Uncork Your Wine Knowledge: The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide To Becoming A Wine Expert

Melissa B.: Bought these as gag gifts for people who like wine. They loved them!

United States on Jul 23, 2023

Shopper5377: Cute gift for wine lovers. The scents are surprisingly accurate!

United States on Mar 15, 2023

Naveen Benny: Not a single wine smell in the book. They have put stickers of how vanilla and fruits smell but nothing to do with wine. Can get this information from a 30s YouTube short. Absolute waste of money.

India on Aug 20, 2022

Jennifer: It was pretty neat but almost felt a bit childish. Not sure i would purchase again but if you are looking for just a fun into to wine this could work for you.

Canada on Jul 04, 2017

Alaina Dugas: Purchased this after learning about it's existence on TV, as a funny gift for my Mom (who is a bit of a wineaholic). Book does not have as many scratch-and-sniff areas as I was expecting, but it does seem to have some actually good educational information in it. Overall, pleased with the book.

Canada on Jun 13, 2016

edouard cointreau: This is an inventive and fun way to learn about wine. It works, and you learn without any effort, unconsciously. In fact your memory is strongly impacted by the process of scratching and sniffing. The quick experiment is fun. Its value cames in later tastings, with unconscious memory helping you. It is a very smart book, by a very intelligent author. and it makes the reader that uses it smarter without really becoming aware of it.. The perfect gift for wine lovers

France on Jul 17, 2015

Posh Gypsy: Most of the reviews have described this book as a great gift but I actually wanted it as learning tool. I am a newbie to the world of wine and I'm trying to improve my palate.

I don't mind that it looks like a child's pop-up book because the information is very good. For example, I didn't realize that only certain red-color fruits are found in red wines, that is, the author explains that you won't find lemon or pineapple in red wines. This is news to me because I thought any fruit aroma was game to appear in any wines. Narrowing the field for me helps, but this is where the author stops short! On the page where he talks about red wine, there is an illustration of the fruits and then the scratch and sniff thing, but not one mention of the fruits! There are illustrations of cherries and what looks like strawberries, but not one fruit is mentioned by name, even though the title of this section is "What fruit do you smell in red wine?" It would have been nice to be able to name some of the fruits.

By far the most disappointing part is the scratch and sniff. They were just too faint to get any sense of what I should be smelling. If the picture weren't there, you'd have...

United States on Aug 02, 2014

Ainhoa Olaciregui: Very nice book to understand and have better idea about the wine world. But is not the best book to become a sommelier. It's just funny that for sure

United Kingdom on May 27, 2014

Amazon Customer: This is a very short board book of 22 pages, written as if for a child, with a total of 14 tiny, transparent disks where you can scratch and sniff. But two of these seem to be duplicates, so the book actually contains 12 smells and a few hundred words, plus some child-like diagrams. The sniff points are so difficult to locate (indicated by the tiny diagram of a pointing finger) that readers could easily miss most of them, as numerous reviewers here apparently did. The concept is good in theory, and the wine information provided is accurate, if obviously very limited. The tone is cutesy, trying very hard to be accessible and fun. The problem is that the aromas on the scratch and sniff spots are barely perceptible, so you have to press your nose to the page to get even the faintest whiff of a smell. And when you do, you also hoover in the pronounced aroma of cardboard from the page itself. Most of the smells are all but obliterated by the cardboard aroma. Those smells that do come through, such as the fruits, are so subtle that they aren't very useful. One reason wine lovers catch the 'bug' of wine appreciation is that they discover there is a tremendous range of aromas and flavors...

United States on Jan 30, 2014

Ursiform: I've been tasting--and drinking!--wine for decades. My friends tend to think of me as something of a connoisseur. But when I read descriptions like "undertones of rose petals beneath burnt shoe leather" I roll my eyes.

This book, on the other hand, oversimplifies, decomposing wine into a handful of aromas. I think that's a good starting point, and I applaud the author for cutting through the crap of wine puffery. But there is another level or two of subtlety beyond this book, and it won't make you an "expert".

In format it's a 22 page board book, much like you'd give a small child. But the text, as well as the subject, is grown up. It walks you through the basic categories of wine smells--the biggest components of taste--and lets you "scratch & sniff". As such, it's a great starting point for understanding wine.

What's peculiar is that while the author does noble service in cutting through the pretense that surrounds--and inflicts--wine tasting and wine descriptions, he feels the need to posture his brief, otherwise excellent, introduction as a guide that will make readers experts. In that, he's actually pretentious in attacking pretension.

If you...

United States on Oct 26, 2013