Zita’s Guide to Wine and Life: A Different Kind of Wine Book
Zita Keeley With Carolyn Kourofsky


The “Wine Moment”

Section I: Wine Moments
Wine Can Make Any Day a Good Day
Drink Like a Local
Sharing the Honeymoon
How Do You Find What You Like? Ask!

Section II: Getting Started With Wine

Different Palates, Different Tastes
How Your Brain Tastes Wine—What the Nose Knows
No Bad Pairings
Try Everything Once—Then Again
This Wine’s Got Legs…and Other Wine Myths
Sidebar: Do Ratings Matter?
How Sweet It Is

Section III: Exploring the World of Wine

A Chardonnay is a Chardonnay is a …Chablis?
Sparkling Wine
There’s Zinfandel, and There’s White Zinfandel
Birthday in Italy
Touring Bordeaux, In One (Big) Room
Sidebar: Tasting Survival
A is for Alsace
B is for Burgundy
C is or Champagne

Section IV: How to Treat That Bottle

What’s in a Glass?
Opening the Closet Door: Decanting
Wine Temperature Matters
Three Bottles, Three Corks
Sidebar: Mad About Madeira

Section V: Moving On and Up in the Wine World

Wine Judging and All That Goes With It
A World of Wine Friends
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Introduction: The “Wine Moment”

This is a different kind of wine book. We’re not going to discuss vintages or debate where the Riesling grape was first grown. This book is about wine as part of your life.

For me the whole point of learning about wine is to enhance a meal, and enhance your life. Whether I’m teaching a class at my wine school, or answering a question from a total stranger standing next to me in a wine shop, my goal is for every person to learn what they like, why they like it, and how to find more wines they like!

I want you to have the chance to learn about wine in the best possible way--by talking about it with a friend. So, sit down and pour yourself a glass of your current favorite (which could be different from your favorite a year ago, or yesterday--more about that later). Let’s talk about wine.

You’ve had a ‘wine moment.’ I know you have, because you picked up this book. Everyone who wants to learn more about wine had a moment when they glimpsed what wine could be, how much enjoyment it could bring, and how much more there was to know.

My own wine moment happened more than a decade ago, near the beginning of what would be a six-year stay in London. I was trying to make a home, very far from my original Manhattan home, and like every American living abroad sometimes I yearned for familiar things. The “American foods” aisle at the Jerry’s shop on Hampstead High Street could satisfy a taste for Captain Krunch or Heinz ketchup, but I missed the cultural rituals we usually take for granted, like holidays. The English don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, for instance (and needless to say we didn’t even mention Independence Day!)

It seemed easier for my two-year-old son Ethan, who quickly became friends with a little girl at his nursery school. Allison’s mother was an American, married to an Englishman. We followed our children’s lead and became great friends.

As Thanksgiving neared, I remembered the gatherings of extended family that holiday always brought. We were happy to be able to invite another couple (half of which at least had Thanksgiving memories too!) to fill in the dining table of our top floor flat for the traditional meal.

Then our new friends called to say they would be having a visitor on Thanksgiving Day, a friend currently working in France. Would we mind if they brought him along? The turkey was more than ample, taking up nearly all the space in our tiny refrigerator. The more the merrier, we said—especially when we learned he’d offered to bring the wine!

As it turned out, he brought five bottles of wine—apparently Europeans figured one bottle of wine for each adult—all of them the same 1993 Puligny-Montrachet. I was pleased the wine was white, as that was mostly what I drank at that time, but other than that the bottle meant nothing to me. I didn’t know that Puligny-Montrachet was a tiny region within Burgundy, in east central France, or that this meant the grape used would be Chardonnay. As we talked about London, France, and memories from home, we just opened and poured.

That first taste was pure nectar. My mouth filled with elegant flavors of honey and butterscotch that seemed to linger for hours. I literally hadn’t known wine could taste like this.

How did I describe it? “Wow” was the best I could do just then. But I wanted to learn more, to be able to describe what I was experiencing, to know why I loved it so much, and above all to be able to have more “Wow” moments in the future.

I kept the label, and embarked on a mission to find and taste more white Burgundies. Do you know what? I never found that particular bottle again. But in exploring wine I found many other great bottles to enjoy.

That’s what wine is like. You may never recreate that first moment, but you’ll have and share many more. I’d like to share some of mine with you, and along the way help you find, create and savor a whole collection of great wine moments to enhance and last your whole life.

Hugs,
Zita