The New “Wine Folly Essential Guide to Wine” & a Giveaway!
Wine Folly and the New Book
If you’ve never heard of Madeline Puckette and Wine Folly, I might wonder what rock you’ve been living under? Madeline and Justin Hammack run a very popular website, Wine Folly, which features tons of infographics, videos, and generally useful wine information in a very accessible format. No stuffy, hard to understand jargon, just good info, presented clearly. This week, they released a new print book:
Wine Folly The Essential Guide to Wine
The new Wine Folly Guide will help you make sense of all of this
Best Beginner’s Guide?
By its title, you might assume this is a beginner’s book, but you wouldn’t be exactly correct. I can give a decent opinion on this one point, as I’ve only be seriously drinking wine for a few years. My all time favorite beginner’s book was the topic of my very first blog post. I’d still recommend the same book for a 100% beginner, looking for a place to start.
55 popular wine grapes are profiled with key information organized into a two sided page for each one; nice!
Who Should Buy the Wine Folly Book?
The Wine Folly Guide is the perfect 2nd wine book, or would be great for a person who is past the very beginning of an interest in wine. Once you know your way around a few wines and are looking to go deeper, a pure beginners guide is no longer so useful. Enter Wine Folly – online and in print. Often, quick access to more information without needing to read an encyclopedia is just what is needed. Madeline and Justin present an amazingly wide variety of material in fun infographics. Perfect for getting a quick answer to your burning question of the day. It also functions well as a coffee table book, as you can literally open it to any page and find something interesting.
Madeline’s Challenge, how would you match up?
My Favorite Part
My favorite part of the book is Madeline’s challenge in the preface on page VII. She sets out 3 goals:
- Taste 34 of the 55 wines in the book
- Try at least 1 wine from each of 12 regions
- Learn to blind taste your favorite varietal
This is the best way to use the book, as your guide to broadening your wine horizons. How did I do? I’m at 53 of the 55 varieties, 12 for 12 on regions, and I participate in a blind tasting group. And I still think the Wine Folly Guide is very fun and very useful.
Do you need all these glasses? The Wine Folly Guide can help.
Win the Wine Folly Guide!
Holy cow, I’m running my first giveaway! Would you like to win a copy of the new Wine Folly book? Of course you would. All you need to do is leave a comment here with your favorite introductory wine book. On Wednesday September 30th, I’ll randomly pick a winner, and the publisher will send you a free copy. Of course, I’d love it if you would also follow my blog, but you’ll be on the honor system for that. One proviso: contest is only open to US addresses. Go!
Here are a few example pages provided courtesy of Wine Folly (click on any image to view the full size slide show)
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[…] “Once you know your way around… and are looking to go deeper, a pure beginner’s guide is no longer so useful. Enter Wine Folly–” Food Wine Click […]
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Oh my goodness! Honestly, it was “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. Since then, I’ve picked up everything from “The Wine Bible” to “The essential scratch & sniff guide to becoming a wine expert”. Favorite wine tale: Caro Feely’s “Grape Expectations”. Hurrah to wine literature!
Thanks for your reply. I’ll add Grape Expectations to my reading list. I love reading first person accounts.
Wine For Dummies. The best wine foundation a person can have!
Hi Jason, I definitely qualify as a dummy. I’ve usually avoided the Dummy books, but I’ll put in a request at Hennepin County Libraries.
My favorite intro to wine book is Drink This by Dara. Very approachable and full of great content. I still pick it up now and then.
Aaron, I agree 100%. My copy is coffee stained, written in, and even autographed by Dara. Love it.
Very Interesting post. I have desperate need of this book, as my one and only wine book is ‘The World Encyclopedia of Wine’ by Stuart Walters published by ‘Select Editions’ and bought in a local supermarket! It is full of gorgeous photos of different regions and tells which grapes grow where and what is the best region for what wine – but nothing like ‘Wine Folly’ – I love the pictures and diagrams – great for a numpty like me. I don’t think that the publishers would send me a free copy all the way to France though?
Hoping they would…since I’m in Italy! 🙂
Lucky you – wish I was. Just returned from Tuscany and would go back like a shot! 🙂
Lindy, you live in France, so you have an unfair advantage!
Ha ha ha = problem here is though, that it is nigh on impossible to buy foreign wine. You can find some very limited ‘popular’ Italian, German or Spanish wine in certain supermarkets or wine merchants. But I have never seen Bulgarian, South African, Chiliean or Californian for example (maybe can buy it somewhere but have to seek it out). I need that book t educate the French…..
You must be my lucky star – I have just found a New Zealand ‘Kaituna Hills’ Sauvignon Blanc at Marks and Spencers food store at Chatelet – an English shop, I might add……..going to serve it with fish steamed in banana leaves and jasmine rice
I haven’t read nearly enough wine books…but one I always like to reference is Jancis Robinson’s World Atlas of Wine. So comprehensive!
Diana,
I have lots of books, but have never purchased the World Atlas of Wine. Maybe I should put the new edition on my holiday gift list!
“Exploring Wine” by Steven Kolpan, Brian H. Smith, Michael A. Weiss (literally the textbook for my wine certification class)! It’s informative and a great reference.
This book looks beautiful, and I can’t wait to see how my experience stacks up in the challenge described in the preface!
Meg, wow, I’ve never even heard of that one. Must look into it.
My favorite intro “wine” book is called “Wine and Food.” I like it because it’s not recipes, and it’s not specific wines from specific years or vintners, so it’s timeless. It’s a general approach to what types of wines go with certain types of foods.
Thanks, Diane. I like having those kinds of books for reference when I’m stuck.
I did not know that introductory wine books exist. I am more of a trial-and-error drinker =)
Aaron,
Trial and error is definitely part of the process. I do like having a bit of a plan, though.
I’m a newbie at wine books – I don’t have one! I follow the Wine Folly Blog and now yours – I would love to win this one as a first in a new collection!
Thanks! Honored to have every single follower.
Love their site – just downloaded a great article on Merlot in prep for #winePW.
My first wine book was Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World, I’ve updated it with new editions as they come out.
Cheers to your first giveaway!
I have Kevin’s book, kind of spooky that it was in the World Trade Center.
I actually never read one before, but this would be the perfect start. 🙂
Sorry you didn’t win, there’s always Amazon!
And the winner is….. Christy Majors! Congratulations Christy! I’ll contact the publisher and they’ll send you the book. Thanks to everyone who participated!