The DK Ultimate Wine Guide

Author: Featuring Oz Clarke

Oz Clarke is very well known individual in the wine world, and this software uses his notes and skills to lead you through the world of wine. It offers a wine encyclopedia, an atlas of wine, how to pair food and wine, descriptions of vineyard and winery processes, and more. A search option lets you track down whatever you're interested in, no matter where in the system it is located.

The graphics with the software are quite nice and helpful. Click on "Classic Grape Varieties" and you get little photos of the various grape bunches - Riesling, Syrah, and so on. Go to South Africa, and you are shown maps of the region as well as photos of the vineyards.

The system gives you not only general information on regions, but also reviews of individual wineries. Click on Oregon, and you'll be presented with several wineries to watch for. Another click on "Ponzi" will give stars on the various merits of the wines created. You can even get further details on which years to watch for, and tasting notes on individual wines.

The interface itself is a bit klunky. The screen stays sized at a set size, even if your resolution leaves a lot of blank space around it. Click on the wine pairings for fish and shellfish, and you have to page through 8 pages to reach whichever dish you are interested in. Their little pop-up boxes that give more details are interesting, but often the details go on for several pages and you're stuck scrolling through a tiny box to read it all. Click to explain a term, and the first box vanishes, never to return.

I also ran into a number of crashes with the software, despite running on a P3-750 with quite enough memory. These usually happened just as I was about to drill down to the point that had the information I sought.

In general the encyclopedia offers a good, full set of information for the average wine drinker, with good accompanying graphics and descriptions. However, I might wait until the next version came out, for them to work through some of these production issues.

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