Oz Clarke - Oz Clarke Wine by the Glass: Helping you find the flavours and styles you enjoy

My name is Oz. Welcome to my world of wine. This is a world where wine is about pleasure, about laughter, about friendship and fun, but also about flavour, personality and value. The world of wine has never been more alive, more energetic than it is now.

There has never been such an astonishing array of wines for us to choose from. Countries that Id barely heard of 10 years ago are now clamouring for our attention. Grape varieties I feared had been consigned to the dustbin of history are glaring out at me from wine lists and merchants shelves. And wine styles that Id barely dreamt of, or perhaps Id wistfully yearned for, are now commonplace, thrilling us all if were prepared to take the plunge.

Well, thats why Im here. Ive been taking plunges all my wine life. I admit, sometimes Ive come up choking for breath, my throat burning with indignation at some of the concoctions Ive confronted. But thats spurred me on to greater efforts and, between you and me, I dont mind bad wine now and then because it makes the myriad of good wines all about us seem all the more delicious.

But the wonderful thing about being a thirsty, enthusiastic wine drinker today is that there is very little genuinely bad wine around. In the good supermarkets and merchants, restaurants and bars, you can go right to the cheapest wine on offer, and still get pleasure from drinking the stuff.

Pleasure. Yes. Thats what wine is all about for me. Its not about prestige or snobbery, its not about marking out of 100 points and taxing my brain for the most unlikely descriptive adjectives. Its about the sparkle in my eyes and the joy in my heart.

But I do know that a bit of advice may not go amiss. So this is what Ive tried to do here. I havent written a book full of dry facts, statistics, pedestrian tasting notes and humdrum wine and food pairings. Ive just tried to tell you about what I think will help you gain more pleasure from your wine. Ive probably missed some things out, various aspects that other wine books religiously cover, but I simply didnt think theyd add to the sum of your pleasure.

There are plenty of details, quite a few facts and a whole ocean of opinions in this book. And if it makes you opinionated, but from the viewpoint of saying, I want more fun from my wine, I want to enjoy talking about it more with my friends, I want to pay a fair price, and I want to get the most flavour from my glass of red, white, pink or fizz then Ill be happy. And I hope you will be too.

You can dip in and out of this book as much as you like you dont have to read it from cover to cover, though Id be delighted if you did. But let me just tell you what youve got coming up.

Basically, Im trying to give a solid but not oppressive grounding, and then take you off into the rather fanciful and exotic world of my mind with its opinions. To start, Ive chosen 12 words. Just 12. And I think if you understand these words you can have a pretty good wine life and never need to learn anything more.

But obviously Id like you to. So I then take you to the grape varieties the ones I think are attractive and important (thats not the same thing in some wine experts eyes). Then I have a good old go at the various styles of wine you might encounter, or you might fancy. Then I talk about the concept of New World, because so many of the wines we like most come from there. And just to keep things lively I throw in some stuff about biodynamic, natural, organic and orange wines; and what does terroir mean and how does a wine get oaky?

I havent mentioned countries much yet, so I do a kind of speed date with all the wine countries of the world well, almost all of them.

Then I talk about a whole load of practical stuff: what the label tells you, buying tips, is there such a thing as a bargain, how do you tell if you should age a wine, how do you tell if its too old? Or too young? Oh, and lots of other things: essential kit, bottle shapes and glasses, food and wine matching, corkscrews and serving temperatures its all there.

Then I give you the chance to become a bit of a wine geek. I talk about wine tastings, blind and not blind, spitting (important), tasting terms, collecting, finding out more from the internet, wine societies and wine trips and a lot of other stuff too.

And if you get through all of that, I hope youll feel more confident in this world of wine, more able to make your own decisions, more able to approach the world of wine with a smile on your face and a sparkle in your eye.