Books : Italian Wines: A Guide to the World of Italian Wines for Experts and Wine-Lovers

Rating: - Good content, badly structured
This is by far the best guide for Italian wines available on the market. It contains all those nice (and very often surprisingly cheap) bottles that make Italian wine so special.

The book is structured according to wine regions (Sicily, Tuscany, etc. However, the reader can get lost, because the producers are listed according to their village and not their name. This means that unless you know a certain producer's location, you have to consult the alphabetic lists of wines and producers at the end of the guide to find you way through to a certain producer -- something that is not very user-friendly.

A second criticism is the use of a somewhat strange evaluation system: wines selected for the Gambero Rosso guide are first marked with 1 or 2 glasses, with those making it into the final tastings getting marked 2 glasses (red) or a top-notch 3 glasses (red). Arguably this system may have always been used, but a slightly wider scale (1-5, 1-10, 1-20, or Parker's 100-point-system) would allow to better distinguish between the different wines as currently most wines listed in the guide end up with one or two glasses, and the reader might end up thinking that there can't be much difference between them when there actually is.

In the end, this book is a must for friends of the Italian wine, but its presentational style ought to be improved.

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Rating: - Italian Wines 2003: A Guide to the World of Italian Wine
This is the most fantastic book - absolutely essential for anyone who has an interest in Italian wines; even those who don't will be interested by the time they have had a read.

Easy to use, understandable descriptions and clear ratings.