Cork Jester’s Wine Teasers Wine Game Wine Teasers is a fun, lighthearted activity for people who enjoy wine! Teams of players answer questions, discuss topics, loot virtual wines from each other, and more.

Wine Teasers is perfect for wine-tastings, informal get-togethers, staff training, and even personal reference for learning or when shopping for wines.
Customer Review: Loads of laughs. A great group game!
Four of us played it last weekend and it was a blast. It’s a bargain.
Buy it!

The Wine Lover’s Cookbook: Great Recipes for the Perfect Glass of Wine A glass of wine can be delicious, but when it is paired with the right dish, it can resonate in a magnificent way. This gorgeous cookbook lets any cook plan a meal in perfect concert with a favorite or special wine. Mystified by the art of choosing a wine to go with your meal, or vice versa? Is white wine with fish the only rule you know? The Wine Lovers Cookbook is a unique guide for the wine lover and cook who considers wine an essential part of a meal and wants to understand the dynamic interplay between wine and food. Author Sid Goldstein describes in detail the flavor profiles of 13 popular varietals, such as Merlot and Chardonnay, and explains which ingredients balance each wine, giving the reader a professionals foundation for planning meals with each kind of wine. Best of all, he offers 100 recipes, from appetizers to desserts, specifically created to complement a particular varietal. The Wine Lovers Cookbook is a truly essential reference, an irresistibly beautiful cookbook, and an inspiration for all who want to make the most of an excellent glass of wine.
Customer Review: Best Cookbook Ever
If you enjoy cooking, consider yourself somewhat of a foodie and love wine then this cookbook is for you. My husband and I make dishes from this about 3 times a week and wish another version with even more delicious recipes was being published. I cannot say enough good things about this. Sure the recipes sound frou frou and may make you start buying red wine vinegar on a regular basis but aside from a few, they are really not difficult or that time consuming. Plus, it will force you to expand your food horizon and make you experience flavors you may not have tried previously. This has truly transformed how we eat and drink wine. We actually have trouble spending gobs of money at high-end restaurants now because we know we can make just as good (and usually better) meals for 1/4 - 1/3 of the price! I’ve already recommended this book to all of my friends who I knew would appreciate it, so go on, be adventurous and try something exciting! You truly will be amazed.
Customer Review: Resource for Cooks who are interested in Wine
This book has interesting recipes, but it’s more than a cookbook. It offers information on popular wine varietals and explains why certain foods taste good with certain wines. I find and bookmark most of my recipes on the Internet. This is the one cookbook I own.

Thomas Jefferson on Wine In Thomas Jefferson On Wine, John Hailman celebrates a founding father’s talents as a wine connoisseur and provides unprecedented insight into a seldom explored facet of this great man. In both his personal and public lives, Jefferson wielded his considerable expertise and influence to change the views of his friends, fellow founding fathers, and the American public on the pleasures and refinements of wine.

An international wine judge and former wine columnist for the Washington Post, Hailman discusses the particular wines Jefferson sought, the ways in which Jefferson’s tastes developed, and how Jefferson became one of the great wine connoisseurs of the early American republic. His recommendations governed the president’s table before and after his tenure there. Thomas Jefferson on Wine explores the third president’s fascination with scores of wines from his student days at Williamsburg to his lengthy retirement years at Monticello, using mainly Jefferson’s own vivid words from hundreds of immensely readable and surprisingly modern letters on the subject.

Hailman examines Jefferson’s five critical years in Paris, where he learned about fine wines at Europe’s salons and dinner tables. The book uses excerpts from Jefferson’s journals, as well as his letters to friends and wine merchants, whose descendants still produce the wines Jefferson enjoyed. Vivid contemporary accounts of dinners at the White House allow readers to vicariously experience the enjoyment of fine wine. The book concludes with an overview of the current restoration of the vineyards at Monticello and the new Monticello Wine Trail and its numerous world-class Virginia wineries. In Thomas Jefferson On Wine Hailman presents an absorbing and unique view of this towering historical figure.
Customer Review: THOMAS JEFFERSON ON WINE
This book is super for anyone interested in wine-to know what was going on in wine in Jeffersons time-some European wines that we drink today but were surly different at that time.Well written as well
Customer Review: Jefferson the Connoisseur
Thomas Jefferson is so well known that it is difficult to find a book about him that offers new insight into his multi-faceted character. This book does: it presents Jefferson through his very discriminating taste in wine, which was so expert that his favorite French wines later became the great Classified Growths of Bordeaux and the premiere wines of Burgundy. He traveled through France, Germany, and Italy with the express purpose of selecting wines for Monticello, the house he had built in Virginia, capitalizing on an opportunity that came when he was appointed Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the French court. When he was elected President he built the wine cellar for the White House and stocked it with his favorite imported wines. All this is to his credit, and provides further evidence of Jefferson’s extensive learning, which went beyond books. But he never succeeded in his pet project, of planting a vineyard and cultivating at home the fine wines he enjoyed abroad. That was for later Virginians to do, and the author provides a tour map of the wineries that now surround Monticello, fulfilling the dream Jefferson himself failed to realize.

The Last of the Wine In The Last of the Wine, two young Athenians, Alexias and Lysis, compete in the palaestra, journey to the Olympic games, fight in the wars against Sparta, and study under Socrates. As their relationship develops, Renault expertly conveys Greek culture, showing the impact of this supreme philosopher whose influence spans epochs.
Customer Review: Perfection
I did not read this book, I devoured it…. In THE LAST OF THE WINE I walked through the ancient streets of Athens, I lived among her people, I loved, fought, and died beside them. It is that kind of novel, pulls you right in and never lets go. Even after I finished it, I kept going back to it again and again.
The message of this story is revelant even today. Who can not think of Iraq now, upon reading of foolish, proud Athens sailing off to destroy Syracuse?
A few thoughts on earlier reviews…. this book is an easy read, the prose is simple and straight forward. One does not need a deep knowledge of Greek history or language to follow this story.
Homosexuality is synonmous with ancient Greece. It was a core element of their society, and if you can not accept this fact, than you will never understand the Greeks.
Customer Review: Good novel for GLBT young adults.
What makes a novel for “young adults”? Is it one written for them, one marketed to them, or one which they will like? The correct answer is, of course, “any or all.”

I cannot find the reference, but I remember reading an interview with an author who had been quite successful in writing novels for adults, who had been asked to try her hand at a young adult novel. She was advised that the best way to do that was to make her main character the right age, and go on from there.

Given that the main action of the novel starts when the narrator, Alexias, is fifteen and ends when he is in his early twenties, this would classify the work as a young adult novel, although it is usually marketed and criticized as an adult novel.

The story is set in Athens, during and just after the Peloponnesian War. Alexias and his lover Lysis become pupils of Socrates. However, it is not all dry philosophical discussion. Alexias is a middle-distance runner and Lysis is a pankratist. (Pankration was a Greek combat sport; it means ‘all power’ and involved anything short of biting, gouging, and hair-pulling. Kicks, punches, throw-holds, grappling, and joint-locks were all parts of the pankratist’s repertoire. I suppose the nearest thing we have would be full-contact karate.)

Now, why would a teenager be interested in this? Well, the popularity of such films as Troy and The Three Hundred shows that Classical civilization is still of interest to young people; so does the continued growth of enrollments in high school Latin classes. Both war and sports–subjects which young men in this age group find interesting–are important parts of the plot. And, last of all, it is such a well-written, interesting story that one can hardly fail to be sucked into it.

Lastly, for GLBT teens, it offers us a view of a society in which same-sex relationships are seen as normal, even expected. Indeed, Alexias’ year-mate Xenophon–yes, the same person who later wrote the Anabasis; Renault is famous for putting real and made-up characters together–is totally heterosexual. At least Alexias suspects that he may be, but says that (a) he couldn’t bring himself to ask in so many words and (b) if it were he felt rather sorry for his friend who would thus have missed out on an important part of life. When Alexias’ father goes off to Sicily with the army, he and his son sit down for The Talk–but it isn’t about girls. Renault presents all this very matter-of-factly. That such a society could exist once implies that it could exist again.

In spite of this, Renault does not idealize Ancient Greece. The evil of slavery, the low place of women, and the casual cruelty are unblinkingly presented. (For example, the way prisoners of war were treated makes recent US violations of the Geneva Conventions look tame.) Contrast this with the thoroughly judgmental tone of Frank Yerby’s Goat Song, which imposes early-twentieth century values on Classical Greek culture.

For a more extended discussion of Mary Renault’s writing, see http://www.glbtq.com/literature/renault_m.html (accessed 6NOV07); I would recommend this–and indeed all of her mature period novels–for high school on up. The Mask of Apollo is set about a generation later, and sets things up for her trilogy about Alexander the Great (Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy, Funeral Games.)

Recommended for high school and up.

A Wine Atlas of the Langhe: The Great Barolo and Barbaresco Vineyards Breathtaking landscapes filled with castles and churches, picturesque hilltop villages and, best of all, vineyards. This is the Langhe, an area in the Piedmont region of northern Italy that produces some of the world’s greatest wines.

A Wine Atlas of the Langhe is a beautiful and highly informative book, produced by the international Slow Food movement, headquartered in Piedmont. For over ten years Slow Food researched the vineyards, the wines, and the history of this fascinating part of the world, including the men and women who have made the wines of the Langhe famous. The book explores the unique features of topography, soils, and climate that have enabled Barolo and Barbaresco to become recognized as two of the world’s most exclusive and highly prized wines. Spectacular aerial photography shows the beauty of the fifteen municipalities profiled in the book.

“Eyewitness Reports” sprinkled throughout the book give readers a privileged insight into the rural culture and social life of the Langhe, through the words of the area’s oldest residents. Chapters on The Greats of Barolo and Barbaresco detail the lives of pioneer winemakers, including growers, scholars, oenologists, cellarmen, and aristocratic entrepreneurs.

More wine is currently imported to the U.S. from Italy than from any other country. Lovers of Italy or its classic wines will treasure this beautiful book. Travelers to Piedmont will find many recommendations for the best vineyards to visit, as well as the best places to stay and eat while in the region.
Customer Review: Beautiful Book
I don’t know much about wine [I sell this book as a bookseller], but I can tell you this large format and thick book is a piece of art. It contains many beautiful photos, has a lovely layout, and feels expensive. I’ve sold many to wine experts and never had anyone be disappointed by it.
Customer Review: One of the finest wine books available
If you’re a lover of nebbiolo wines this book is a must. With relentlessly rich detail, it covers every aspect of the great wines of the Piemonte, their history, viticulture, and the people who make them.

Every major Barolo and Barbaresco vineyard is profiled, along with many of the contributors to the production of their great wines. Not only the great winemakers, past and present, but also the “regular people” involved, from grafters to vine dressers, pickers and barrel makers, even office workers and school teachers have their say. The result is a compelling picture of one of the world’s greatest wine regions.

And if you ever plan a trip to the Langhe, the book features excellent advice and contact info on where to visit, what to look for, etc. A great resource.

Cellaring Wine: A Complete Guide to Selecting, Building, and Managing Your Wine Collection Beer is just a beverage, but wine is an experience. There?s an aura of romance, a hint of the sublime, to bringing a bottle up from your own cellar, carefully drawing out the cork, pouring the wine into a goblet, and taking the first delectable sip.

Now Jeff Cox, author of From Vines to Wines (89,000 copies in print) and a connoisseur well respected in wine circles, shows you how easy it is to have a wine cellar of your own.

But Cellaring Wine is not a home-building project book. In some cases, the would-be wine collector doesn?t have to do much building at all. Rather, Cellaring Wine teaches anyone who loves wine how to create a working system of selecting wines that will age well, know how to lay them down properly, and recognize when they have matured to their full glory and are ready to be savored.

Cox pinpoints the optimum conditions of temperature, light, and humidity for a wine cellar. He walks you through possible locations for your wine cellar ? whether in the basement, an old root cellar, the back of your garage, or even a closet or room in your house ? and what each location requires. He explains when you?ll need a climate-control device (and how much they cost). And he discusses the pros and cons of buying a freestanding unit that is much like a refrigerator.

Then Cox tackles the question that most troubles wine lovers: Which wines will improve with age, and which won?t? This chapter alone is worth the price of the book, since nothing is more disappointing to a wine lover than waiting years to open a bottle of wine only to discover that it was at its peak when it was laid down.

Cox shows you how to keep accurate records so you know at a glance ? without having to hunt through the wine racks ? what you have, where it?s located, and how much to buy so the cellar doesn?t become depleted. And he gives you a crash course in appreciating the fragrance and flavor of a fine wine.Perhaps best of all, Cox gets readers excited about the possibilities of having their own wine cellar. After all, a cellar is not just a storage room, it?s a university where good young wines become great.
Customer Review: Cellaring and much more….
The title of this book is a little misleading, the book does cover selecting, building, and managing wine. However, this information only acocunts for about 1/4 of the book. The rest of the book talks about wine in general. The cellaring chapters were very detailed and answered all of my questions. The other 3/4 of the book was interesting and covered your basic intro to wine information. If you want to know more about wine, or are looking for a complete guide on different ways to cellar wine, then this book is for you.
Customer Review: Exactly what it says…
Jeff Cox has written a wonderful guide for cellaring wine which is nearly complete in all its details. More importantly, he has managed to write it in a way that is highly readable.

The Wine Journal: Label Collection Album & Label Remover Kit Collect your favorite wine labels to recall the memory of the wines characteristics, vintage, the occasion, the food served and those who enjoyed the wine. The Wine Journal contains 24 Wine Appeal Label Removers to remove and laminate the label and adhere it to one of 24 Label Collection pages found in the journal. Each label collection page offers a space to write about the wine and a wine rating system on the reverse side of each page. There are tab sections for Reds, Whites and the Cellar Inventory. The Wine Journal also contains a glossary of terms, cellar inventory pages to track your wine purchases and some amusing wine quotes. All featured in a black linen cover with a wine themed illustration on the front cover. This illustration can be removed to add your own illustration of photo from your own wine tasting adventures. Refill Label Remover Kits 24 and refill Wine Label Collector Pages exclusive from Wine Appeal Products are available through Amazon. The Wine Journal is a fantastic gift for the wine lover!
Customer Review: Great Wine Journal!
I bought my first wine journal last year. We have shared it with friends and taken it to restaurants to help in wine selections. We’ve not had any problems using the label covers except when we were removing them after the 2nd bottle of wine! It’s become a tradition with friends to include their comments and ratings. We’ve just ordered a second journal to give as a gift.
Customer Review: Wines Appeal to me
I chose the Wine Appeal wine journal because it had the Wine Appeal brand of label removers included in the journal. I’ve been using the Wine Appeal label removers for years and love them and thought I can’t go wrong. I was thrilled when the journal arrived! It is great quality and you can add more pages to it if you want. The pages are sold on Amazon and I just found the label removers on Amazon too. I loved the front cover picture but have taken it out and put in a picture of my husband and I from our recent trip to Napa. I love this journal! It’s what my sister and special wine loving friends will be getting for Christmes.

The Wine of Angels (A Merrily Watkins Mystery)

Customer Review: Long, but worth it
Yes, this book is a long one, but it is well worth the effort! This is the first in the Merrily Watkins series, and if the rest that follow are as gripping as this one, I for one, can hardly wait to read them. Merrily Watkins is a single-mother of a precocious fifteen-year-old girl named Jane. She also is an Anglican minister. Her first posting is in a small insular English village called Ledwardine. Not much has really changed in Ledwardine as Merrily and Jane find out. The setting is present-day, but the story kept taking us back to the 17th century where a former minister of the old church was found hanging in the orchard. There are long-buried secrets here that are fighting to come out, but the people holding the secrets will stop at nothing to keep things hidden. The book is very well-written. A nice blend of the occult, history, modern suspense and the play of very-well drawn characters.
Customer Review: Intriguing premise in an overly long treatment
The real story does not start until well past page 250. Prior to that it is ALL exposition, a parade of a veritable phonebook of characters, and numerous unnecessary tangential subplots. It took me a long time to figure out what the real focus was in this rambling, incident-filled book. It’s obvious that Rickman thoroughly enjoyed creating this village and all its inhabitants but many of these characters serve no purpose whatsoever. Lots of false tension when contrived plot incidents are thrown in as obstacles before we get to the real meat of the story. And endless reiteration and redundancy - especially the moody, angst-filled musings of the ex-rock star who contemplates a la Hamlet his own suicide in four separate sections. And the first time wasn’t even that interesting. This book could easily have been less than one half of its voluminous, turgid length.

Initially I was drawn to this because it was a modern crime tale that blended folklore and the supernatural. I like what Rickman is trying to do here, but there’s quite a bit of digging through a bleak and murky mine before you get to even a smidgen of the vein of gold that is the real story of Merrily, Jane, Lucy and Lol. The ideas of fate vs. purpose, faith vs. doubt, the contrast of the paradoxes in organized religion and less structured pagan or naturist beliefs — all of these themes finally come through in the last third of the book. The “crime” part of this crime novel (and there are a few) is almost thrown in as an afterthought. Really this is something akin to George Eliot meets Arthur Machen (how’s that for an egghead literary allusion?) in a contemporary setting. I’ll try my hand at the next book in the series in which Merrily becomes an exorcist and see if Rickman manages to lay off the tangents, minutiae and often mundane sideline incidents. I see that all of these books weigh in at over 400 pages. Somehow I don’t think I’m going to make it through all of these.

Living Raw Food: Get the Glow with 100 More Recipes from Pure Food and Wine

Compass American Guides: California Wine Country, 5th Edition (Compass American Guides) Fodor’s. For Choice Travel Experiences.

The guide that has it all–spectacular photography, evocative prose, insider tips, and detailed color maps to help you make the most of your trip. Written by longtime local residents, Compass American Guides California Wine Country, 5th Edition provides in-depth coverage of the history, culture and character of one of America’s most spectacular destinations! Follow your Compass to “get” there.

•Discover the state’s top wine regions: renowned Napa, welcoming Sonoma, and the up-and-coming Central Coast. Sip your way through the tasting rooms both on and off the beaten path. Star ratings highlight our favorite spots.

•Day-long driving itineraries steer you through the best of each region. A wine-tasting how-to helps you sip like a pro, and timing tips reveal the best strategies for visiting the wineries.

•Follow our lead for indulging. Splurge on a memorable meal—or choose from our recommended picnic spots. Find an intimate inn or a luxe resort. Browse through tempting shops in Healdsburg or slip into one of Sonoma’s decadent spas.

Visit Fodors.com for more ideas and information, travel deals, vacation planning tips, reviews and to exchange travel advice with other travelers.

What the critics say about Compass American Guides:
“Lushly illustrated and intelligently written.” —National Geographic Traveler

“The most literate and elegant series of guides ever written about North America.” —Jan Morris