Oldman - Oldmans Guide to Outsmarting Wine

The perfect primerconcise, evenhanded, fun, and practical.

The New Yorker

Fresh, funny guide... glib and unpretentious, Oldman decodes wine-tasting lingo and shows how to spot a bargain bottle.

People

THE benchmark book for a wine introduction.

GoodGrape.com

Highly approachable... [an] inviting and informative book sure to please both novice and experienced wine connoisseurs.

Library Journal

Transforms the wine experience.

Kirkus Reviews

If youre a budding wine enthusiast with a distaste for encyclopedic volumes, this is the book for you.

La Cucina Italiana

Simplifies... with fun and celebrity.

San Francisco Chronicle

We love [Oldmans Guide]; Mark demystifies the world of wine.

Family Circle, Editors Choice Selection

Winespeak without the geek... will make you fluent in wine without sounding like a blowhard.

Bon Apptit

The perfect book.

Wine Enthusiast

If only wed had just one wine book: Oldmans Guide to Outsmarting Wine.

Jesse Kornbluth, The Huffington Post

PENGUIN BOOKS

Passionate about helping wine enthusiasts jostle the jaded and slay the snooty, Mark Oldman is one of the countrys leading wine personalities. His signature style was summed up as winespeak without the geek by Bon Apptit and the ideal mix of wine connoisseur, showman, and everyday dude by Publishers Weekly.

The bestselling Oldmans Guide to Outsmarting Wine, was called perfect (Wine Enthusiast), shortcuts to a connoisseurs confidence (BusinessWeek), and the perfect primerconcise, evenhanded, fun, and practical (The New Yorker). Currently in its ninth printing, it won the Georges Duboeuf Best Wine Book of the Year Award, was a finalist for Best Wine Book at the World Food Media Awards, and is published in Japan, Belgium, and in four volumes in France.

Mark has also written the bestselling Oldmans Brave New World of Wine, which was called the perfect book for someone whos just caught the bug, or would like to (The Wall Street Journal), one of the Best of Books of the Year (iTunes), amazing, hilarious (Marie Clare), charismatic and cool (Publishers Weekly), and a book you will cherish (The Huffington Post).

Mark is a lead judge in the PBS television series The Winemakers and has just completed filming the shows next season in Frances Rhone Valley. He has written for several top publications, including Food & Wine, Departures, and Travel & Leisure, and he has chosen all of the wine picks for the 15 million annual readers of Everyday with Rachael Ray magazine. A renowned speaker, he lectures at the countrys top gastronomic festivals, including the Aspen Food & Wine Classic, the Boston Wine Expo, and the South Beach Food Network Wine & Food Festival.

Graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a B.A., M.A., and J.D., Mark has long been keenly interested in innovating in the areas of education and consumer advocacy. Mark cofounded the career portal Vault.com in 1997 and served as the companys president through its successful sale in 2007 to a private equity firm. He has served on four major boards of Stanford, including the universitys Board of Trustees

Visit Mark online at www.MarkOldman.com, www.facebook.com/wetakem, or twitter.com/markoldman.

I drink to th general joy o th whole table.

Shakespeare, Macbeth

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in Penguin Books 2004

Copyright Mark Oldman, 2004

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

ISBN: 978-1-101-66469-8

Cover illustration by Juliette Borda

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or othewwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

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I know nothing about wine is the classic sheepishly exasperated refrain uttered in wine shops and restaurants, at dinner parties, and anywhere else corks are popped. Whether youre a habitu of Michelin three-stars or a connoisseur of Subway sandwiches, chances are youve experienced a Maalox moment when faced with making a decision about wine. Its one of those universal knowledge deficiencieslike remembering friends birthdays or knowing the right dance movesthat haunt people throughout their lives.

The wine and restaurant industries are partially to blame. How do you experiment with new types of wine when restaurants mark them up at least three times over retail price? Even if you can afford to broaden your wine horizons in a restaurant, theres not always someone there to guide you. Although some restaurants employ wine-savvy servers, many of them have no background in wine or just arent that approachable if they do. The situation can be just as difficult in wine shops. For every customer-focused wine store, there are others run by imperious or indifferent owners who care more about moving stock than educating their clientele. Even if you ignore the shopkeeper, its difficult to decipher the multiplicity of wine label types, with some wines identified by grape variety, others by region of origin, and still others by brand name.

Compounding the problem is wines Grey Poupon aura, which makes it needlessly difficult to master. Do restaurants employ scotch stewards? Do we decant tequila? Do beer guzzlers feel compelled to memorize vintage charts? And its not just what you do with wine; its what you say. Can a wine really be diffident and flintaceous or smell like gooseberries and tomato leaves? Snobs would have you believe you need a Ph.D. in linguistics to truly enjoy wine.