Hamish Anderson, Vino

This is the book that helped me finally feel ok about wine. For me, today, wine is no longer'what other people talk about'' " a dark, mysterious, bourgeious elitist club, which requires you to have a taste bud transplant in order to fathom what on earth they are going on about''notes of gooseberry and chalk? ' . This was the book that took all that fear, worry, self-doubt and took it outside and gave it a good kicking. I am now completely fine about wine; what I don't know doesn't bother me ' " I either look it up, or celebrate my ignorance usually through the help of a new bottle of wine.

This doesn't happen overnight of course, and my knowledge in the period has not sky-rocketed, nor have I suddenly found a level of discernment to my palette that allows me to differentiate even the remotest grape and soil varieties. And certainly I haven't been converted to become a'wine snob ' . I just feel more comfortable...

But I think this is where Anderson makes his mark very well. He includes enough in the book that, whatever your start-point, you will soon discover some very new exciting information to take with you on your way. The book is lavishly constructed, a hard-back with lots of space, thoughtfully laid-out sections, specifically dividing the'wine world'by Region, by Grape Variety and finally by suitability with Food. Depending on your start point, you might want to dip in to one or more of the sections independently. For example you are on the hunt for a decent new world Sauvignon Blanc that is a comparable with a good French Loire example, but you don't want to pay the exorbitant prices for a decent Sancerre ' " then off you can go to the Varieties section and spend your time in the Sauv Blanc section of the Whites. I happen to know this because that was my initial challenge ' " namely how do I get the same fantastic fruit 'hit' I got from a Pouilly Fume recently (admittedly at a Hotel Du Vin) for a fraction of the price?

The second section which splits it all up geographically is equally as intriguing and insightful. The level of detail provided takes a lot of the mystery out of looking at a label in the supermarket. This is particularly true for France, which has its own arcane and indecipherable regulations about wine naming, rendering the whole industry largely inaccessible to anyone who's not been on the initiation course. Anderson cuts through the opaqueness of France's viticultural politics such that you can now concentrate on more important matters, namely the wine itself.

The final section brings things to life very well by attempting to describe when to drink the wines in terms of food accompaniment. The eternal debate about'whites with red meat'is diffused and this could easily be the section that ensures the book's continued usage and reference over time.

What I most liked about the whole thing is that despite his rather lofty status as buyer for the Tate, Anderson never goes beyond the level of friendly advisor in the book; his undoubted supreme subject-matter expertise is quietly kept in reserve and the tone of the book is polite, relaxed and honest. Learning about wine shouldn't feel like you are being patronized, but it often can; Hamish Anderson has found a way of imparting a lot of tremendous expertise without making the reader feel like a Neanderthal oaf for needing to read such a book.