Hugh Johnsons Pocket Wine Book 2005

Now in its twenty-eighth year of publication, this book offers the current news on more than 6,000 wines, growers, and regions. With completely updated vintage information, recommended wines for current drinking, and star ratings, this is the only annual wine guide anyone will need. It has all the information necessary to help you select anything from a weekday wine for supper to a prestige vintage for investment. Also included are vintage charts, maps, and unique insider tips on where to buy and consume wine when travelling. Expert tasting notes and hints on serving wine and matching wine with food complete the picture. nnnFor everything there is a season, and in the world of wine the calendar is defined by bud break, fruit set, harvest and the arrival of the latest edition of Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book. Celebrating the sale of more than seven million copies of editions spanning a quarter-century, the 2002 edition provides an updated addition to the prestigious and prolific wine writer's popular series of pocket-sized reference books. With delineated chapters--some merely a page long--Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book: 2002 follows a standard format: wine trend prognostication, a brief description of the current vintage (here the 2000 harvest), a re-examination of 1999, glossary of grape types and food-and-wine matches. The book's bulk is composed of an alphabetical listing of short entries--mostly wineries--subdivided within geographical chapters. Johnson can be stylish, even witty (a lively Vernaccia pairs well with a dish of grey mullet: not the one ''on the heads of aging rock stars''), but aside from the opening few pages, there's a decidedly ghost-written feel to the proceedings. Indeed, the acknowledgments list over 40 ''kind friends''--including several regionally based wine writers--for their ''special knowledge'', most notably of some smaller producers. But it's remarkable for someone of Hugh Johnson's stature to allow, once again in the 2002 edition, the Syrah grape to be identified as identical to Petite Sirah. Friends--''kind'' or not--shouldn't let friends get away with that sort of thing. --Tony Mason --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.