Get expert ratings for the world's distilled beverages, and select the brands that taste best and give the most bang for the buck. Every category gets its own special evaluation process, from Whiskey (American, Canadian, Irish, Scotch), to Brandy (cognac, grappa, Spanish), and from rum, gin, vodka, and tequila/mezcal, to liqueurs such as port, sherry, and vermouth. Includes practical definitions of common terms, along with the 10 most important things to know when buying spirits.

The largest group of wine tasters in the world report on 3,000 wines from over 1,500 wineries in 43 states, rating them for taste, quality, and price. See which to buy, which to avoid, and which styles, regions, and producers are right for you. All Canadian and U.S. wines are listed by grape variety, and reviews appear alphabetically by producer for easy reference. Also featured: tips on the year's best buys, progress reports on each category, and advice for beginners. "An impressive new work...Beverage Testing Institute has earned a solid reputation for the independence and clarity of its evaluations..."--Chicago Tribune.

If you've ever spent as much money on the wine as on the meal, it's time to find the world's best bargains and enjoy them at home and in a restaurant. Over 1,500 wines are included. You'll save the price of the book the first time you use it when you shop!

Master the mysteries of wine. The study of wine and beverages has become integral to hospitality education. The Wine, Beer, and Spirits Handbook demystifies the wine and wine-making process, examining not only the making and flavor profiles of wine, beer, and spirits, but also the business of wine service as practiced by a chef or sommelier. Unique to this book, is the strong emphasis on food and wine pairings, as well as food and beverage interactions. An entire chapter uncovers this broad, often intimidating, topic with detailed information on table wines, sparkling wines, fortified wines, beer and spirits. More importantly, The Handbook explains the responsibilities of a sommelier from both service and managerial perspectives. Readers explore their wine-related duties including: the developing of wine lists, identifying faulty wines, ordering, receiving, and storing wines, conducting inventory control, pricing, product research, cellar management, and the health and legal implications of wine consumption. A comprehensive, one-stop resource to the character and best use of beverages, The Wine, Beer, and Spirits Handbook will help every student, chef, sommelier and wine enthusiast confidently master the mysteries of wine and other beverages.

A new, revised and updated edition of the James Beard award-winning guide to wine from The Culinary Institute of America.

If you read wine reviews, you're already either amused or confused by the soaring language wine writers often use to describe what they're smelling and tasting. But do you always know what they mean? Have you ever sipped a complex white and sensed what's so colorfully described as a peacock's tail? Have you ever savored a full-bodied red only to detect the ripe acrid smell of a horse stall? If not, you're in for a treat, because these terms and thousands more are all here to amuse, dismay, enlighten, inspire, puzzle, and utterly shock you . Welcome to the rich linguistic universe of wine speak: a world where words and wine intersect in an uncontrolled riot of language guaranteed to keep you entertained for hours. The author, a lifelong lover of both wine and words, has compiled and organized this unique thesaurus of 36,975 wine tasting descriptors into 20 special collections extracted from 27 categories so you can locate exactly the right term or phrase to express yourself clearly or to understand others. May your path across the galaxy of wine be paved only with labels from the very best bottles on earth. Or, much more cautiously, with wines that could introduce you to angel pee, citronella, eastern European fruit soup, Godzilla, iodine, ladies' underwear, mustard gas, old running shoes, rawhide, hot tar roads, bubblegum, sweaty saddles, crushed ants, kitchen drains, or even turpentine.