California Wine for Dummies (ISBN - 0470376074)

291 Pages·2021·3.52 MB·English

Ed McCarthy, CWE
Wine journalist
Mary Ewing-Mulligan
Master of Wine

• Evaluate and enjoy California wine

• Explore the different wine regions
from Napa Valley and Sonoma Santa
Barbara

• Pair California wines with food

• Get the most from a winery visit

Learn to:

California
Wine

Making Everything Easier!™

Open the book and find:

• An overview of California wine
today

• Wine recommendations for all
budgets

• Explanations of wine label
language

• A map of wine regions

• Tips for aging and collecting
California wines

• Winery tasting etiquette

• The ins and outs of recent
vintages

• Top wine country travel
destinations

Ed McCarthy, CWE, is a wine columnist for
WineReviewOnline.com and for Beverage Media. Mary
Ewing-Mulligan, MW, is President of the International
Wine Center in New York. Together, they are the authors
of many For Dummies wine guides, including the
perennial bestseller Wine For Dummies.

$16.99 US / $19.99 CN / £11.99 UK

ISBN 978-0-470-37607-2

Cooking/Beverage/Wine & Spirits

Go to
dummies.com®
for more!

Want to be a California wine connoisseur? This
friendly guide gives you the knowledge you need
to appreciate these fine wines, showing you how to
taste them, select a good bottle, pair wine with food,
and much more. You’ll see why certain wine regions
are renowned and how to further enrich your wine-
drinking experience.

• California wine 101 — understand the range of
California wines, what makes them unique, and
what a varietal wine is

• Review the regions — explore the major wine
regions of California and what makes each one
special, from the soil to the climate

• Open the bottle — become fluent in the Big
Six: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet
Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, and Zinfandel

• Go beyond the basics — appreciate Pinot Grigio,
Viognier, Syrah, sparkling wines, and more

• Round out your wine experience — pair and share
wines, learn about the proper glassware and
serving temperatures, and prepare for a winery
visit

Discover the nuances of
California wines and increase
your drinking pleasure

California Wine

McCarthy
Ewing-
Mulligan

spine=.57”

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California
Wine

FOR
DUMmIES

‰

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California
Wine

FOR
DUMmIES

‰

by Ed McCarthy & Mary Ewing-Mulligan

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California Wine For Dummies
®

Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
111 River St.
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permit-
ted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written per-
mission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the
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Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley
& Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2009924128

ISBN: 978-0-470-37607-2

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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About the Authors

Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan are two wine lovers who
met at an Italian wine tasting in New York City’s Chinatown and
subsequently merged their wine cellars and wine libraries when
they married. California Wine For Dummies is the seventh wine
book that they co-authored in the For Dummies series — including
the best-selling Wine For Dummies and two of their favorites, French
Wine For Dummies and Italian Wine For Dummies. They also wrote
Wine Style: Using Your Senses to Explore and Enjoy Wine (Wiley) in
2005. Together, they have taught hundreds of wine classes, visited
nearly every wine region in the world, run five marathons, and
raised 12 cats. Along the way, they amassed more than a half a cen-
tury of wine experience between them.

Mary is president of International Wine Center, a New York City
school for wine professionals and serious wine lovers. As U.S. direc-
tor of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), the world’s lead-
ing wine-education organization, she works to make the courses
she offers in New York available in more and more parts of the
United States. She is also a freelance wine writer. Mary’s most
impressive credential is that she was the first female Master of
Wine (MW) in the United States and currently is one of only 26 MWs
in the U.S. (with 277 MWs worldwide).

Ed, a New Yorker, graduated from the City University of New York
with a master’s degree in psychology. He taught high school
English in another life, while working part time in wine shops to sat-
isfy his passion for wine and to subsidize his growing wine cellar. In
1999, Ed went solo as author of Champagne For Dummies, a topic on
which he’s especially expert. He is contributing editor of Beverage
Media, a trade publication. Both Ed and Mary are also columnists
for the online wine magazine WineReviewOnline.com and are
Certified Wine Educators.

When they aren’t writing, teaching, or visiting wine regions, Mary
and Ed maintain a busy schedule of speaking, judging at wine com-
petitions, and tasting as many new wines as possible. They admit to
leading thoroughly unbalanced lives in which their only non-wine
pursuits are hiking in the Berkshires and the Italian Alps. At home,
they wind down to the tunes of k.d. Lang, Sarah Brightman, Bob
Dylan, and Neil Young in the company of their feline roommates,
Dolcetto, Max, Ponzi, and Pinot.

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Authors’ Acknowledgments

This book would not be possible without the amazing team at
Wiley. We thank Publisher Diane Steele, who along with
Acquisitions Editor Stacy Kennedy engaged us and encouraged us
to write California Wine For Dummies. And special thanks to our
Project Editor, Chrissy Guthrie, for her patience with us and for her
invaluable suggestions to improve the text — and make it all fit!

We thank our Technical Editor, fellow wine writer and esteemed
California wine expert Alan Goldfarb, for his expertise. It’s a better,
more accurate book because of you.

Special thanks to Steve Ettlinger, our agent and friend, who brought
us to the For Dummies series in the first place and who is always
there for us.

We thank all our friends in the wine business for your input and
suggestions for this book; the book reviewers whose criticism of
our previous books has been so generous; and our readers, who
have encouraged us with your enthusiasm for our earlier books. We
are inspired when we recall how many of you have told us that
Wine For Dummies was the first wine book you ever read.

Mary gives special thanks to Linda Lawry and everyone else at
International Wine Center who enabled her to have the time and
peace of mind to work on this book. Thanks, also, to Elise McCarthy;
E. J. McCarthy and his fiancée, Kim Espinosa; and Cindy McCarthy
Tomarchio and her husband, David, for their encouragement and
support. And thanks to Jason and Michael Tomarchio for the joy
they bring us.

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Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online
registration form located at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please
contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at
317-572-3993, or fax [phone].

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and
Media Development

Senior Project Editor: Christina Guthrie
Acquisitions Editor: Stacy Kennedy
Senior Copy Editor: Danielle Voirol
Assistant Editor: Erin Calligan Mooney
Editorial Program Coordinator: Joe Niesen
Technical Editor: Alan Goldfarb
Editorial Manager: Christine Meloy Beck
Editorial Assistants: David Lutton,
Jennette ElNaggar
Art Coordinator: Alicia B. South
Cover Photos: © Gerald French/CORBIS
Cartoons: Rich Tennant
(www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees
Layout and Graphics: Samantha K. Allen,
Reuben W. Davis, Christine Williams
Special Art: Interior maps by Lisa Reed
Proofreader: Nancy L. Reinhardt
Indexer: Potomac Indexing, LLC

Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies
Kristin Ferguson-Wagstaffe, Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies
Ensley Eikenburg, Associate Publisher, Travel
Kelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel

Publishing for Technology Dummies

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

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