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Book makes buying wine easy (May 13, 2010)

By Sandra Silfven

Find yourself playing wine roulette in front of the wine shelves?

You're not alone; everybody is perplexed by the sheer number of choices and the gamble involved in buying something new.

A surprising little paperback, "Good Better Best: A No-Nonsense Guide to Popular Wines" by Carolyn Evans Hammond (Alpha Books, $12.95), gets down to brass tacks and compares the wine quality of the top-selling brands -- and, I might add, the ones sold at well-stocked Metro Detroit supermarkets and some drugstores, along with wine shops.

Hammond, a sommelier and wine writer based in Toronto and trained in London -- don't worry, she knows the California wine trade inside out -- studied the 120 top-selling brands compiled yearly by a respected market research company and applied her palate. All wines in the book, except in the last chapter, on dessert wines, cost $15 or less. (The price limit for dessert wines is $30.)

Her price categories are $5-$7.99, $8-$10.99 and $11-$15, and within each price category she says what's Good, Better and Best without mentioning vintages.

Snooty drinkers might attack this work as rating only "commercial" wines, not "artisan." Commercial implies mass production -- millions of bottles -- while artisan means small-batch, boutique producers. And yep, that's what she does. Hello Korbel and Barefoot. But wouldn't you like to know if those big brands are any good?

Speaking by phone, Hammond said, "It's a great challenge for large wineries to make consistently good wines, but they have the resources to buy quality fruit and hire reputable winemakers."

As a wine taster and writer with an eye for affordable wines, I find plenty of value and good tastes in these large brands, though some admittedly are lighter in style, soft and not complex. But Hammond's picks are spot-on from my experience.

This guide is a terrific help to people who like wine and know very little about it, who have limited tasting experience and no exposure to the great wines of the world. And if you do know wine, you'll be even more curious to see what her recommendations are.

Let's check out Cabernet Sauvignons at the three price points:

Priced $5-$7.99: Good -- Pepperwood Grove; Better -- Stone Cellars; Best -- Hardy's Stamp of Australia.

Priced $8-$10.99: Good -- Cavit Collection; Better -- Rosemount Diamond Label; Best -- Columbia Crest Two Vines.

Priced $11-$15: Good -- McWilliam's Hanwood Estate; Better -- Blackstone Winery; Best -- Clos Du Bois North Coast.

Hammond, in her introduction, does not waste words about her mission: "With this book, I'm putting my foot down. Slamming my fist on the table and giving you the stuff that matters."

This terrific little work hit shelves last month and in a week's time was the fourth best-selling wine guide on Amazon.com.

To see the review on the source website please click here.