Mastering a World of Wine Knowledge

After ten years in the restaurant industry, six years in the wine industry, countless hours spent studying – including college level courses on the subject – I can honestly say that I still don’t “know” wine at all. It’s one of those subjects that one needs to stay on top of, like politics or the dishes piling up in the sink. The question is how do you make it from one end to the other? How do you master (or at least come to terms with) a growing world of wine knowledge?

A few suggestions spring to mind from the outset. The first is straightforward, and relaxing. Find yourself a comfortable chair and begin reading. There are a great many resources, literally thousands of books and journals where you can find what you seek. A few of my favorite texts are: The Wine Bible (Karen McNeil), The Oxford Companion to Wine (Jancis Robinson), Sotheby’s World Wine Encyclopedia (Tom Stevenson), and The Story of Wine (Hugh Johnson) – these books will give you a great base of general information on just about everything that has to do with wine. But this is just a start (and these are not small books).

Finding enough fodder to challenge your sensibilities will be the easy part. There are thousands of really good books that have been written about the subject of wine, its history and future. The mastery does not come with simply reciting facts, it comes in knowing why one wine is the way it is compared to every other wine.

There are those who chafe at the idea of being a know-it-all, but that’s not what we’re going for. Mastering a subject, any subject, means retaining enough information and skill to make confident decisions in various circumstances.