Wine Simple

A Totally Approachable Guide from a World-Class Sommelier

By: Aldo Sohm, Christine Muhlke

Narrated by: Aldo Sohm

Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

From the world-renowned sommelier Aldo Sohm, a dynamic, essential wine guide for a new generation

Named One of the Best Cookbooks of the Year by Food52

Aldo Sohm is one of the most respected and widely lauded sommeliers in the world. He's worked with celebrated chef Eric Ripert as wine director of three-Michelin-starred Le Bernardin for over a decade, yet his philosophy and approach to wine is much more casual. Aldo's debut book, Wine Simple, is full of confidence-building infographics and illustrations, an unbeatable depth of knowledge, effusive encouragement, and, most important, strong opinions on wine so you can learn to form your own. Imbued with Aldo's insatiable passion and eagerness to teach others, Wine Simple is accessible, deeply educational, and lively and fun, both in voice and visuals. 

This essential guide begins with the fundamentals of wine in easy-to-absorb hits of information and pragmatic, everyday tips - key varietals and winemaking regions, how to taste, when to save and when to splurge, and how to set up a wine tasting at home. Aldo then teaches you how to take your wine knowledge to the next level and evolve your palate, including techniques on building a “flavor library”, a cheat sheet to good (and great) vintages (and why you shouldn't put everything on the line for them), tips on troubleshooting tricky wines (corked? mousy?), and, for the daring, even how to saber a bottle of champagne. This visual, user-friendly approach will inspire readers to have the confidence, curiosity, and enthusiasm to taste smarter, drink boldly, and dive headfirst fearlessly into the exciting world of wine.

This audiobook contains a downloadable PDF of maps, charts, recommended wine pairings, and a glossary of wine terms from the book. 

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. 

©2019 Aldo Sohm and Christine Muhlke (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“If you’ve ever felt like you ought to be smart about wine, this is the book. Aldo makes wine approachable and never dumbed down.” (Madeline Puckette, co-founder of Wine Folly)

“A meal at Le Bernardin is always an incredible experience, especially with Aldo’s expert knowledge and effortless charm! It can be intimidating to choose wine, but with Wine Simple we can all feel like world-class sommeliers.” (Chrissy Teigen)

“Whoever thinks wine is all about snobbery and intricate complexity should open this book! In less than 300 pages, Aldo Sohm manages to open the doors of this universe with wit, fun, and great pedagogy. A perfect, personal beginner’s guide by a legend in our industry, Wine Simple will surely be the bedside book for a new generation of wine lovers.” (Pascaline Lepeltier, Master Sommelier and managing partner, Racines NY)

As promised.

Loved this book so much that I bought the hardback! The PDF wasa nice addition and was also helpful.

can't get past the narration

content is great but narration less than acceptable. I would listen to it again if narrated by someone other than Aldo

Great wine book

It taught me so
Much about wine I started to drink so many kinds. My mind has been opened. Also gave me a morphius level of eye opening knowledge and it talks about many types of wine and things you’ll need to know. It was truly lovely

An informative and charming book on wine

Listening to this audiobook was an excellent experience. Sohm is a super effective explainer, slightly self-effacing and approachable. The book gives context and background to copious amounts of information. I love that the author includes his own perspectives - he gives a balanced overview and then shares his favorites (wines, vineyards, serving protocols, etc). It makes it easy to find a starting point among a pretty vast landscape of possible new wines to try. Also helpful, the author recognizes that the average reader will be cost-conscious. I really liked that he acknowledges and stresses value, while empowering readers make good choices for splurge experiences. The book also demystifies the wine ordering experience, which I found extremely practical.

I'd like to add that the author's voice is quite charming, and the performance is in the style of someone reading to you (which I enjoy in nonfiction). Each section has a kind of summary at the end, and in addition, there is a quite wonderful pdf that accompanies the book, a great resource. Five stars!

Concise, thoughtful, and fun!

This is a great guide from a sommelier of whom I greatly respect. Perfect for all wine lovers and a book I’ll recommend to anyone that wants to take their wine game to the next level.

Good info, likely better as a physical book

This has some good info, and does come with a bonus PDF, but that mostly highlights that this book would have been better as an “on the shelf” reference than an audiobook, and the narration was terrible; stilted, uneven, and disjointed. Strange pauses in the middle of sentences and poor phrasing rendered this almost un-listenable.

Narration is difficult to understand

I’m sure this is a highly knowledgeable and skilled sommelier with lots of good information to share; however, his accent is too strong to understand some of the dialogue and most of the names of the wines he’s discussing.

The one and only wine book you need!

Aldo Sohm takes you through the wine world and teaches you all you need to know to enjoy your wine adventures.

Worth the listen if you’ve come this far

I’ve listening to a few books/courses on wine, this one being one of my favorites so far. I walked away more informed on wine types, characteristics, regions, pairings without feeling like I had to take notes. PDF is also a useful guide.

Brilliant!

Interesting and entertaining! And very educative for beginners like me. Aldo Sohm has a good story to tell and a lot of knowledge!

Not suited as an audio book

I’m afraid that, as much as I tried, I just couldn’t get on with this book. I forgave the accent and the mispronunciations, but I just couldn’t cope with the mid-sentence pauses in the wrong place - the same with emphasis and word stresses: it simply didn’t flow and wasn’t easy to follow.

This is also a book best suited to reading rather than listening to. There are so many recommendations to particular wines and these aren’t featured in the accompanying pdf; to keep stop-starting the recording isn’t a viable option.

I’m really sorry to be writing this review as I think the content is probably pretty good - it just doesn’t work as an audio book.

Great book on starting the journey in wine

Absolutely quality words to get started a wine understanding for anyone who is very new to the subject

“Wine WEALTHY: a manifesto for American snobs”

Some interesting stuff in here. But also some pretty classist stuff too — it’s certainly pitched at the better off.