Le Cordon Bleu Wine Essentials

Professional Secrets to Buying, Storing, Serving, and Drinking Wine

by Stephen Brook, Patricia Gastaud-Gallagher, Peter Howard, Graham Latham, Wink Lorch, and Margaret Rand

John Wiley & Sons, 192 pp., $30

With hundreds of wine tomes on the market, how does a book distinguish itself from the hoi polloi? In this case, one of the world’s great cooking schools provides the name and direction. More important, this book aims at a different reader than usual. No long-winded comparisons of the aromas of Fitou versus Faugeres. Instead, Le Cordon Bleu gives us the equivalent of an owner’s manual. What should I buy, where should I buy it, and then what should I do with it? How do I taste it and what should I serve with it? Very practical.

My favorite part of this book is the fact that you don’t have to read the whole thing. Want to know whether you got a bad wine? Check the table of contents and you find “Recognizing Good and Bad Wine” on page 80. Turning to page 80, you find a simple and straightforward description of all the ways wine can go bad. Or maybe a friend gave you a bottle of Shiraz and they’re coming over for dinner. What should you serve? Go to page 134, where the authors recommend red meat, especially beef, venison, and lamb. They even give you a sample recipe for Rack of Lamb with an Herb Crust. Ever wonder about why wineophiles use terms like pineapple or asparagus or vanilla or wet dog to describe a grape product? Back to the table of contents and there’s a section beginning on page 70 about smells, even an Aroma Wheel on page 73.

Don’t get me wrong. Le Cordon Bleu Wine Essentials has enough information and organization to reward a trek from page 1 to page 192. In fact, if you read this book from beginning to end and do everything the authors prescribe, I promise you that you’ll know more about wine than almost anyone in Central Texas who doesn’t do this stuff for a living. But if you can’t be bothered with all that extra knowledge running around in your head, this book gives you a quick way to answer your wine questions.

Packed with helpful illustrations and written in a conversational manner, there is plenty of detail here for the knowledgeable wine consumer. If you don’t think that describes you, don’t despair. As long as you know the difference between Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, your knowledge is advanced enough to take advantage of this excellent book.

This article appears in August 3 • 2001.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US

Wes Marshall is the author of What's a Wine Lover To Do? (Artisan) and The Wine Roads of Texas (Maverick), as well as the Executive Producer of the PBS television series of the same name. Wes has written for The Austin Chronicle since 1999, covering wine, cocktails, food, and travel.