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Title: Italian Wines 2003 by Gambero Rosso ISBN: 1-890142-07-7 Publisher: Gambero Rosso Pub. Date: April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (3 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: There have to be better choices than this
Comment: Of all the wine books in my collection, this is the only one I just cannot bring myself to read or study. It is poorly laid out and difficult to use as a ready reference, and it is not good reading to use for pure recreational or educational reading. I pick it up from time to time thinking that the layout will become comfortable for me if I persist, but it does not, and I do not. It has neither the straightforward reference style of Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Guides nor the fabulous reading and educational style of Parker's Bordeaux.
Rating: 3
Summary: Good book, badly structured
Comment: This is by far the best (annually updated) guide for Italian wines available on the market. It contains all those nice (and very often surprisingly cheap) bottles that make Italian wine so special.
The book is structured according to wine regions (Sicily, Tuscany, etc.), which is alright. But within those chapters, the reader very often gets lost, because subsequently the producers presented are listed according to their village (post code). This means that the alphabetic lists of wines and producers at the end of the guide is absolutely crucial almost any time one want to use the book, something that's not very user-friendly.
A second criticism that must be levelled against the Gambero is its evaluation system: wines are first marked with 0, 1, or 2 glasses, and those making it into the finals are the ones which have gained at least 2 glasses (but not all of those). Among those finalists (glasses marked in red) some receive a third glass, making them Italy's wine élite. This system may have tradition but a slightly wider scale (1-5, 1-10, 1-20, or Parker's 100-point-system) would better distinguish between different wines. So, most wines listed end up with one or two glasses, and the reader might believe that there is not much difference between them.
In the end, this book is a must for wine enthusiasts, but its presentational style ought to be improved. Not a criticism of the English edition, though: it's the Italian original that must address this problem first.
Rating: 4
Summary: Still pazzo after all these years
Comment: In my review of the 2002 edition of the Gambero Rosso's Guide to Italian Wines, I took the editors and publishers to task for taking too long to get an English edition in our hands. After all, the purpose of the Guide is to review the best Italian wines released in the past year. It's an annual, not a periodical publication, and as a result the book inevitably closes too soon to include key wines from the most recent vintage. Case in point: the 2002 edition failed to include '97 Brunellos even though they had been available in the US for six months prior to publication. I hypothesized that their rigorous judging process simply took too long.
I'm sure it's a coincidence, but the most interesting change in the 2003 Gambero is the lengthy explanation/apology in the introduction for why it takes so long for them to complete their judging. Otherwise, it's same old/same old, which is a good thing because the Gambero remains the authoritative publication on the best wines made in Italy.
For newbies: the Gambero rates about 20.000 Italian wines a year and awards the best of them 1-3 glasses (three glasses is the highest award and is slowly becoming recognized in America as the definitive point-of-view on Italy). In the 2003 edition, 250 wines across Italy earned the highest honor, the coveted "tre bicchiere" or 3 glass status. Now you can occasionally find a tre bicchiere tag hanging from a wine store rack even in the untutored wilds of New Jersey.
After using the book for a number of years, I find the hit ratio, ie the ratio of wines I actually enjoy divided by the sum of the wines they recommend to be the highest of any source of wine reviews I've ever used. I'm going to Italy for a vacation in a couple of weeks, and you can be sure I'll be packing my Gambero. So despite the dollar's nasty slide, I'll be ready to jump on a hard-to-find or well-priced Gambero favorite.
Gambero-if you're listening, please make a version that's downloadable to PDA or iPod or whatever turns you on. I asked for this two years ago and non vedo l'ora. Grazie.
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Title: Italian Wines 2004: A Guide to the World of Italian Wine for Experts and Wine Lovers (ITALIAN WINES) by Gambero Rosso ISBN: 1890142085 Publisher: Gambero Rosso Pub. Date: April, 2004 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy by David Lynch, Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, Mario Batali, Joseph Bastianich ISBN: 0609608487 Publisher: Clarkson Potter Pub. Date: 09 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: A Wine Atlas of the Langhe: The Great Barolo and Barbaresco Vineyards by Carlo Petrini, Victtorio Mangnelli ISBN: 8884990416 Publisher: Slow Food Intl Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: Brunello to Zubibbo: The Wines of Tuscany, Central and Southern Italy by Nicolas Belfrage ISBN: 1840007907 Publisher: Mitchell Beazley Pub. Date: 01 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Burton Anderson's Best Wines of Italy by Burton Anderson ISBN: 0316857033 Publisher: Antique Collectors Club Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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