A Foggy Day at Lake Willastein

January/February 2017
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One of the things that has
puzzled me about wine
writing is that wine writers
seldom discuss their personal
wine background or their
writing credentials, apparently assuming
their readers will simply conclude that
the writer is an expert. I recall one wine
writer in the remote past who never mentioned
that he was completely blind and
that all of his wine writing about variations
and complexities in color, appearance and
similar matters were written by an unidentified
person.
I cheerfully admit that while my wine
knowledge probably exceeds that of someone
who started enjoying wine last year,
that knowledge often needs supplementation.
Invariably, the needed supplementation
starts with Frank Schoonmaker’s “Encyclopedia
of Wine.”
That statement may be a bit puzzling
when it is considered that my copy of the
Encyclopedia was published more than 50
years ago and Frank died in 1976. Certainly
the Encyclopedia is out of date in many respects
but it often remains the best place to
start when I research an aspect of wine with
which I am not familiar.
As to Frank, most people consider him
to be the greatest wine authority of his time.
His wine book is impeccably detailed and
presents wine information in authoritative
but still understandable language. While the
greatest emphasis in the book’s more than
400 pages is on California and France, it covers
most of the other regions and aspects of
wine enjoyment, including wine and food
affinities. It even dares to recommend “no
Wine Information
By Ken Forrester
wine at all” in at least one instance. It contains
dozens of maps of wine regions and is
still widely available. If your personal wine
journey is just starting do find a copy and
buy it.
I haven’t bought a lot of wine books
at new retail prices in recent years since
friends give me many of them and publishers
sometimes send complimentary copies
of upcoming books although some of the
complimentary copies have obvious defects
e.g., the cover is installed upside down.
One recent purchase was titled simply,
“Wines of the World,” a 688 page “Visual
Reference Guide” that bills itself as “Your Essential
Handbook.” It is published by Metro
Books of New York; Susan Keevil is listed as
a consultant and there are several contributors.
The back page gives essential information:
comprehensive facts on each wine
region, its grape varieties, vineyards producers
and wines with detailed reports on
styles, flavors of hundreds of wines, best vintages,
who makes them. Also covered are
hundreds of photographs, maps and special
illustrated features. There is a comprehensive
wine glossary and a section on wine
and food matching.
My only criticism of the book is that
it crams so much information into its reduced
size (about 5 inches by 8 ½ inches,
688 pages). If that is a problem for you, do
buy a magnifying glass or see if you can run
a copy through your computer to enlarge
it. If your seeking of wine knowledge is just
starting, or isn’t yet very comprehensive,
I suggest that you buy a copy of the book
and shelve it next to your copy of the Frank
Schoonmaker book.
A ploy that has worked well for me and
which you may find useful in acquiring wine
books is going to library book sales. Libraries
frequently discard books in their collection.
This likely is fine for ordinary books but
not for wine books, since older wine books
often contain information not available
elsewhere. (A friend once found an old set
of encyclopedias giving then-current information
on Benjamin Franklin’s experiments
with electricity.) When my local library has a
sale I go and take a number of sacks which
I fill with any books related to any aspect
of wine. The price is usually a dollar or under
per book and I can fill a sack with what
would otherwise be the cost of one new
book. I take the books home and examine
them carefully. The ones I wish to add to
my wine library I keep; the others I return to
the library to sell at future sales. Books by
favored wine writers (Alexis Lichine, Hugh
Johnson, Philip M. Wagner, Alexis Bespaloff,
many others) I keep and add to my personal
wine library.
This system has an added advantage: it
“sort-of” separates the wine books into categories:
winemaking, cooking with wine,
wine producers, wine regions and others.
The Wine Spectator is an excellent, authoritative,
upscale magazine and source of
wine information. I recommend it with only
one relatively small reservation: wine reviewers
have excellent credentials but tend
to use cutsey-poo language in their reviews.
Ignore this other-world (in my opinion) language
and the rest of the reports are very
worthwhile.
Now for a bit of personal aggrandizement:
I have been selling my writing about
wine for more than 50 years and during
that time I have acquired a great deal of
practical information not usually available
elsewhere. A minor illustration: the most
important sentence in any manuscript you
hope to get published (whether that manuscript
is about wine or any other subject) is
the first sentence. If that sentence doesn’t
Ken Forrester, a retired administrative
law judge, is the published author of
numerous articles and columns on wine.
Ken is a member of the Authors League, the American
Wine Society and the Society of Wine Educators.
figuratively reach out and grab the reader
by the lapels and say, “Listen up, dammit, I’m
talking to you,” your chance of a sale often
decreases to the vanishing point.
I have included most of this practical
knowledge In a multi-page monograph
titled, “About Wine, To Get You Started.” As
one reviewer stated, “It starts just forward
of which end of the bottle you open and
goes on from there.” It also mentions, describes
and discusses most aspects of wine
in a practical way, lists a dozen or so specific
Welcome to Our World!
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wines to taste as well as the pages of additional
wine information.
It sells for $4.95 and is not available from
me but from barnesandnoble.com or amazon.com.
In the search window type “Ken
Forrester” and a list of this and my other
“About” monographs will appear.
My admittedly biased opinion is that
the monograph gives you more practical
wine information for less money than you
are likely to get from any other source. MM
501.851.3641
www.quyspa.com
www.MauMag.com
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