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| All in all a "pretty useful guide" |
| 02 March 2010 by Cathy Marston |
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| Somehow reading about wine never has the appeal of actually drinking the
stuff, so when I was faced with the latest book to review for this
site, I thought I would try and combine both activities. So last night I
opened a bottle of Table Bay Sauvignon, opened the Wine Tourism
Handbook, sat back and prepared to be enlightened.
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Retailing for approx R110 in most major book shops puts this book on a par with other guide books such as the Essential Guide (reviewed here in November). Like that book, some entries are paid for but instead of only including the wineries which have paid, the WTH offers a comprehensive list of every winery in each region. I actually found the maps very useful - in some instances listing more wine farms than Platter which is quite an achievement. They are accompanied by brief details of all the cellars in that region (telephone numbers and opening times) which seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable alternative to only mentioning those who have paid.
If you were prepared to shell out money and advertise, then what you get for your money is a small tabbed block containing expanded essential info and about 50 words about your business. I also quite liked this section too, as it wasn't limited to just wine estates. So if I was a visitor to one of the areas, I instantly got the lowdown on a couple of estates, a couple of restaurants and a couple of places to stay as well. Fairly useful stuff. Bigger winery features covering the whole page read very much as adverts and then on top of that, there were the in-your-face adverts as well which didn't pretend to be anything else, but there was enough information in amongst all this hype to still justify the read.
Other interesting sections include a list of all the major wine festivals in 2010, a feature on outdoor activities in the winelands (book me on that ballooning trip now!), a glossary of terms and a particularly interesting 'Easy Wine Guide' section at the back which highlights the three best wines in each region in three different price bands. Yes, there were several wineries having a suspiciously large number of plugs, but then again, I suppose good wineries do make good wines, and at different price levels, so perhaps that is fair enough.
So all in all, a pretty useful guide. Lots of info, lots of gorgeous pictures, lots of text and a light, breezy, easy-read tone throughout. Would I buy it? Probably not, but then, I don't really think I am this book's target market. So I shall test it out on my sister from the UK in a month's time and will give you an update then - watch this space!
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