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Get a Good Book to Better Wine (November, 2010)

By Cate Burke

With the holidays rapidly approaching, several dilemmas arise…. What wine will you serve with Thanksgiving dinner? Which champagne will you celebrate the New Year with? To help tackle these issues, Carol Evans Hammond has written Good, Better, Best: A No-Nonsense Guide to Popular Wine.

Wine writer and sommelier Carol Evans Hammond explains, “While wine snobs are swirling and sniffing expensive wines that are tediously hard to find, the rest of America is just drinking wine.”

Good, Better, Best, released by Alpha Books in April 2010, ranks by varietal the best-selling wines in America under $15. The result is a guide to wines that you can both afford and conveniently find in your local store. In addition to the standard categories (white, red, rosé and sparkling), Hammond covers all her bases by dedicating a section to bargain (under $5), dessert and party wines.

This compact-sized book provides bottle images and tasting notes making it ideal to take shopping with you. It is easy to use and quick to reference. There is also an abundance of information and tips including ideal serving temperature, food pairing, average calorie count, history, etc. (One of my favorite tips: discover your wine personality at http://www.thelittlepenguin.com/penguinzone/winepersonalitytest)

While I would recommend this book, it is not for wine snobs. Due to the parameters set by the author (best-selling wines in America under $15) the wines suggested are not necessarily the absolute best. Good, Better, Best is intended to make wine assessable and so is ideal for people who want to buy a bottle of nice wine and enjoy it (without it having to age first).

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