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The Bluffer's Guide to Wine: Bluff Your Way in Wine
Author(s): Harry Eyres (Author)
- Publisher: Oval Books
- Publication Date: 1 Jun. 1999
- Edition: New
- Language: English
- Print length: 64 pages
- ISBN-10: 1902825675
- ISBN-13: 9781902825670
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
Bluffer’s Guides is a series of snappy little books containing facts, jargon, and all you need to know for instant expertise.
About the Author
He went on to Christie’s Wine Department, and then spent some time teaching in England and in Spain, finally deciding to become a full-time writer for the Spectator, the Times and various publishers. Between books, he returns to Spain to anaesthetise his palate with Fundador brandy in the bars of old Barcelona.
His main interests seem to be reading, writing and drinking, not necessarily in that order.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Bluffer’s Guide to Wine
By Eyres, Harry
Oval Books
Copyright © 1999 Eyres, Harry
All right reserved.
ISBN: 1902825675
Variety
There are more than 4,000 named varieties of the domesticated vine. Don’t panic. It would be a bold person who claimed to be able to distinguish more than 30 by taste, and for practical purposes you will be able to get by with less than a dozen.
Nose
When talking about smell, do not use the word ‘smell’. Choose instead from ‘nose’ (which with wine does not have unpleasant associations), ‘aroma’, or ‘bouquet’, if you’re feeling flowery. If the wine doesn’t smell of anything, try ‘Rather dumb on the nose, don’t you find?’ or ‘Still very closed-up.’
Breathe
Simply removing the cork to allow a wine to breathe is useless because the surface area exposed to the air is so small. The only way to let it breathe properly is to pour some into a glass when you open the bottle. This not only increases the breathing area but enables you to justify sneaking a glass ahead of the game.
Taste
To say that a wine is fruity is to suggest that it has gone through all the processes which have transformed it from uninteresting grapes into a miraculous drink, for nothing. ‘Fruity’ should be the bluffer’s last resort. ‘Grapey’ is a somewhat different matter, because only wines made from certain kinds of grape, especially Muscat, actually taste, or should taste of grapes.
Continues…
Excerpted from The Bluffer’s Guide to Wineby Eyres, Harry Copyright © 1999 by Eyres, Harry. Excerpted by permission.
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