A Toast to Bargain Wines

How Innovators, Iconoclasts, and Winemaking Revolutionaries Are Changing the Way the World Drinks

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THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF JUDGMENT OF PARIS EXPLORES THE THRIVING BUSINESS OF BARGAIN WINES AND OFFERS HIS RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE BEST VALUES.

Is inexpensive wine any good? Award-winning author George M. Taber shows that it is, examining the paths to success of the world’s best-selling bargain brands. Taber helps readers learn to trust their taste and make informed decisions when confronting wine lists, and reveals how innovators are turning the old vin ordinaire into something extraordinaire.

A Toast to Bargain Wines is an accessible mix of history, business, and reference, and includes a two-part guide to the world’s best buys: George’s ten favorite bargains of every varietal (plus two splurges in each category), then ten value brands from twelve regions around the world. Casual wine drinkers and connoisseurs alike will benefit from this insider’s guide to finding and enjoying good wine—at a great price.

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Book details:

Scribner |
320 pages |
ISBN 9781439195208 |
November 2011

$16.99 List Price

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Praise

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“One of today's finest wine journalists, GeorgeTaber once again gets the scoop before it hits the headlines. First it was the JUDGMENT OF PARIS. Now it's the news that, amid all the woes ofthe Great Recession, there's one thing... ”

– Tilar Mazzeo, author of The Widow Clicquot

“A timely, interesting, educational approach to today’s wine picture. Wine still makes a feast out of a meal, but in times of not so plenty we will enjoy a bottle that is more reasonable. This tome is a must-read for wine... ”

– Margrit Mondavi, Vice President of Cultural Affairs at Robert Mondavi Winery

“There's been a mutiny in the wine world, and for years, George Taber has been camped out in the trenches with the contrarians who have been drinking snobbery under the table: the rogue masters of wine, the behavioral... ”

– Robin Goldstein, author of The Wine Trials and director of the Center for Sensory Economics at the Culinary Institute of America

“A must-read for wine enthusiasts, especially those on a budget.”

– Kirkus

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Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE
Embarrassing Moments in Wine History

In 1863, Englishman Thomas George Shaw published a delightful book entitled Wine, the Vine, and the Cellar that painted an insider’s picture of the British wine trade in the early and mid-nineteenth century. He recounts how, in the 1820s, as a young clerk and salesman for a London port and sherry house, he used to play a trick on the venerated wine tasters who worked alongside him at the docks, where wine arrived from the continent. He would pour two glasses from exactly the same wooden barrel, give them to two tasters, and ask which they...