Wine is food. It can be an integral part of a meal, enhancing food's flavors, aiding digestion, and acting as a social lubricant. While selecting a wine can be endlessly fascinating and as complicated as brain surgery, it needn't be any more difficult than picking a good porterhouse at the butcher's counter or choosing a ripe avocado from the grocer's bin. My goal with What's a Wine Lover to Do? is to offer advice for readers with an interest in wine. The information is designed to help people who are just starting to drink wine, continuing to offer useful knowledge even after you gain enough confidence to be comfortable trekking through a wine list at a high-end restaurant. One thing I've learned in the seminars and workshops I've led is that most folks come because they feel curious about wine, but many of them feel intimidated by the trappings. And while I can assure all of you that nothing about wine is scary, I also understand that for the uninitiated, some of the accessories and routines can be puzzling. So there are a good many sections in this book on how to navigate through the more mystifying parts of the world of wine, from how to read a label, to which wine openers uncork a bottle with the least amount of hassle, to what types of glasses work best.

The best way to learn about wine is to taste a lot of them and then visit as many wineries as possible (I know, tough work). In order to help, I've provided organized tastings along with recommended brands and forms to keep records. The more wines you taste, the more you will appreciate having some sort of record-keeping procedure, so I've recommended a system. Visiting wineries is one of life's great pleasures. They are almost always in lovely agricultural areas, and the people who inhabit the tasting rooms are invariably entertaining and full of helpful information. You'll find a list of great wineries to visit in each of the main winemaking areas of the world. Carefully placed throughout the book are recommendations from other wine experts, with a few celebrities sprinkled here and there for fun. I asked their opinions on the best values in wines under $20, but since all of us aspire to the occasional fancy bottle of wine, I asked for high-end recommendations as well.

And for those of you hoping for specific advice on which wines to buy, you'll find my ideas about the best of the best all through the book.