Schneider - Wine for normal people : a guide for real people who like wine, but not the snobbery that goes with it

TO M.C. ICE AND ALL THE PODCAST LISTENERS (MY WINE TRIBE) WITHOUT WHOMWINE FOR NORMAL PEOPLEWOULD NEVER EXIST. AND TO MY LITTLE SHINING STARS, ARIANA AND VIVIAN.

Text copyright 2019 by Elizabeth Schneider.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-7141-8 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-7134-0 (hardcover)

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started working at a big hulking winery fresh out of business school.

In my first week on the job in sunny California, I was talking to a few people about Italian wines I liked and I mentioned Dolcetto as a favorite. Thats when he pounced! My snotty, arrogant new boss was Johnny-on-the-spot, and as he was heading toward the printer he not-so-casually stopped and said, OK, if its your favorite, tell me this: Is Dolcetto a grape or a region? I was caught off guard.

Using my basic wine knowledge (again, mostly with the experience of lifting the glass from table to mouth, but with some wine classes, too), I tried to deduce the answer. I knew that the wine was Italian and most wines from Italy were named by region, so I took an educated guess. I said it was a region.

His welcome-to-your-new-job, helpful response? Its a grape. I guess you dont know as much about wine as I thought you did, Miss Wine Lover. Better hit the books.

I stayed there for about four years and Ive been in the industry for another ten so Ive learned that these lavish displays of schmuck-ery are everywhere in wine. The only thing you can do is walk away from these wine peacocks without losing it on them, and maintain your dignity by realizing that you are NOT a moron, youre just on a normal-person learning curve. Wine is one of the few subjects I know of in which many people in the industry discourage you from learning yet put you down for not knowing stuff.

The best analogy for our journey into wine is learning a foreign language: Youre not fluent on day one, and part of the fun of study is that you can always learn more! Further, immersion is the only way to truly know the subject. In wine, basics like wine vocabulary, geography, naming conventions, and pronunciations can get you on your way to fluency. So thats what I aim to give you in this book: the basics, plus more if you want to take your knowledge further. Use the book how you want and know that my aim is to make the sections easy to understand, exciting to explore, and a little quirky and funny because theres no reason to be boring and lame when writing about something thats for pure pleasure!

To help contextualize vocabulary, region, or customs, youll see question-and-answer boxes throughout the book. These are questions Ive received countless times from normal people who listen to the Wine for Normal People podcast and attend my classes and events, and from my husband, M.C. Ice, who is a normal wine person and co-podcaster, and whose name you will see throughout the book. Ive inserted the questions where theyre most needed, in the hope that I can preempt confusion around certain issues by calling them out. I wont get them all, so you can always find me online and Ill answer whatever I didnt get here (and use it in the second printing, so thank you in advance!).

Note: While well be exploring wine worldwide, for simplicity, dollar amounts given in this book refer to US dollars.

And now, to conclude the introduction, Im going to wave my magic wand and reveal to you the secret to learning wine. Once I tell you this, you may not need the hundreds of other pages Ive slaved over but Ill take that risk.

If you need no further detail once you read the answer, drop the book and watch some bad TV. If you want more, lets start with the basics on wine words and get into wine, for normal people.