The New Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia of Wine

By Frank Schoonmaker

Book Overview

Written by the greatest wine authority of his day, and first published in 1964, The Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia has long been acclaimed as one of the very best wine books available. The New York Times immediately called it "the finest quick reference book in the literature of wine."

Because no other wine book provides the reader with as much information in so concise a form, a revised version has been long awaited. Despite all the wine books that have appeared in the past decade, The New Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia of Wine is still unique in that its self-contained alphabetical entries make it easier to use than any other encyclopedia on the market. This book has no indexyou simply turn to the entry you want and find exactly the information you need.

Completely revised by one of today's top wine experts, the Bespaloff edition takes into consideration the increased interest in the wines of California, Italy, and Australia. The material on such traditional topics as port and champagne has also been expanded considerably. Beautifully designed in two colors, it features twenty-three maps drawn especially for this edition, and contains more than five hundred new entries including such varied topics as Amador, calories, cr class , FrenchAmerican hybrids, late harvest, Martha's Vineyard, vintage port, and "Zip Code wines."

The New Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia of Wine is the foundation of any wine library. It is the one book any wine lover will ever need. Even if you own and use other wine encyclopedias, the elegant accessibility of this book will induce you to eventually rely on it and no other.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688057497
• ISBN13: 9780688057497
• Release Date: October 1988
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 624 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Best straight reference guide for beginners or experts

We use this book constantly in our tasting room. I have years of experience in the wine industry and I'm always running to Schoonmaker to answer all kinds of obscure questions that our customers come up with. The format hits the major points of each topic without opinion or prejudice - how refreshing to get the facts without the hype on a subject that is over-hyped to begin with!

The basic wine encyclopedia

I cut my own wine-loving teeth on an earlier edition of this excellent encyclopedia, literally reading it from cover to cover over a weekend when I was first excitedly discovering the wine hobby. Alexis (not Alex) Bespaloff's revision (and his editors) unfortunately took a lot of the guts out of the old book -- along with adding in much new information about New World wines -- but it's still a useful reference, arguably the one single-volume encyclopedia a wine lover ought to have if you can have only one