Wine book’s best part is in the middle

Vincent Gasnier, a British-based master sommelier, has put together a volume that is designed well and has attractive photos. Like many other comprehensive wine books, however, it’s a snore. But buried in the middle of “A Taste for Wine” is a mini-volume that’s very interesting, indeed. Work your way through the 215-page midsection of the 352-page paperback, and you could well be on your way to possessing many skills of a bona fide wine expert.

Gasnier, according to the jacket copy, became the youngest master sommelier ever (in 1997) at the age of 22. His first book, the impressive, encyclopedic “Drinks,” published in 2005, hinted that he had a nose for unusual wine discoveries.

Skip “Wine Styles” and “Wine: A User’s Guide,” and proceed directly to Part 2.

Here begins Gasnier’s tour through the wines of the world, organized by style – juicy, aromatic whites; full, opulent whites; rose; fruity, lively reds; rich, dense reds; sparkling wines, etc. Within each of these style categories, Gasnier goes country by country, starting each time with France (“Being French,” he writes, “I make no apology for starting each category with the appropriate wines from France!”).

The tour is wonderfully inclusive: He doesn’t stop with the usual suspects (Italy, Spain, Germany, Australia, U.S., etc.) but gives us lots of intriguing finds from Hungary, Greece, Austria, South Africa, Croatia, Serbia – even England, where Gasnier lives and works as a consultant.

In these pages you’ll discover Aglianico, a powerful red from the mountains east of Naples; Dimiat, a fresh, aromatic, tangy white from Bulgaria; and Setubal, a fortified Moscatel from Portugal, as well as more familiar wines.

Every few pages, the section is punctuated by a “Taste Test,” a self-contained wine lesson. It might be about how to tell the difference between fruity, aromatic wines and true sweet wines, what is meant by “length,” or understanding the influence of oak aging. These interactive lessons comprise the heart of the book, an intention made clear by the subtitle, “20 Key Tastings to Unlock Your Personal Wine Style.”

For each tasting, Gasnier instructs readers to purchase three or four different wines, suggesting several producers to choose from. I was worried that I might have some difficulty finding all of them because Gasnier doesn’t live in the U.S., but at my well-stocked wine shop I had no problem.

I conducted the taste test, “Microclimate,” with two colleagues, one versed in wine, the other a little less so. This tasting purported to demonstrate “the influence of microclimate in three Chardonnays from California,” one from Carneros, one from Santa Barbara County and one from Napa Valley. We poured the wines – a 2004 Cuvaison from Carneros, a 2004 Cambria from the Santa Maria Valley in Santa Barbara County, and a 2004 Frog’s Leap from Napa Valley – into three glasses each and followed along with Gasnier’s photo-illustrated one-page lesson.

The Cuvaison definitely demonstrated the bone-dry acidity Gasnier said we would find, along with “intense yellow-lemon citrus fruit.” But we didn’t find the “ripe, exotic fruit flavor” nor the “nice, clean acidity” he promised in the Cambria, which was rather flabby, with very little acid.

The temperatures in Carneros (which includes southern reaches of the Napa and Sonoma valleys), according to Gasnier, “are consistently lower than in Santa Barbara and the Napa Valley.” This had us scratching our heads, because Santa Barbara is a huge region with wide climactic variations in the many microclimates.

A more thorough reading suggested that while Gasnier is impressively knowledgeable about French and other European wines, California isn’t his strong suit. This was revealed in uninformed or outdated generalizations such as, “The first thing to hit you when you smell the Santa Barbara Chardonnay is a big whiff of new American oak.” He’s referring to Santa Barbara Chardonnays in general here, but many serious Santa Barbara winemakers age their Chardonnay in French oak, not all of it new, or even in stainless steel.

The Frog’s Leap did exhibit the ripeness, depth and complexity that Gasnier said we would find as a result of Napa’s warm, sunny days and cool nights.

Next, I assembled three reds for a tasting at home. This one would address body – “Just what do we mean by ‘rich and dense’ when we talk about red wines?” I poured a California Pinot Noir (2005 Au Bon Climat from Santa Barbara County), a Chilean Carmenere (2005 Santa Rita from Rapel Valley) and an Australian Shiraz (2004 Jim Barry “The Lodge Hill” from Clare Valley) into three glasses for each of the three of us tasting. The others were my husband, a Frenchman who has tasted his share, and a girlfriend who’s a self-proclaimed know-nothing about wine.

With this test it was easy to distinguish the differences in mouth-feel between the relatively light Pinot and the two denser wines. It seemed to me a no-brainer, but my neophyte girlfriend was wowed.

“I definitely learned something,” she said. She explained that when she sat down, she could have imagined what a big, round red was, “but this demonstrated clearly what it meant. The words are defined, not just connoted.” Further, she was fascinated with Gasnier’s descriptions of the aromas and flavors to look for in each of the wines, amazed that she was able to discern them.

Clearly, for someone nurturing a new interest in wine, this book can be quite valuable. The tastings don’t come cheap, however. Though I was able to pick up wines from the producers that Gasnier recommended for between $10 and $20 each, the tab for just two of 20 tastings was almost $100. The idea would be to gather enough friends to make the lessons worthwhile financially.

But whether you’re a new wine lover interested in trying Gasnier’s taste tests or a seasoned oenophile who knows it all, this book holds plenty of interest, simply for Gasnier’s smart thumbnail sketches of the wines of the world. Part of the book’s success lies in its design. It is beautifully art directed, with clear, striking layouts, valuable, easy-to-read sidebars, appealing photos (by Ian O’Leary) and portraits of the handsome author on more than a few pages. The design makes the all-important Part 2 very easy to use.

There are little nuggets of interest throughout. “A good sparkling wine,” Gasnier writes, “will display a phenomenon called the cheminee – a chimney of bubbles, rising from the bottom of the flute to the center of the liquid’s surface; the bubbles then move out to form a circle around the inside of the glass.” Indeed!

But most valuable are the dozens and dozens of unusual wines Gasnier suggests for discovery. I may not drop everything to run out and try to find a Plavac Mali from Croatia, but next time I bump into a Lago di Caldaro from the Alto Adige in Italy (a red that’s “fresh and fruity, with hints of almond”) or a Rousette from the French Alps (“perhaps the finest Savoie white”), I’m bound to give it a try.