A guide to choosing, buying and appreciating French wine. It covers 8000 wines, selected from a total of 25,000 by 800 experts after a blind tasting. Published annually, the book contains information, notes and addresses and maps of each wine-growing region. The information covered includes: the year of wine tasted; the quality of the wine; the kind of wine; price; price/quality ratio; best/exceptional years; whether it was matured in the barrel or a tank; the number of bottles produced; the address/email address/name of the proprietor; area cultivated; thermo-regulation; tasting on site; and sales on site. Wines can be referenced via the region, name of the wine, appellation, or via the producer/co-operative/merchant. In addition there is a practical section on everything from reading the label to pairing wine with food.
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Learn more. |
|
There is a newer edition of this item:
|
Book Description
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
As a Frenchman who has read all upteen past editions of this book, and a great wine lover, please allow me to dissent with the popular praise of this guide. In summary, it is a long compendium of the mainstream production of the French regions. As such, it weeds out the bad wines, but never includes the really great ones. (except for a few token "stars" like Montrachet or Latour which are allways added in for good measure). It is not hard to find out why this guide is so: just ask yourself how it is made. How could they possibly taste tens of thousands of wines? The answer is simple: they don't. The Hachette guide is based on regional tastings where so called experts such as restaurant chefs, sommeliers and wine producers taste the wines. Unfortunately, contrarily to common opinion, this population is NOT expert at tasting wine at all. Most restaurant chefs don't kow wine, most sommeliers never taste wine (they are too busy waiting tables in their bosses' restaurants) and 99% of wine producers know fewer than 20 wines (their own plus those fo their best friends). Moreover these wine producers would never mark a wine down in a blind tasting - in fear that they may be tasting their own production! (remember, the tastings are done at the regional level, so the chances of this happenning are pretty high).
This is a mediocre book. Use it to build yourself a mediocre cellar. Look elsewhere for great wines (at all prices)
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
This is the English version of the annual bible for French Wine lovers and professionals. Unlike other guides this one does not accept advertising and all wines are judged on blind tastings by over 800 professionals. Only 30% of the 28,000 bottles submitted from every wine region of France succeed in winning an entry. Every wine is described and rated together with details of the winemaker, visiting times etc. There is also a wealth of other information on vintages, food, tasting etc which makes this such a valuable book for anyone seeking out decent wines in France. As a professional I use it as an indispensible guide to finding new supplies and learning more about wine and France. Most of us do not need to purchase it annually, as inclusion in any year suggests that the vineyard in question is doing most things well. The print is small but this allows for such a wealth of information. Like all good things, I recommend this with some hesitation, as until now it has been almost a secret source of information for me as a professional - now all my customers can access the same information!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must have
4 Sep 2001
By Mark Bell
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
This book is a standard and a must have for serious wine lovers or those wishing to know more about French wine. Despite its weight I took this tome with me on a recent trip to France and found it even more useful than I had before, as it contains a great deal of contact information about wineries, including email in many cases, and information about whether or not visits are offered, if wine is sold on location, etc. This information is helpful even if you are not traveling to France as you can use it to contact the wine maker and ask who distributes their wines in your area. But such contact information is just one of the many very useful features that this guide provides. If you can afford to buy french wine at current crazy prices, then you cannot afford not to have this invaluable guide.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
French wines for the advanced Francophile
2 Aug 2001
By Errol Kovitch
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I can rate this book 4 stars based on volume alone.
Thousands of wines, from EVERY wine producing region of France, are rated with mostly verbal descriptions on each wine. The rating scale is similar to the Michelin guide. Only very good wines receive one star, excellent wines two stars, and only the very best three stars. Only significant wines are deemed important enough to have any mention of past vintages.
Producers of many wines (e.g. Burgundy) typically have only one wine mentioned, leaving the reader to wonder if the review is typical of the producer's range.
I was hoping to use this guide to help me find ratings on wines ignored by the major publications, like Parker, and the Wine Spectator, but instead, I can rarely find any of these wines in the pages of this guide either.
Instead, I have found this book to have great value as a guide to wines in the lesser-known wine areas of France. So, if you cannot afford the prestigious areas of Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhone, etc., this book serves well in helping you to find satellite regions producing similar wines at hopefully much lower prices.
›
Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews
4.5 out of 5 stars
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
