A Taste for Wine
The perfect wine gift for any wine lover, A Taste for Wine is a complete home wine-tasting course from award-winning wine critic and educator Rose Murray Brown MW.
ONE OF THE TIMES BEST BOOKS OF 2025
ONE OF FORBES’ ESSENTIAL WINE AND SPIRIT BOOKS OF 2025
‘How do you distil a lifetime of knowledge and learning into 224 pages?…Rather than a dry encylopaedic catalogue of wine grapes and styles, this is a series of masterclasses for the layperson. So you cover all the ground at your own pace – with a glass in hand.’
Tony Turnbull, The Times, ‘Books of the Year 2025’
– Begin with the key elements of taste, before learning how wine is made and the effect this has on flavour.
– Familiarize yourself with every significant grape variety and the wine countries of the world, including a complete directory of international wineries to visit.
– Dive into natural, orange and low-alcohol wines, and enjoy expert at-home food and wine matching.
– Prepare for a changing world of wine, with features on everything from urban wineries to PiWI grapes.
A Taste for Wine includes ten step-by-step tasting practices in which to apply your newfound knowledge, interspersed throughout the book:
1. Classic Whites
2. Classic Reds
3. Full, Rich Whites
4. Crisp, Delicate Whites
5. Soft, Juicy Reds
6. Sparkling Wines
7. Comparing Sweetness
8. Fortified Wines
9. Full Rich Reds
10. Taste Trends
‘Rose Murray Brown has written a genuinely useful guide to tasting in the no-nonsense vein of Mary Poppins.’
Club Oenoloqique
ONE OF THE TIMES BEST BOOKS OF 2025
ONE OF FORBES’ ESSENTIAL WINE AND SPIRIT BOOKS OF 2025
‘How do you distil a lifetime of knowledge and learning into 224 pages?…Rather than a dry encylopaedic catalogue of wine grapes and styles, this is a series of masterclasses for the layperson. So you cover all the ground at your own pace – with a glass in hand.’
Tony Turnbull, The Times, ‘Books of the Year 2025’
– Begin with the key elements of taste, before learning how wine is made and the effect this has on flavour.
– Familiarize yourself with every significant grape variety and the wine countries of the world, including a complete directory of international wineries to visit.
– Dive into natural, orange and low-alcohol wines, and enjoy expert at-home food and wine matching.
– Prepare for a changing world of wine, with features on everything from urban wineries to PiWI grapes.
A Taste for Wine includes ten step-by-step tasting practices in which to apply your newfound knowledge, interspersed throughout the book:
1. Classic Whites
2. Classic Reds
3. Full, Rich Whites
4. Crisp, Delicate Whites
5. Soft, Juicy Reds
6. Sparkling Wines
7. Comparing Sweetness
8. Fortified Wines
9. Full Rich Reds
10. Taste Trends
‘Rose Murray Brown has written a genuinely useful guide to tasting in the no-nonsense vein of Mary Poppins.’
Club Oenoloqique
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Reviews
How do you distil a lifetime of knowledge and learning into 224 pages? That was the challenge facing the master of wine and Scotsman newspaper columnist Rose Murray Brown. Rather than a dry encylopediac catalogue of wine grapes and styles, this is a series of masterclasses written for the layperson. So you cover all the ground at your own pace - with a glass in hand. On the way, she knocks off the trends you should be up to speed with - piwi grapes, anyone? - but perhaps best are the crib sheets to help you to distinguish your chablis from your white rioja and your malbec from your merlot.
Rose Murray Brown has written a genuinely useful guide to tasting in the no-nonsense vein of Mary Poppins... Her delivery is refreshing and informative....Though Murray Brown is as highly educated as it is technically possible to be about wine...there is not a whiff of arrogance about her. In a an age of emoji personalities and abject individualism, Murray Brown's book is a welcome tonic.
In short, [Rose Murray Brown] is a very experienced and knowledgeable wine expert who knows how to taste wine and much more...A Taste for Wine is really a wine bible oriented around tasting....All told, this the most interesting and useful book.
A very useful addition to the wine library of literally anyone who feels wine is something of a hobby... an excellent Christmas gift for any of your friends who... would like to learn more about the practicalities of tasting...Who should read it? Anyone who enjoys wine and thinks there is more to learn.
Rose Murray Brown distills decades of teaching into a structured "course in a book." Short, focused chapters walk readers through the fundamentals, grape varieties, classic regions, and ten guided tastings you can set up at home. The tone is straightforward and no-nonsense without being joyless, and the exercises gently nudge you from "I like it" to real sensory vocabulary and comparative tasting. [Best for] the friend who keeps saying, "I wish someone would just teach me how to taste properly."
A sensory journey into tasting, appreciating, and above all enjoying the extraordinary array of flavours so many of the wines of the world offer these days. It's like being given the keys to an abundant and very comfortable wine cellar, certainly technical, but served up with clarity and even affection, extremely well-organised and written - there are charts and highlights, and crib sheets, but also reassurances galore, a useful invitation to considerable pleasure.