Download Software.org

 

Wine for Dummies

5 stars (A very good start) - He very good start if you want to know more about wine. A must for everyone who loves wine and wants to have a clear overview 5 stars (Gets One Into & Clarifies A Difficult Topic) - Wine is complex with all its grapes and regions and producers. This book helps to simplify and compartmentalize much of this complexity into useable, workable info. Start with grape types and clear away the snobbish smoke of much of the vino knowledge, this book delves into wine lists when dining and labels when purchasing. Extremely useful are chapters are serving and storing and collecting from major wine areas. Least useful part which could use more is pairing with food. One might benefit also from reading Andrea Immer's books which to this reader clarify and provide food pairing info in superb style and manner. 5 stars (Good Intro without the Snobbery) - There may be more in-depth wine books out there, and there are certainly more academic books out there on the subject, but most of them scare the average reader with their pages of pomposity and attitudes so high and mighty that they induce nosebleeds. But finally there's a wine book for amateur wine enthusiasts who don't have a wine cave handy or a budget to road trip the Napa Valley or Bordeaux. The books takes the reader from the very basics of wine, its history, and all the terms used in wine making and wine tasting. What's particularly helpful is how the book is divides wine into geographic chapters so the reader can get the feel for the region, which helps immensely when differentiating the specific wine types. What's also quite nice is the humorous, down-to-earth attitude of its authors, who see wine as something to be enjoyed by all, not just an elite few, and, in fact, the book is peppered with "Snob Alerts" to warn readers of particular wine trivia that the nosebleed, blue-blood types like to toss about. The book does need some updating, especially with the pricing and vintage i...
For Dummies :: Wines :: Cooking & Wine & Spirits :: Wine and wine making :: Wine Buying Guides :: Regional - General :: Gardening :: Cooking & Wine :: Cooking :: Beverages - Win :: Wine for Dummies

 

From Vines to Wines - The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes and Making Your Own Wine

5 stars (The best introduction to growing & making wine) - I have acreage in california that I want to use for growing and making wine (I also live there, it's not a commercial venture). I have been doing research on what to grow, what to plan for etc. and this book has been, by far, the most helpful resource so far. Cox covers all aspects from site selection, planting, training, harvesting, and the wine making process itself. This book won't answer every question you have, but it answers far more than most. Highly recommended! 5 stars (Nice book on making wine) - I like this book for my winemaking and think it has been very useful over the years. The author does a nice job of explaining the entire process of making wine here from starting with a bare plot of ground to picking the grape varieties to grow, spacing the plants, pruning, harvesting, crushing, fermenting, and finally bottling. He also makes the point that winemaking is as much of an art as it is a science, there is more than one way to do most things and he explains some of them in this book. I happen to use some different methods to growing the grapes than he recommends in this book though due to the climate I live in, such as using shoot thinning which he advises against. He leans more towards cluster thinning and I can't come to the task of removing grape blooms when that is the whole point in grape growing. Instead I remove the new shoots with no grape blooms and leave only those shoots that have them. I have found this to be the best way to get full crops in my climate, however with heavy bloomers his method may be more appropriate. Also he advises to fertilize and I don't do that either as it leads to rank growth and more severe pruning later on, but as I said those are minor points I do differently. The chapters on fermenting the grapes and producing wine are excellent as well, I would only say that my experience shows he tends to go too light on adding preservatives and I have found it is b...
Storey Publishing- LLC :: Gardening & Fruit :: Wine and winemaking :: Wine and wine making :: Viticulture :: United States :: Organic :: Gardening&Plants :: Gardening & Horticulture :: Gardeni :: From Vines to Wines - The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes and Making Your Own Wine