Book review:”The wine at dinner, the best agreements” by Jacques-Louis Delpal

Jacques-Louis Delpal tirelessly to improve his excellent book on the agreements and the new edition at a very affordable price appears to be particularly inviting and pleasant to use.

The book is organized into major sections: appetizer, starters, seafood, fish, poultry, veal, beef, pork, lamb, game, great food, cheese, desserts. In each section, foods are ordered not alphabetically but by similarity, the most common dishes usually come first. This mode of classification is very convenient to use, it is fairly easy to find something without even need to go through the index at the end of the book.


The number of dishes mentioned is important and even includes a few additions. This is one of the strengths of the book: it is rare not to find the one you seek. Another strength lies in the quality of the suggestions: not only the proposed agreements are always a good idea, but they are explained in a quick few lines of text.

Thus, the amateur who wants to understand the mechanisms of the agreements will increase. The first step to finding a good agreement is to be familiar with the dish, these few lines describe the dish very often and components on which the agreement will play. The 60 pages of the book cover general topics and practices on wine at dinner, the tasting, where to get information and a fairly comprehensive glossary.

The presentation is clear and airy, the photographs are many and generous. This new edition includes a strong spiral binding that keeps the book open flat and makes the book enjoyable to use. Here is a book without hesitation to put all hands.