Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #449848 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-26
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1004 pages

Amazon.com
No more excuses for buying wine based on label design! The popular Wine Spectator magazine's massive guide covers common recent vintages as well as rare collectibles. More than 40,000 individual wine ratings--organized first by country, then by producer--are based on blind tastings by the magazine's editors. Each entry includes a rating on a 100-point scale, price information, and often a description of the wine--for example, "Wild and exotic, bursting at the seams with tons of round fruit flavors, loads of wild berry characteristics, hints of violets, earth and blueberries and well-integrated tannins to boot." The editors smartly contextualize this mass of data with an introduction to each country's wine industry, emphasizing the country's major growing regions, common grape varietals, significant geographic and climatic influences, labeling conventions, and stylistic traditions and trends.

This guide's most useful features are tables organizing the wines by overall quality or value. For example, the connoisseur will enjoy the table listing only the finest wines from the greatest vintages of the past 10 years. Any wine enthusiast will do well with the table featuring "value wines" rated 85 points or higher but costing less than $12. Another table of top-rated current releases is a veritable shopping list. With that list, no one needs to rely on pretty labels anymore. --Brendan Finucane

Customer Reviews

A new format that is not as useful
Past issues of the Wine Spectator Ultimate Guide included all of the past vintages for each wine listed. This one is departure from that, and only covers a short window (couple of years) for each wine. If I had know that I wouldn't have bought it.

Invaluable reference book for all wine drinkers/collectors
No serious wine buyer/collector should be without this. Easy to use reference guide, with ratings against multiple vintages. I have yet to find a wine not listed in here, and the only downside is that this much information does not fit in a handbag (so memory is required for restaurant ordering)!

New format ruins what was a great book
What a shame when a new format turns what was once a fairly encyclopedic wine guide into a rehash of the last years reviews. Having purchased editions 5, 6, and 7 I was eagerly waiting for the release of the 8th edition. It was stunningly disappointing.

What is worse is that the first reviews on Amazon must have been for earlier editions as they still listed "Over 40,000 wines reviewed". Misleading to say the least.

I'm returning mine as defective and will not purchase it again unless they go back to the old format.