Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 26, 1995                   TAG: 9507260008
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETH CRITTENDEN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VINTAGE READING: CURL UP WITH A BOOK ABOUT WINE

My vote for the easiest to read and understand goes to Heidi Yorkshire's "Wine Savvy: The Simple Guide to Buying and Enjoying Wine Anytime, Anywhere." Yorkshire tells the reader how to smell and taste wine, pronounce the grape varietals, open a bottle, store it, serve it, match it with foods and order wine in a restaurant. Numerous wine experts are quoted, as are California wine mogul Robert Mondavi, who wrote the foreword, and Bart Simpson, who ordered a bottle of a restaurant's freshest wine on an episode of The Simpsons. "Wine Savvy" is published by Duplex Medi Group, Portland, Ore., and can be ordered from the publisher for $9.95 by calling (800) 507-BOOK.

Closer to home, popular wine writers Hilde Gabriel Lee and Allan E. Lee of Charlottesville have compiled "Serve With Virginia Wine," a comprehensive cookbook that describes specific Virginia wines and wineries and matches wines to more than 150 recipes. Hilde Lee's easy-to-follow recipes are a mixture of international specialties and local favorites, drawing on current food trends and Virginia products.

My eyes keep straying to the baked brie with lobster, matched with Horton Viognier, cold watermelon soup paired with Afton Mountain Chenin Blanc and Viennese marble cake made with apricot preserves and recommended with Rapidan River Semi-Dry White Riesling.

"Serve With Virginia Wine" includes charts showing which Virginia winery produces what wine. It is available for about $13 from Hildesigns Press, 2855 Ridge Road, Charlottesville, Va. 22901, (804) 296-0885,

For serious wine students, Canadian author and wine educator Andrew Sharp's 240-page "Winetaster's Secrets" is an in-depth how-to book on developing one's own natural senses to increase the enjoyment and consistent evaluation of wine. Pros and cons of wine-scoring systems are discussed, and the rating systems are analyzed for accuracy. Sharp also touches on topics not commonly found in wine-related books, such as the relative ages of the taster and the wine, how to set up a wine tasting and what foods should or should not be available while tasting. Sharp's writing - proper and heavily laced with dry humor - is by no means "light reading," but it is educational. "Winetaster's Secrets" is available in bookstores or through Firefly Books Ltd. for about $15, 250 Sparks Ave, Willowdale, Ontario M2H 2S4 .

"Larousse Encyclopedia of Wine," edited by Christopher Foulkes, reads more like a travelogue with lavish pictures and detailed regional maps. It is geared toward readers with every level of wine experience and is divided into two major sections. The first gives a brief history of wine and guidelines on how to handle it - winemaking, tasting, serving, storing, aging, etc., as well as a great section on food and wine pairing ideas. The second divides the world into wine regions and explores each with an overview and in detail.

The photographs alone provide a marvelous education and beckon you to explore in person. "Larousse Encyclopedia of Wine" is published in the United Kingdom by Larousse and retails for about $40.

Designed for the novice as well as the connoisseur, Jancis Robinson's "The Oxford Companion to Wine" is like no other guide to wine. With its 3,000 alphabetically arranged topics, it invites frequent use as a reference but defies cover-to-cover reading. Robinson, a regular columnist for the "Wine Spectator" edited this 1,100-page behemoth with the help of more than 80 authorities on wine from around the world. Beginning with Abboccato, an Italian word for medium sweet, and ending with Zweigelt, Austria's most popular dark-berried grape variety, "The Oxford Companion to Wine" delves into just about anything that has anything to do with wine. It has been called the most comprehensive guide to wine to date, and I am inclined to agree. "The book costs about $50 in bookstores and is published by Oxford University Press.

THE WINE LIST runs once a month in the Extra section. Beth Crittenden is a local wine wholesaler as well as a wine educator, and writer and founding member of the Roanoke Valley Wine Society, which meets for wine-tasting programs on the fourth Thursday of each month. Call 992-3285.