Following Philippe

Wine For Dummies

When the decision was made to become serious about wine, the challenge I faced was finding a starting point. There are books upon books about wine, but determining which one would be best for a beginner without much technical knowledge about wine was extraordinarily difficult.

For some time, I Googled my way through the world of wine, stumbling upon some less than useful sites and some others that seemed like a good gateway if not for the cost. For instance, there is a local organization called the Winetasters Society of Toronto, but the cost of joining and becoming active in Winetasters was too much. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any more such groups in the Toronto area, although I have recently heard of another organization called the Pickering Wine Guild, which does not appear to currently have a Website.

In my search for a simple starting point, I finally cast aside my pride and bought a copy of Wine For Dummies by Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan. The Dummies book turned out to be a good place to begin my journey, although its focus on American and European wines meant it barely mentioned Canadian wineries or the Canadian wine industry, a topic I have a great interest in. What little was written about VQA made no sense to me whatsoever (but similar wine standards mentioned from elsewhere in the world were likewise confusing).

Additionally, there were still a few things that I didn't quite understand when I finally flipped to the last page of the book. Perhaps I had missed something in my reading of the book, but I had failed to grasp the concept of tannins. It wasn't until very recently, when I attended an introduction to wine seminar at the Ajax Public Library hosted by Jeff McIlveen, that I finally started to understand what oenophiles are referring to when they mention the tannins in a wine.

posted by Chris @ 1:44 PM