jaimiejaimiejaimie's review
3.0
This is a fun little book with a very good overview of flavors to look for in wine. The included map is a great resource for finding wines that you might not know about. Sadly, I grabbed this out of a free little library, so the smells are long gone.
josh_caporale's review
4.0
This is exactly what it says it is: a scratch and sniff book that uses the olfactory method to help one become more familiar with wine and with an even greater hope to pursue the direction that a connoisseur would. The items that are being presented for one to scratch and sniff are not the different types of wine, but instead elements that make up the wine that we are more familiar. Ingredients include fruits and citrus, bacon and butter, and even grass and leather, which produce a residue that ends up in the wine as it is being made. While one may question some strange things that can be found in wine, the strangest being cat urine, Betts reminds up the types of bacteria and mold that is found in different types of cheese, most notably blue cheese, and yet we still eat that. It was on moldy bread where we got penicillin, and it still has its use in serving as an antibiotic.
I feel that this book about wine is effective in giving readers a sense of what they need to know in order to understand wine. It is only 22 pages, but Betts uses these pages effectively in order to display as much as possible. If you are willing to pay $12 off of Amazon or $20 for retail to purchase something of this caliber, which I would say is the only major downfall, then I feel that something like this is worth it and right to the point. I feel that it is worth it and I have not found anything that tops this, so I would recommend it. The fact that it is a hands-on experience is a bonus!
I feel that this book about wine is effective in giving readers a sense of what they need to know in order to understand wine. It is only 22 pages, but Betts uses these pages effectively in order to display as much as possible. If you are willing to pay $12 off of Amazon or $20 for retail to purchase something of this caliber, which I would say is the only major downfall, then I feel that something like this is worth it and right to the point. I feel that it is worth it and I have not found anything that tops this, so I would recommend it. The fact that it is a hands-on experience is a bonus!
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