The Periodic Table of Wine

Book excerpt: Wine connoisseur Sarah Rowlands’s The Periodic Table of Wine is a fun, concise, and appealingly geeky new concept to wine appreciation. The foundation of the book is a periodic table designed to give a visual overview of how different styles of the world’s wines relate to one another. Beginning with white wines in columns on the left, the table then highlights rosé in the middle, and then reds in the columns on the right. The rows, running from top to bottom, are organized by quality of flavor—fruit and spice, green and mineral, sweet, etc. If you like one “element” or wine type in the table, you can discover other examples situated around it you might also enjoy. The Periodic Table of Wine also offers substantial descriptions of the 127 “elements,” or wines, each of which includes a full background and, frequently, food pairings. Also available: The Periodic Table of Cocktails