Wine For Dummies ebook | Ed McCarthy, Mary Ewing-Mulligan | 9781118050712

Wine enthusiasts and novices, raise your glasses! The #1 wine book has been extensively updated! If you’re a connoisseur, Wine For Dummies, Fourth Edition will get you up to speed on what’s in and show you how to take your hobby to the next level. If you’re new to the world of wine, it will clue you in on what you’ve been missing and show you how to get started. It begins with the basic types of wine, how wines are made, and more. Then it gets down to specifics:

• How to handle snooty wine clerks, navigate restaurant wine lists, decipher cryptic wine labels, and dislodge stubborn corks
• How to sniff and taste wine
• How to store and pour wine and pair it with food
• Four white wine styles: fresh, unoaked; earthy; aromatic; rich, oaky
• Four red wine styles: soft, fruity, and relatively light-bodied; mild-mannered, medium-bodied; spicy; powerful, full-bodied, and tannic
• What’s happening in the “Old World” of wine, including France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and Greece
• What’s how (and what’s not) in the New World of Wine, including Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, and South Africa
• U.S. wines from California, Oregon, Washington, and New York
• Bubbling beauties and medieval sweets: champagne, sparkling wines, sherry, port, and other exotic dessert wines

Authors Ed McCarthy, CWE, who is a regular contributor to Wine Enthusiast and The Wine Journal and Mary Ewing-Mulligan, MW, who owns the International Wine Center in New York, have co-authored six wine books in the For Dummies series. In an easy-to-understand, unpretentious style that’s as refreshing as a glass of Chardonnay on a summer day, they provide practical information to help you enjoy wine, including:

• Real Deal symbols that alert you to good wines that are low in price compared to other wines of similar type, style, or quality
• A Vintage Wine Chart with specifics on numerous wines
• Info on ordering wine from out of state, collecting wine, and more

Wine For Dummies, Fourth Edition is not just a great resource and reference, it’s a good read. It’s full-bodied, yet light…rich, yet crisp…robust, yet refreshing….

Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan are two wine lovers who met at an Italian wine tasting in New York City’s Chinatown and subsequently merged their wine cellars and wine libraries when they married. They have since coauthored six wine books in the Wine For Dummies series (including two of their favorites, French Wine For Dummies and Italian Wine For Dummies) as well as their latest book, Wine Style (Wiley); taught hundreds of wine classes together; visited nearly every wine region in the world; run five marathons; and raised eleven cats. Along the way, they have amassed more than half a century of professional wine experience between them.
Mary is president of International Wine Center, a New York City wine school that offers credentialed wine education for wine professionals and serious wine lovers. As U.S. director of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET®), the world’s leading wine educational organization, she works to make the courses she offers in New York available in more and more parts of the United States. She is also the long-standing wine columnist of the NY Daily News. Mary’s most impressive credential is that she’s the first female Master of Wine (MW) in the United States, and one of only 22 MW’s in North America (with 251 worldwide).
Ed, a New Yorker, graduated from City University of NY with a master’s degree in psychology. He taught high school English in another life, while working part-time in wine shops to satisfy his passion for wine and to subsidize his growing wine cellar. That cellar is especially heavy in his favorite wines — Bordeaux, Barolo, and Champagne. Besides co-authoring six wine books in the For Dummies series with Mary, Ed went solo as author of Champagne For Dummies, a topic on which he’s especially expert.
Ed and Mary also share wine columns in Nation’s Restaurant News and in Beverage Media, a trade publication. They are each columnists for the online wine magazine, WineReviewOnline.com. Ed and Mary are both accredited as Certified Wine Educators (CWE).
When they aren’t writing, teaching, or visiting wine regions, Mary and Ed maintain a busy schedule of speaking, judging at professional wine competitions, and tasting as many new wines as possible. They admit to leading thoroughly unbalanced lives in which their only non-wine pursuits are hiking in the Berkshires and the Italian Alps. At home, they wind down to the tunes of U2, K.D. Lang, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young in the company of their feline roommates Dolcetto, Black & Whitey, Ponzi, and Pinot.