Before starting this blog I engaged in a two-year self education course on wine. Wine was verboten for my family growing up, so I knew literally nothing about it.

A big part of that education came from books. And while some of them were more helpful than others, many of them position themselves as "irreverent" and come up short on straightforward, helpful information.

Drink This: Wine Made Simple by Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl strikes the perfect balance between wit and straightforward information. Writing to the interested novice, Grumdahl begins the book with introductory wine-buying and -tasting information, moves on to detailed guidelines for nine different varietals (including Riesling, of course!), and finishes with advice on wine budgeting and how to order wine at a restaurant.

In each chapter she starts out with "What's to Love about..." and "What's to Hate about..." and then describes the "story" of the grape. In her Riesling chapter the story includes the clearest summary I've ever read of the German wine classification system. I will surely turn to that chapter again and again.

The chapters conclude with her advice on how to conduct a tasting--which wine categories and price ranges to make sure to include and what food to have around to make the experience even better.

This book is far and away the best introductory guide to wine I've read--and is the one I'll constantly turn to as a helpful summary of the basics. After all, you can always learn more than the basics, but you can never leave them behind.