Oz Clarke's Wine Buying Guide 2003 Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Oz Clarke's Wine Buying Guide 2003 Book

You might think that, prices apart, not much is going to change between one year's edition of Oz Clarke's Wine Buying Guide and the next. After all, we're all buying pretty much the same wines, aren't we? The wines Oz has done so much to popularise in his many books and television programmes: fresh, supple, lively young vintages from new or revivified growing areas such as South America, Australia and Eastern Europe. Not a bit of it. Wine is such a dynamic business, and drinkers' loyalties so mobile (or is that fickle?), that a year can bring enormous changes. Oz Clarke, his ear ever to the ground, reports that we seem to be getting bored with Chardonnay. Perhaps it's had its day. Could it be the Liebfraumilch de nos jours? Next year may tell. The format and structure of this essential volume remain unchanged. An opening section of Best Buys, Supermarket Selections and Wine Buyers Choices is followed a comprehensive and informative Retailers Directory and then the serious stuff of prices by region. As always, one looks for the prices that take one's breath away, and sure enough, the '78 Romanée-Conti is there at £3,760 a bottle. Somebody must be able to afford it. For everybody else, this guide is packed with immense quantities of information about good wine, at, by and large, reasonable prices, and where to buy it. It represents an amazing feat of organisation. How does Oz Clarke do it, year after year?--Robin DavidsonRead More

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    In its way, Oz Clarke's Wine Buying Guide, now entering its 17th edition, is a great monument to the astonishing transformation that has overtaken all aspects of wine in the last decade or so. We're fortunate to be buying and drinking wine at a time when the word can encompass not only the immense grandeurs, and staggering prices, of a Chateau Pétrus or a Romanée-Conti (£3,285.89 and £2,937.50 a bottle for the respective 1961 and 1978 vintages), but the supple, attractive new-style wines that are being made so much now, and are so widely available through supermarkets and retail chains. This huge range is exactly what this book is all about and is what makes it an essential handbook for any buyer of wine, at whatever level this takes place. Covering the main wine-producing countries and regions, it lists the principal producers and/or appellations as appropriate, then proceeds to its main business of listing prices. Oz Clarke is a great populariser, completely free of prejudice and cant, passionate (and serious, which is not the same thing at all) about his subject--qualities which are reflected in his Guide. Alongside the useful but potentially rather dry price lists, his commentaries are chock-full of advice, on-the-nail discriminations and irresistible enthusiasm. "That disturbing smell of engine oil and mouthwash, do I want it in my mouth? Hell, yes." --Robin Davidson

  • 0316861960
  • 9780316861960
  • Oz Clarke
  • 3 October 2002
  • Little, Brown Book Group
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 128
  • Revised edition
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