The Global Encyclopedia of Wine CD-ROM

The winners of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2001, have been announced and this year’s Best Wine CD-Rom is The Global Encyclopedia of Wine, a companion to the book of the same title, itself one of the three nominees for Best Wine Book of the Year. Not just a supplement to the book, it stands alone as the new ideal for wine related CD-ROMs: an interactive instructor, a pet sommelier, a personal cellar custodian. The book and companion CD ROM are published by The Wine Appreciation Guild Ltd of San Francisco, America’s leading specialty publisher of wine books. The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards will be presented to a distinguished audience of wine and food professionals on December 6, 2001 at a lavish Truffles Gala Dinner in Perigueux France. More than 3000 books and other media in 31 languages from 51 countries compete for these annual awards. . Enjoying Wine The CD dedicates a lot of itself to wine’s sensory pleasures and gives good advice on how best to accentuate your tasting experience. There are lessons on how to distinguish flavor intensities, balance, length, complexity and the tongue’s hot spots. It runs through the four S’s of the tasting ritual (see, swirl, smell, sip). The CD also gives helpful tips on every tier of the consumer process from best buying to the last drop in the bottom and when the apprentice appreciator should send the bottle back. Wine Culture This portion of the CD will please every exotic wine curiosity. It identifies some of the more strange tastes and practices of remote wine regions and people along with some of the odd origins of our own ways. A thorough over view of the ups and downs of wine history and the industry’s intriguing past will hook the historian and the tradesperson. A 15minute movie, takes the viewer through the astonishing process of how a rather uninteresting grape becomes a liquid that inspires the stomach and the soul. Wine Guide This is the part of the CD that helps with the dinner table and the cellar rack. An interactive food and wine matching page lets the harried host or hostess enter the contents of dinner, what style of wine preferred (optional), the level of cash your willing to part with and out pops the results. It works just as well the other way round. There’s also a complete wine cellar logbook that categorizes bottles, optimum drink dates, notes, etc immediately. It’s the easiest and most reliable form of keeping records on your precious wine. To top it all off there’s a powerful search function that takes you right to the place you want go. The Global Encyclopedia of Wine CD-ROM can replace a stack of CD-ROMs, and effectively nullify half a library of wine literature.