appropriate for professional and layperson alike, the volume continues to be one of the most indispensable titles of its kind. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Because of its textbook format, novices and seasoned wine tasters will find this 25th-anniversary edition of the best-selling wine guide extraordinarily useful. Although Zraly has written the chapters (called classes) to instruct new wine enthusiasts, they are complete enough to enhance the knowledge of longtime aficionados. While covering classic wine regions (France, Italy, and California) of the world, Zraly has also added six new sections and expanded coverage of wine-producing countries, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Chile, that have gained world recognition over the past quarter century. Each chapter/class is followed by two pages of questions that cover the material presented in the chapter. Recommended examples of each varietal are generously dispersed throughout the book, including reproductions of their labels. VERDICT The casual browser will find fascinating trivia and facts about wine in numerous sidebars, but may not be able to resist becoming involved in the main text, making this difficult to put down. Highly recommended for all wine connoisseurs. (Index not seen.)—Ann Weber, Bellarmine Coll. Prep., San Jose, CA

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