Secrets from the Wine Diva: Tips on Buying, Ordering & Enjoying Wine

By Christine Ansbacher

Wine expert Christine Ansbacher has some enviable clients: they include both corporate icons such as American Express, as well as cultural giants like The New York Philharmonic. Why? Because she's fun and passionate about wine...and eager to share extensive knowledge so that ordinary wine drinkers (not just elite oenophiles) can get more pleasure from their glass. Here she reveals her smart secrets that everyone who loves wine ought to know--including how to make a $10 Cabernet taste like a $30 bott= how to determine a fair price for a bottle of wine at a restaurant; and how to avoid the dreaded "red wine headache." She also answers some common questions, including "What wine do you recommend with Chinese food?" Buying wine, storing wine, going on a "wine vacation", reading the label, ordering in restaurants: all that, and more, is covered in language as sparkling as fine champagne. This Diva is a delight!

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1402730365
• ISBN13: 9781402730368
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Sterling Publishing (NY)
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Secrets from the Wine Diva

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone that enjoys drinking wine and wants to know a little more about how to buy it, order it, and/or pair it with food. The wine diva makes it easy to understand with a few simple tips, and lots of great examples.

Bravo, Wine Diva!

I drink wine but I have never known anything about it... Because I love to throw parties and plan events, I decided it was time to learn. I picked up this book and wow, what a great little resource! I learned so much and had a fun time reading it. Being an avid reader, I love how the author phrases everything and how she organized the sections. Not only is it a good guide but it is also a good read. Now I know how to order wine at dinner, wine for a party and I am not afraid to try new varieties... I definitely recommend this book for anyone- from wine lovers to beginners.

Terrific resource for selecting wine

I'm not a wine connoisseur but I've been known to drink quite a few bottles. I picked this book up thinking it would be a quick read on a short plane trip. But I found that it was a great reference manual, and I keep going back to it for tips. It's very easy to follow and organized well. One of the best aspects of the book is the Wine Diva's advice on navigating a wine list, which I often find intimidating. She takes the mystery out of it, decodes the list and makes the whole process easy and enjoyable. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn a little more about great vino and have fun at the same time.

Love this book

I'm not an expert, but I have read my five feet of bookshelf devoted to tomes of wisdom, on the mysteries and pleasures in my twenty odd cases of wines. I didn't really expect to learn very much from this diminutive volume, obviously meant to inform beginners. Frankly, the book is a jewel. Witty, extremely readable, concise, packed with common sense and real insider info on enjoying wine. There was barely a page that didn't contain stuff I really want to know. Its like having a world class expert, feeding you tips. The book is over flowing with useful tips. The amazing thing is that this is a book that beginners will find completely accessible, fun to read and filled with useful information, much of which, I hadn't acquired in forty years of aspiring to be worthy of my cellar.

Takes the fear out of buying wine

I find it very intimating to buy in a high-end wine shop like Sherry-Lehmann because I'm strictly in the under $20-a-bottle category buyer. But the Wine Diva even tells you how you can find excellent $10 bottles of wine without embarrassment. I love her idea of associating names of wines with common words so that you can remember them when you're ordering in a restaurant. Like remembering that Riesling sounds like "wrestling." Many great tips for wine lovers.