Giglio Anthony - Andrea Immers wine buying guide for everyone: featuring more than 400 top wines available in stores and restaurants

Contents

Introduction

Although enjoying a good glass of wine is easy, all the types, costs, and confusing labels can make shopping for a bottle pretty hard. For the typical wine consumer, buying guidancein the form of critics 100-point scores and elaborate tasting reports of rare and exclusive bottlingsisnt much help. That is why I wrote Andrea Immers Wine Buying Guide for Everyone. It is your road map to the real world of wine buyingfrom restaurants and hotels to supermarkets, price clubs, wine shops, and websites. Here is what youll find inside:

Real-World Wines

This guide showcases more than 400 of the most popular and available wines on the market. That includes everything from supermarket stalwarts to trade-up labels to superpremium restaurant brands (with plenty of boutique pedigree but without the you-cant-get-it frustration). Putting it plainly, if the wine is in your favorite neighborhood shops and eateries, at your supermarket or Costco, Olive Garden or Walt Disney World, Marriott or Carnival Cruises, Delta Airlines or wine.com, its probably in this book.

Wine Reviews from the Trenches

I am indebted to the many consumers and wine pros who helped assess, for each of the wines in this book, what really matters to buyers at the point of purchasetaste and value for the money. For each wine, youll also see their real-world reactions, as well as my impressions of how the wine stacks up in its grape or style category and in the marketplace overall. My tasters also contributed write-in candidates to the list of wines, and Ive included those that received the highest number of positive mentions and have decent availability. Theres also space in each listing for your notes, so you can keep track of the wines you try. (I hope youll share your impressions with me for the next editionread on to see how.)

Other Helpful Buying Tools in the Guide

Throughout the Immer Guide, Ive included simple tools to address just about every major wine buying question Ive ever been asked. They are:

Best-Of ListsA quick reference to the top-performing wines in each grape or style category.

Andreas Kitchen Fridge Survivor and Kitchen Countertop Survivor gradesHow long will a wine keep after its opened? Having heard this question more than any other from my restaurant customers and wine students, I decided several years ago that it was time to find out, so I started putting every wine I taste professionally to the fridge/countertop test. The resulting report card should help both home wine drinkers and restaurateurs who pour wine by the glass make the most of the leftovers, by simply recorking and storing red wine on the kitchen countertop and storing recorked sparkling, white, and pink wines in the fridge.

Immer Best BetsThis is the books search engine of instant recommendations for every common wine occasion and buying dilemma, from Thanksgiving wines to restaurant wine list best bets, party-crowd pleasers, blue chip bottles to impress the client, and more.

Wine List DecoderThis handy cross-reference chart will help you crack the code of different wine list terms, so you can quickly and easily find the styles you like.

Great Wine Made Simple Mini-CourseMini-lessons covering wine styles, label terms, glassware, buying wine in stores and restaurants, and other housekeeping details to simplify buying and serving wine, so you can focus on enjoying it.

I had been in the restaurant wine business for more than a decade before I wrote my first book, Great Wine Made Simple. Having studied like crazy to pass the Master Sommelier exam (the hardest wine test you can imagine), I knew there were lots of great books out there. So why another? Because as I worked training waiters and budding sommeliers, I began to see that in practice those books werent much help. Wine, like food, golf, the saxophone, and so many other sensory pursuits, is something you learn not by studying but by doing. So Great Wine Made Simple teaches wine not through memorization but the way I learned itthrough tasting. It works, and its fun, whether you are just a dabbler or a committed wine geek.

Similarly, I intend this guide to fill a gap. Most people around the country buy wine based on price and convenience. And whether its restaurant guests, live callers on my Food Network and radio appearances, or e-mail from readers of my Esquire column, they all have the same questions: What are the good, cheap wines? And which wines are really worth the splurge? This buying guide is the first to answer those questions realistically, featuring wines and tastes in the broad marketplace, along with plenty of shrewd pro advice to help you make the most of every wine purchase. Food is one major way to do that, so as a professionally trained cook Ive also included lots of pairing pointers.

How to Use This Buying Guide

Here is everything you need to know to get instant buying power from the Immer Guide.

Looking Up Wine Recommendationsby Wine Category or Winery Name
Wine CategoryGrape, Region, or Type

The wine reviews are grouped by major grape variety, region, or type. For example:

Reviews section headings look like this

WHITE WINES

Sparkling/Champagne

Youll probably recognize some of the main grape and style categories, because they lead the wine market in both quality and sales. These include what I call the Big Six grapes (the white grapes Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay; and the reds Pinot Noir, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon), plus Pinot Grigio, Italian reds, Syrah/Shiraz, and some other popular categories. This is also the way most wine lists and many shops are set up. The Other Whites and Other Reds sections are used for less common grapes and proprietary blends.

Helpful to know: Ive arranged all the wine categories from lightest to fullest in body, as a quick reference for when you are shopping or perusing a wine list. More and more, restaurant wine lists are being arranged by body style, too, because it helps both the guest and the server quickly determine which wines are lightest or heaviest, so they can match their personal preference or food choice if they wish.

Winery NameAlphabetical Wine Listings

The wines in each category are in alphabetical order by winery name, so you can easily find the specific wine youre looking for. For example:

Chardonnay [[Wine category heading]]

Helpful to know: If you are looking for a specific winery name rather than a grape or style category, the Winery Index at the back of the book will show you which producers wines were reviewed for the guide and the page number for each wine review.

Key to the Ratings and Symbols in Each Wine Entry

This sample entry identifies the components of each wine listing.

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