The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting

The Bootcamp Manual for Aspiring Masters Winner of a Best in the World Gourmand Award A comprehensive education in wine. —The Times Literary Supplement A detailed textbook… Very thorough. —Decanter Magazine Most wine books teach you what to taste. This one teaches you how to think. The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting is for anyone who wants to move beyond drinking and describing wine to truly understanding it. Whether you’re preparing for advanced wine exams, working in the trade, or simply refining your palate, it offers a clear, structured approach to tasting and analysing wine. At its core is a systematic framework for blind tasting that helps you identify what matters in the glass, interpret sensory evidence, and draw reliable conclusions step by step. You learn to move from aroma and flavour to meaning: grape variety, climate, region, and winemaking choices, all inferred through disciplined observation rather than guesswork or memorisation. Alongside this method, the book provides the essential background needed to make accurate comparisons and evaluations: grape varieties, vineyard and cellar practices, and the world’s major wine regions and styles. The emphasis is always comparative—training you to recognise what truly distinguishes wines and why those variations exist. Why is Pauillac so different from Pomerol just across the Gironde? How do expressions of Riesling shift from the Rheingau to Alsace or Austria, or from the Wachau to Kamptal or Kremstal? The result is a transferable approach to blind tasting that builds precision, improves consistency, and supports performance under pressure. Carefully chosen producers and vintages are included throughout to ground learning in real-world reference points. By the end, you’ll be better able to recognise quality, identify origin and style, and make confident, evidence-based decisions in the glass—drinking with greater clarity, precision, and understanding. About the author Dr Neel Burton FRSA is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine-lover who lives in Oxford, England. He is a Fellow of Green-Templeton College in the University of Oxford, and the winner of several book prizes including a Best in the World Gourmand Award for this volume. In his heyday, he was on the winning team of two international blind tasting competitions … beating the French on their own soil. Praise for previous editions A rigorous, highly focused, well-honed bootcamp manual (Bible might be a better word) for the likes of WSET diploma students, MW students, Master Sommelier students, and anyone else who thinks that blind tasting competitions are a riot. —Tamlyn Currin for JancisRobinson.com The most definitive guide to wine tasting since Michael Broadbent, and a lot more scientific to boot. —Mark Savage MW A great jumping-off point for wine professionals or eager hobbyists as they develop their personal tasting grids. —Wine & Spirits Magazine A book that will be of benefit to anyone taking a Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) course in the coming years. —Paul O'Doherty for JancisRobinson.com Splendid, concise, up-to-date, comprehensive and accurate. —Clive Coates MW, author of The Wines of Burgundy Delightful yet sophisticated. —Konstantinos Lazarakis MW, author of The Wines of Greece