The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide To Becoming A Wine Expert: Take a Whiff of That

My friend is definitely a wine snob/lover... so I thought this was a cute book to read and share with him. He was laughing the whole time I read from it. Hopefully we can finish it soon. (I finished the book by myself) I love the sniffs, they smell really tasty! I left this book at my friends house, so I hope I get it back! It's MINE!!! But... this wine book will make a great gift for any wine lover, expert, or someone like me, who is still learning. This would also make a great coffee table book. The map insert is absolutely adorable and helpful. Kudos to the author for making a fun, funny, scratch-n-sniff book that is filled with accurate information. P.S. I saw this book on sale at *another store*, I thought to check amazon, glad I did. The book came packed, no wear or scratches on front, sniffs in tact inside, and plastic wrap in the back w/ insert intact. Perfect quality A+!

Purchased this for a Christmas gift for my mother in law who is a wine lover but sort of clueless (by self admission!) when it comes to knowing what she wants. Thought this would be a fun way to teach herself about her wine preferrences and when it came, I had to take a look... and sniff. It was fun and quick to read! The scratch and sniff portions smell exactly like whatever it is they should (grass, 'earth', vanilla, red fruit, black fruit) without being overly powerful or fake. It's not like you can smell the book when you open it meaning it'll definitely have a place on the coffee table and won't be annoying. Also includes a little flow chart/ map to guide you through your preferred smells to your best wine picks. Brilliant!

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 little idea what you were smelling. With many of the illustrations in the book there are quarter-size, clear stickers on top that supposedly carries the aroma. At first I thought I was supposed to remove the stickers and the smell would be underneath, but I think there would have been instructions if that were true. Not every illustration has a sniffer. In all, these are the aromas that are available in this book: pear, mixed fruit, red fruit, black fruit, stone fruit, another pear, vanilla, dill, dirt, leather, bacon, butter, and grass. Towards the end Mr. Betts talks about, and there are illustrations for what to look for in faulty wine such as wet dog smell, burnt rubber and mold. Where are those sniffers? It's like teaching bad words in a foreign language class -- you need to know the bad stuff in order to recognize them when they occur. I have a lot of respect for this area of expertise especially after I saw the documentary, "Somm". The information in this book is very clear and arranged in a way that makes the wine tasting journey not so vast and never-ending. Mr. Betts says that all wines fall into four main categories and the explanation of terroir is clear. I appreciate the different and big fonts, the colors and the illustrations. But I was actually a serious purchaser of this book for myself since my palate is so poor; I actually want to identify the gooseberries (inside book joke) someday. I've purchased other wine books of course and I'm taking an online CSW class (living in a very small Southern town, no wine tastings here!). I hope he comes out with a second edition!

I received this little wine book as a gift a couple of years ago and really enjoyed how it breaks down the process of "tasting" wine. It definitely has helped to give me a good guide as to how to consider all the components of a wine and it's flavor and overall experience. Since then, I have gifted it to a few folks. Definitely recommend for anyone interested in wine, even if you already have a good working knowledge of wine, or if you are a beginner (or looking for a gift for these types of people). Highly enjoyable, easy read, quick reference on wine tasting. We keep a copy in our restaurant for our staff to reference as well.

I bought this gift as a birthday present for my fiancé after we watched the Netflix documentary "Somm" (about Sommeliers), which we both really loved (and which I highly recommend). At the time I presented this gift, I also gave him a bottle of red wine with all the labels covered with tape. I instructed him to study this book, and when he was ready, we could open the wine to see if he could identify it based on his newfound knowledge. He embraced the challenge, studied diligently, and about a week later, decided it was time for the big uncorking. He poured a glass, smelled it, sipped it, and identified it perfectly - down to the region! (I tried to trick him by getting a Cabernet Sauvignon - Shiraz blend, but he still nailed it). Considering he had little to no knowledge of wines before reading this guide, I consider that a big testament to the helpfulness of this book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in increasing their familiarity with the world of wine.

I gave this book three stars because it's fun for the coffee table or to gift to a fellow wine lover. But don't expect anything more. It's not as enlightening as I hoped for the beginner wine-o, and maybe three of all the scratch and sniff smells actually smell like something.

I was going to say Wine Essential for Dummies. But really the way it's illustrated and the introduction of simple concepts as a board book, it's more like "For Babies", besides most people aren't dummies, they are just blank slates. I own a restaurant and enoteca. I am buying this book for all my employees and to sell to my customers. It presents the essential elements of wine succinctly illustrated on 24 hard board pages. Even if you can' smell, this book works as a basic primer about wine. I have been to all day seminars that don't cover this material as pointedly as this book. Richard Betts takes a complex subject and turns into ideas so simple that even a baby would enjoy this book. It's possible to be a som at the age of three with this book.;) That kid would know more about wine without even tasting it than most of the waitstaff I've met. I am betting I can use this book to train even my dense waiter so that he can appear to be an "expert".

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 to enjoy and even analyze, and if you pay attention to what's in your glass you start to notice this amazing variety. The book fails in its ambition to convey this sense of wonder. It's purely a gimmick. The book is clearly intended to be only a novelty gift, to be picked up once by the recipient, flipped through and sniffed for 30 seconds, and then put aside never to be looked at again. If you want a novelty gift with 30 seconds of useful life, buy this book and give it to someone. If you want to learn anything useful about wine, or the layers of aroma many wines offer, you'll have to look elsewhere. Frankly, wine appreciation doesn't start with a book, it starts with a glass of wine and someone to share it with who can coach you on ways to pick out the different aromas and start to classify them. So take a mouthful of a reasonably good wine, and "chew" it - hold it in your mouth while you breathe our through your nose and concentrate on the cascade of aromas and flavors hitting your senses before you swallow. After you've had your first aha! moment with wine, then think about buying a wine book (and not this one).

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.

Simple pero didactico

Very nice and easy to let people understand the wine tasting process. Great idea. Perfect for a gift for a wine lover.

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

Da spart man sich lieber das Geld für eine sündhaft teure Weinverkostung und kauft sich lieber dieses Buch. Es ist ein perfektes Geburtstagsgeschenk, die einzelnen Klebefelder riechen noch nach Wochen sehr gut. Also ich war sehr zufrieden =)