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| Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: 2008 Edition (Windows on the World Complete Wine Course) | 
 enlarge | Author: Kevin Zraly
Publisher: Sterling
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $15.57
You Save: $9.38 (38%)
New (34) Used (11) from $14.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 4071
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Updated
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 8.6 x 1.1
ISBN: 1402751419
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.22
EAN: 9781402751417
ASIN: 1402751419
Publication Date: October 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
Windows on the World Complete Wine Course is simply the bestselling wine book in North America—it’s a classic. The 2007 edition alone has sold over 100,000 copies and reorders continue to pour in. Along with the expanded text that has made last year’s update so successful, the 2008 revision will include a special 16-page supplement on “How to Taste Wine,” taken directly from Kevin’s world-famous class. This new material will include more than 100 wines that Zraly selects for his students to taste, along with the tasting sheet they use for their evaluations. Organized by region, from simple to complex, his list begins with white wines from France, the U.S., and Germany; moves on to the red wines of Burgundy and the Rhone, Bordeaux, the U.S., Italy, Australia, Argentina, and Chile; and concludes with champagnes and ports. By following Kevin’s order, readers will experience the best wines and the wide diversity of taste, style, region, and country. It’s not only a comprehensive and bargain-priced hands-on wine education, but a superb catalog from which to start a wine cellar or find a bottle appropriate to any occasion. In addition, the label for each of the 101 wines is shown, along with commentary on how to read it, suggestions for alternative wines, and specific instructions on how to set up a tasting using Kevin’s techniques. This is the first time Kevin’s actual list has ever been offered in book form and it alone is worth the cover price of Windows on the World Complete Wine Course.
Of course, as always, this unequaled volume retains all the invaluable information, fabulous illustrations, and gorgeous styling of the previous editions—all presented in Zraly’s inimitable, irreverent style. This is the wine guide against which all others are judged.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Zraly uncorks the mysteries of wine. September 24, 2007
27 out of 30 found this review helpful
Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World Complete Wine Course is considered a classic among amateur grape geeks (like me). The 2007 edition sold over 100,000 copies. Zraly uncorks the mysteries of wine with his trusted "wine course." The comprehensive 2008 update is informative in the areas of wine tasting, selection, regions, and countries (from France to Chile), and also includes recommendations and advice on selecting a wine in an often complex market further complicated by the Internet. While this course may not qualify you to become a sommelier, it will definitely improve your knowledge and credentials as an amateur oeniphile, and should be considered an excellent starting point for any wine connoisseur.
G. Merritt
 Ignorant, badly written, condescending, and incomplete June 7, 2008
17 out of 29 found this review helpful
If you don't know anything about wine then this book might seem to be a good introduction. However, if you have any prior knowledge then it is immediately obvious that the author is a self-absorbed pretender. The book fails on multiple levels:
Writing style
The book is poorly written and insults its readers. It's filled with little insinuations that the reader is a hopeless idiot, and after a few pages this repeated rhetorical device becomes insufferable. How often can you tolerate an author characterizing your thoughts and behavior as moronic just to set up the point that he is trying to make? Much of the text unreadable for this reason. In addition to talking down to his readers, the author generally writes like an eighth grader. He loves to put words in quotation marks for no apparent reason, typographical errors are common (even ones that would be caught by any computer spell checker), and he often trips over his own feet trying to write the simplest sentence. Finally, he talks about himself incessantly, like a bore at a dinner party.
Inadequate coverage
The book has gaping omissions at all levels. The author gives the impression that he is introducing the range of varietal grapes and growing regions of the world, but he misleads novice readers in this pretense. His coverage is limited, outside of a few uninformative and incomplete lists, to the larger regions and grape varieties. This is the kind of basic survey that one can gather from going to one or two wine stores and looking at the shelves: there's a lot of wine from California, France, Australia, Italy, and Spain. The author simply repeats the obvious in many parts of the book.
Inaccurate information
The one thing that a book like this should at least get right is the basics. And yet he fails here as well. In one part of the book the author honestly claims that letting a wine breath before drinking it is of dubious value--he actually goes so far as to question whether it has any effect. This is where he exposes himself as a poser. When a wine is exposed to air, the organic compounds in the wine begin to react with oxygen. This is simply a matter of measurable chemistry. For someone to claim to be an expert and yet to assert that letting the wine breath has no effect is preposterous. The effect can be analyzed and measured. And it can be easily tasted! For someone who claims to taste 3,000 wines per year (that is his statement), he is inexcusably ignorant about this most basic fact. The truth is that the vast majority of wines improve their complexity of flavor, bouquet, and smoothness if they are allowed to sit open (or decanted into another container) for 2-3 hours. A real expert on wine would encourage the reader to test this for herself: open a bottle and taste the wine at 30 minute intervals. It's easy to determine that in the vast majority of cases the chemistry of oxidation makes a real difference in enjoyment. Instead, this pompous author proclaims that there is no benefit to a wine breathing, and encourages everyone to drink the wine directly after opening the bottle. He's an idiot.
He also claims that you should never use soap to clean your wine glasses. His explanation is that soap residue can effect the taste of the wine. This might be true if you don't wash the glass thoroughly, but it's generally pointless advice. It sounds insightful, but it's just empty hogwash. Just rinse the glass well and dry it with a clean towel--problem solved. It takes a special type of fatuous blowhard to fabricate pearls of wisdom out of thin air, but he manages to do it!
Over emphasis on wineries
The final major failure of the book is to give the reader an utterly false sense of comfort and knowledge by listing wineries that the author feels have a good reputation. This is the most useless information for a novice seeking to learn about wine. The well known wineries very often fluctuate in the quality of wines that they produce, increase production to cash in on their reputation and thereby suffer a loss of quality, or become priced out of reach for most people (and become overpriced in general compared to wines of equal quality). The author's approach here simply encourages ignorant snobbery and perpetuates the problem of people simply wanting to be told what is good. You need to taste a variety of wines. You need to get a feel for what you like, not what some stuffy and arrogant faker tells you is good. This book is poison to someone who really wants to develop real knowledge about wine. It gives the illusion of being informative, but it simply feeds the reader comforting half truths and steers him off course.
Avoid this steaming pile of nonsense like the plague.
perfect for any level of interest and knowledge October 31, 2007
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
I absolutely love this book. Incredibly informative and broken out so that you don't find yourself overwhelmed by all the vast information available in the wine world. I knew a little bit about wine before this book, and my knowledge has increased dramatically after reading this book. This is a must have for anyone with an interest in wine.
 Not much different than last edition... November 24, 2007
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
As I stated in the review on the 2007 edition, Zraly writes a good beginner book that delivers some good knowledge. The text is rather large as are the diagrams, it seems that this is in an effort to increase the number of pages only.
Pros: good beginner knowledge, great writing style, easy to understand
Cons: lacks depth, lacks polish, generic maps
Well worth it March 5, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Great book that covers all of the basics + provides real-world tasting ideas. Only downside is the focus on French wines; I wish there was more on Italy and "emerging" markets like Argentina. But with that said, Kevin Zraly recommends books that focus on these (and other) regions, so for those that need more information, it is easy to know where to read next.
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