Wine Isn’t Rocket Science: A Quick & Easy Guide to Under- standing, Buying, Tasting, & Pairing Every Type of Wine

While wine blogger Ophelie Neiman’s debut isn’t the first book to attempt to introduce novices to the immersive world of wine, it’s easily one of the best. Neiman begins with a practical approach to selecting wine, offering tips for hosting a party. She explains the pros and cons of various glasses and corkscrews and gives advice on selecting the appropriate wines as well as on chilling wine quickly and how to quickly recover from a bad wine. This brief opening distillation of the subject matter is brilliant—even if readers never get past the first twenty-five pages they still will have acquired enough information to confidently serve wine at a get-together. That strong opening will likely carry readers through the rest of the book, where they’ll learn the flavor profiles of various wines and their respective regions as well as the expected food pairings. They’ll also pick up great tips on selecting the right wine at a restaurant and at the supermarket. Neiman offers all sorts of trivia along the way, on such subjects as the secrets of cork, how to remove red-wine stains, and surefire phrases to make you sound like a card-carrying oenophile. Yannis Varoutsikos’s whimsical illustrations add to the instructional material and keep readers engaged. This book is a terrific introduction to an often intimidating subject. (Apr.)