Buy Book "Wine without rules. How to drink great wine and not depend on the opinions of wine snobs" in Ukrainian

The book seems to be useful, but there is a lot of water and lyrical digressions. The information is constantly interrupted by historical references, stories from the author’s life, how she visited a winery, what people she met there, who planted oaks in France and why, and while you’re reading this, you manage to forget that the chapter was actually about how to choose wine in a store.

And the author also said that she decided to collect all her “wine adventures” in a separate book, for which I am sincerely grateful, because, for example, I am not at all interested in reading about how someone’s pants burst before an important interview in a book about wine.

I understand that it was necessary to stretch the information into a full-fledged book, not a brochure, but I don’t like this format. I like it clear and to the point, without unnecessary lyrics.

And the most annoying thing is that the “free version” had a dozen pages with reviews about the book and the author himself, so there was no way to evaluate the book itself before buying. But I bought it anyway, to support the domestic.

And all these lyrical digressions are not necessary. I watched a video on YouTube where the same thing is told in an hour, but in a concise, understandable, and at the same time easy and interesting way.

In general, if you remove all this lyrics, the book will be 2 times smaller. But will it become worse? I doubt it.

If you don’t mind the fact that the topic is constantly interrupted by lyrics, you will like the book. If you just want to learn about wine, and you’re not interested in reading what competitions the author has participated in, it’s better to look for something else.

I bought the book because, frankly, having started to give almost complete preference to wine, I realized that I knew almost nothing about it. I read it with great pleasure, because it’s easy to read, the facts come to mind, and you wonder how much you didn’t know. So, the book is great, because now I know that wine has not only color, but also age and character, that there is orange wine, wine made from frozen grapes, and wine that is made with the flavor of a volcano. I also learned about Ukrainian winemakers (although there are few of them) and that one of them produces wine almost next door, and I hadn’t tried a single glass yet. So I immediately corrected the situation and checked out another really good Ukrainian wine. So enjoy the book and the wine, because I have more to drink on the author’s list!

The first Ukrainian-language Ukrainian book about wine, which has been requested for years by many beginners in the knowledge of an intellectual drink that has gone far beyond simple consumption. Wine is not just a drink. It is the history, culture, national traditions and values of many generations of European peoples.

“Anna Yanchenko’s Wine Without Rules is a unique combination of cognitive, almost encyclopedic information, description of technological processes of wine production with the ease of a conversational genre. When you read Wine Without Rules, you immerse yourself in the atmosphere of presence created by the author. It’s as if you’re communicating live, sitting in a comfortable chair with a glass of your favorite Argentine Malbec. If you know a little bit about the topic, the dialog turns out to be surprisingly easy, interesting, and informative.

The book’s convenient format, soft cover, well-chosen font with cheerful, stylish illustrations make it especially easy and convenient to read. “Wine Without Rules” is the book that corresponds to the proverb that a book is the best gift. You really want to give it to your closest people, just like sharing something you have most precious. When you want your loved ones to discover the world, to get to know it better, you want to share what you have read with them, or better yet, the book itself. And it is not for nothing that the author published a gift version in a hard presentable cover to accompany the first edition.

I am extremely grateful to Anna-Zhenya for her work in popularizing wine and Ukrainian winemaking.

I liked Wine Without Rules. Simple, accessible, to the point:

– grape juice always has the same color, regardless of the color of the grape skin. So how is red, pink, white, and orange wine made?

– why it’s time to put aside snobbery about wine bottles that have a screw cap and no cork

– how to feel the same currants, earth, leather, resin and other aromatic things when you taste wine

– Riesling Chile and Riesling Germany – what is the difference and why it will be different

I got the key thing from the book: an understanding of how to choose something interesting when you are standing in front of a shelf in the market. That is, in addition to such an ironclad argument “there is a promotion for this expensive wine,” there is an accessible map of the best varieties and vineyards of a particular location.

Wine Without Rules, of course, also has a favorite theme of all beautiful books about wine: you read how some wine is praised, run to Google it, and it costs 3 fillings and 1 crown. But there is also a universal list of 52 wines, with bottles for every budget.

I missed the beautiful illustrations because I love all this aesthetics. But the content is great.

I’ve been reading the blog of the Sommelier in Green Pants (she is also the author of this book, Anna Yevheniia Yanchenko) for a long time, so most of the information in the book was familiar to me. But what I used to read in separate posts is now logically organized and well systematized. At the same time, a simple blogger’s style of presentation has been preserved, so even the classification of German wines, the names of which can be mouth-watering, is easy and fascinating to read.

I was amused by the wine-related jokes and stories from the sommelier’s everyday life. I read it on vacation with a glass of wine in my hand (because that’s the only way to read this book) and immediately retold the most enchanting moments to my friends. It was a great start for conversations about wine. Everyone took the story about orange and Chilean winemakers particularly close to heart and remembered it until the end of the vacation))

There was a slight disappointment in the book – the section on winemaking in Ukraine. More precisely, not so much. When I saw that Ukraine was among the wine regions of the world described in the book, I was very happy. But after reading it, the joy faded a bit. Of course, I understand, and the author emphasizes, that our winemaking is just beginning to develop and we can’t talk about any wine regions in the classical sense, wine styles or typical varieties yet. At least not in the same way as when describing the winemaking of France or Argentina. But since this is a book about wine by a Ukrainian author, I wanted the section on Ukrainian wines to be a little more informative. Because it’s cool to be urged to buy wine from Ukrainian small winemakers, but you won’t see such wines on the shelves of our supermarkets and you have to look for them. And it would be nice to know what to look for and in which direction. The book says almost nothing about this, just a few names of wineries.

In the end, it’s great that this book exists at all. I definitely recommend it to all wine lovers and hope that there will be more!