Wine For Dummies

Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan are two wine lovers who met at an Italian wine tasting in New York City’s Chinatown and subsequently merged their wine cellars and wine libraries when they married. They have since coauthored six wine books in the Wine For Dummies series (including two of their favorites, French Wine For Dummies and Italian Wine For Dummies) as well as their latest book, Wine Style (Wiley); taught hundreds of wine classes together; visited nearly every wine region in the world; run five marathons; and raised eleven cats. Along the way, they have amassed more than half a century of professional wine experience between them.
Mary is president of International Wine Center, a New York City wine school that offers credentialed wine education for wine professionals and serious wine lovers. As U.S. director of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET®), the world’s leading wine educational organization, she works to make the courses she offers in New York available in more and more parts of the United States. She is also the long-standing wine columnist of the NY Daily News. Mary’s most impressive credential is that she’s the first female Master of Wine (MW) in the United States, and one of only 22 MW’s in North America (with 251 worldwide).
Ed, a New Yorker, graduated from City University of NY with a master’s degree in psychology. He taught high school English in another life, while working part-time in wine shops to satisfy his passion for wine and to subsidize his growing wine cellar. That cellar is especially heavy in his favorite wines — Bordeaux, Barolo, and Champagne. Besides co-authoring six wine books in the For Dummies series with Mary, Ed went solo as author of Champagne For Dummies, a topic on which he’s especially expert.
Ed and Mary also share wine columns in Nation’s Restaurant News and in Beverage Media, a trade publication. They are each columnists for the online wine magazine, WineReviewOnline.com. Ed and Mary are both accredited as Certified Wine Educators (CWE).
When they aren’t writing, teaching, or visiting wine regions, Mary and Ed maintain a busy schedule of speaking, judging at professional wine competitions, and tasting as many new wines as possible. They admit to leading thoroughly unbalanced lives in which their only non-wine pursuits are hiking in the Berkshires and the Italian Alps. At home, they wind down to the tunes of U2, K.D. Lang, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young in the company of their feline roommates Dolcetto, Black & Whitey, Ponzi, and Pinot.