Michael Biddick

Michael Biddick’s pronounced intention in writing this guidebook is to do for wine journalism what Michael Lewis’ Moneyball did for managing a professional sports franchise. That is, the author wanted to produce an intensive, data-driven examination of the climate, locale, and growing conditions necessary to produce a superior bottle of wine throughout the world. Indeed, in the Introduction to this slim volume, there is a brief (i.e., about two pages) discussion of how he gathered and processed the data necessary to cull about 220 growing regions across the global down to the 43 he deemed to be “Great”. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no evidence of this data analysis anywhere in the book, so it was impossible for the reader to actually assess the quality or the substance of the effort.

The clear strength of 43 Wine Regions is that it offers a compact summary of myriad aspects defining the wines produced in some of the most famous growing areas in the world: Burgundy and Bordeaux in France, Piedmont and Tuscany in Italy, Rioja in Spain, Napa and Sonoma in the United States. Particularly useful were the explanations of the quality standards and designations applied in each region, which may well be the single most confusing barrier to understanding the information on a wine label. For instance, Biddick offers straightforward explanations to understand the differences between what AOP means in France versus DOCG in Italy or DOP in Spain or AVA in the United States.

On the other hand, the book has more than a few flaws that detract from its effectiveness as a working guide. Chief among these is the shallowness of the reported analysis mentioned earlier. Two examples of where the paucity of detail matter are the vintage ratings the author lists for each region—for which there is no explanation provided—and the surprising absence of some notable growing areas (e.g., Central Coast in California, Casablanca and Colchagua Valleys in Chile) that presumably missed out on being “Great” in his unrevealed scoring system. Beyond that, there are a number of factual errors in the guide (e.g., inconsistent soil description in Ribera del Duero Spain, no soil description for Vinho Verde Portugal or Wachau Austria, inconsistent grape description in Mosel Germany, confusion of red and white grapes in Hawke’s Bay New Zealand). So, while it definitely has some helpful features, 43 Wine Regions falls far short of being the take-it-everywhere reference the author envisioned.… (mais)