Wine for Beginners

Book Wine for Beginners

Wine for Beginners is a practical and accessible introduction for anyone who enjoys wine and would like to know more about what is actually in the glass.

Stefaan Van Laere explains how wine is made, why red, white, rosé and sparkling wines taste different and how grape variety, climate, soil, winemaking and ageing influence the final result.

You will learn how to taste wine without pretension, recognise important aromas and styles, read a wine label, serve wine correctly and make more confident choices in a shop or restaurant.

Food pairing is also covered in a practical way. Which wines work well with meat, fish, vegetables, cheese or desserts? And when can the traditional rules about food and wine safely be ignored?

Unlike many introductory wine books, Wine for Beginners takes a genuinely international approach. France, Italy and Spain are certainly included, but the journey goes much further. The book also introduces wines from Central and Eastern Europe, Georgia and Greece, North and South America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and emerging cool-climate regions such as Belgium and the Netherlands.

You will discover major grape varieties, wine styles, sparkling and fortified wines, oak and ageing, tasting techniques, food pairing and some of the myths that have surrounded wine for generations.

The aim is not to turn the reader into a wine snob. It is to provide enough knowledge to understand wine better, experiment with confidence and, most importantly, discover personal preferences.

Wine for Beginners is an accessible first step from simply drinking wine to understanding and enjoying it.

Stefaan Van Laere is a Belgian author, journalist and publisher. For more than three decades, he has written about a wide variety of subjects and has published both fiction and non-fiction.

As the founder of Partizaan Publishers, he is closely involved in publishing books and making them available to an increasingly international readership.

With Wine for Beginners, he applies the same accessible approach that he previously used in Whisky for Beginners: practical information, clear explanations and no unnecessary jargon or snobbery.

Wine for Beginners is also available in its original Dutch edition as Wijn voor beginners.

Stefaan Van Laere’s Whisky for Beginners has meanwhile appeared in several languages, including Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish.

More books by Stefaan Van Laere and other authors are available from Partizaan Publishers.