The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting

The Bootcamp Manual for Aspiring MastersWinner of a Best in the World Gourmand AwardA comprehensive education in wine. —The Times Literary SupplementA detailed textbook… Very thorough. —Decanter MagazineMost wine books teach you what to taste. This one teaches you how to think.The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting is for anyone who wants to move beyond drinking and describing wine to truly understanding it. Whether you are preparing for advanced wine exams, working in the trade, or refining your palate, it offers a clear, structured approach to tasting and analysing wine.At its core is a systematic framework for blind tasting that helps you identify what matters in the glass, interpret sensory evidence, and draw reliable conclusions step by step. You learn to move from aroma and flavour to meaning: grape variety, climate, region, and winemaking choices, all inferred through disciplined observation rather than guesswork or memorisation.Alongside this method, the book provides the essential background needed to make accurate comparisons and evaluations: grape varieties, vineyard and cellar practices, and the world’s major wine regions and styles. The emphasis is always comparative—training you to recognise what truly distinguishes and differentiates wines and why those differences exist. Why does Pauillac feel so different from Pomerol just across the river? How do expressions of Riesling shift from the Rheingau to Alsace, Austria, or Australia?The result is a transferable approach to blind tasting that builds precision, improves consistency, and supports performance under pressure. Carefully chosen producers and vintages are included throughout to ground learning in real-world reference points.By the end, you’ll be better equipped to recognise quality, understand style and origin, and make more informed choices—so you can drink with greater insight and less uncertainty.Praise for previous editionsA rigorous, highly focused, well-honed bootcamp manual (Bible might be a better word) for the likes of WSET diploma students, MW students, Master Sommelier students, and anyone else who thinks that blind tasting competitions are a riot. —Tamlyn Currin for JancisRobinson.comThe most definitive guide to wine tasting since Michael Broadbent, and a lot more scientific. —Mark Savage MWA great jumping-off point for wine professionals or eager hobbyists as they develop their personal tasting grids. —Wine & Spirits MagazineA book that will be of benefit to anyone taking a Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) course in the coming years. —Paul O'Doherty for JancisRobinson.comSplendid, concise, up-to-date, comprehensive and accurate. —Clive Coates MW, author of The Wines of BurgundyDelightful yet sophisticated. —Konstantinos Lazarakis MW, author of The Wines of GreeceAbout the authorDr Neel Burton FRSA is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine-lover who lives in Oxford, England. He is a Fellow of Green-Templeton College in the University of Oxford, and the winner of several book prizes including a Best in the World Gourmand Award for this one. Read more