Clueless About Wine: The Best-Selling Guide to the Basics. Rev. ed.

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

This is a textbook. Substance trumps flash. The plan of organization has
all the efficiency of a well-lubricated filing system, serving up
learning modules from the most basic to the moderately complex. The
authors ask simple but fundamental questions. What is wine? What are the
processes and problems associated with getting it from the vine to the
bottle? What choices face consumers in the retail store, and how might
consumers make appropriate decisions? These basic questions explicated,
they introduce the wines of the world, instruct readers in the
techniques of tasting them, offer assistance to individuals looking for
styles of wine that comport with their lifestyles, take up the matter of
matching food to wine, and explore the many ways that wine may be
purchased, gifted, collected, and stored.

Like all the best modern texts, Clueless About Wine comes studded with
sidebars—the New Age response to explanatory footnotes—which season
the learning process with spicy asides. The volume concludes, as all
good texts should, with a useful index. This book offers excellent value
for a modest amount of money.