What's your Wine Style?

A welcome trend over the past several years has been making choosing wine less esoteric, and more approachable. Wine store chains like Best Cellars and Wine Styles have sprung up, where wines are grouped into categories like "bold", "oaky", and "crisp", rather than into varietals or regions of the world. As a result, wine lovers can use descriptive, everyday adjectives to figure out what they like in a wine, and find bottles that fit those profiles

Along those same lines is the book "Wine Style: Using Your Senses to Explore and Enjoy Wine", by Mary Ewing-Mulligan and Ed McCarthy. Ewing-Mulligan is the author of the "Wine for Dummies" series, and McCarthy is considered the leading U.S. expert on Champagne. Together, they take the reader through a journey of the senses, grouping white and red wines into 4 styles each, and rose and sparkling wines into 2 styles each, as they give a variety of examples and producers from which to choose. The writing style is as friendly as the wine categories they describe. And perhaps what's most important, the authors don't attempt to stereotype--they admit that exceptions to each style exist, and that wine styles are changing all over the world.

If you want to get a better handle on what you like, and why you like what you do, when it comes to wine, pick up a copy of Wine Style.