Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for the Taste (Thorndike Press Large Print Lifestyles)

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Whether you can look serenely upon the doings of silly rich and their symbiots may predict the amount of enjoyment you will get out of this book. Fascinating…Thanks to Bosker’s sensory descriptions, we get to taste and smell alongside her, without dealing with the thousands of hours of study and endless flashcards first. Sommeliers are like those little birds that pick food particles off the teeth of crocodiles, the Long-Suffering Wife recently said during a discussion of this book. Bourdain spent his life working his way through the bowels of the restaurant industry and learned to define good food and good chefs along the way.

Review: Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker - Decanter Book Review: Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker - Decanter

The brouhaha finally culminated in a series of tweets by Eric Asimov, the New York Times’s wine critic. Bianca Bosker, previously a technology journalist, gave herself a year and a half to learn everything she could about wine in hopes of passing the Court of Master Sommeliers exam. Other memorable scenes include a passage when author Bosker explains how her vocabulary has changed as a result of her studies. If you have ever listened to someone describing the smells, or tastes of a wine, and thought to yourself, they have to be pulling my leg, than this is the book for you. I had no idea that is was so in-depth and all-consuming to those who immerse themselves in the journey.

Along the way you'll meet the sort of obsessive types who are always interesting/amusing regardless of what they're obsessing over, go to suspense-filled sommelier competitions and bacchanalian, wine-soaked feasts, tag along with restaurant employees (something I always find fascinating), and learn all about the science of taste. In this delightfully written and keenly observed book, Bianca Bosker helps us becomeconnoisseursnot only of wine but also ofpeoplewhose passions would more aptly be described as obsessions. That being said, the Bosker we meet in the book is the type of person who takes up the whole sidewalk with her friends, who inserts herself into conversations she has no business being in, who loudly makes the party about her, who incorrectly corrects people when they're just trying to tell an anecdote.

‘Cork Dork’ or Wine Snob: Who Is Bianca Bosker’s Book

Some visit us just to be in the bar area, it has a gorgeous rustic charm and a beautiful vintage bike adorning the wall. We had this with grilled Tile Fish and when the last of the bread and cheese was finished, I was sad the wine was also gone.Her description was a lot like Cork Dork – a gorgeous, deliciously rendered little journey for my mind to follow along with that, when all is said and done, remained entirely Bosker’s. Rather than mastering blind tasting and the arduous rituals of sommelier service, Asimov believes that teaching people to enjoy wine is about teaching them the role of wine. Bianca Bosker is an award-winning journalist and the author of Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste.

Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive

In some ways this book reminded me of some books like Mary Roach is where the author takes a deep dive into something that you've never really thought about all that much before. Reporter Bianca Bosker takes the reader along on her quixotic quest to become a certified sommelier, a journey you will enjoy even if you aren't particularly interested in wine.The author is Bianca Bosker, a former technology reporter covering the Googles and Snapchats of the world. But, this book is in many ways a celebration of wine experts’ raison d’être, and for beginners it’s a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour. What I find very troublesome about that is, this is a language that we’re trying to use to make wine lovers out of people who are merely wine curious,” she explained. Treasury manipulates its wines with chemicals until they’re perfectly suited to the tastes of the mass market, tastes excavated through focus group.

Like a home from home! - The Cork Dork - Tripadvisor

Readers interested in wine would be fascinated by how quickly the participants in the group quickly sniff, taste, and spit wine. I especially enjoyed the chapter when she journeyed to Virginia Beach and met an aspiring sommelier operating outside the big money echo chamber. The whole notion of connoisseurship is a by-product of geographic locations that don’t make wine in the first place, Asimov argued. From endless blind tastings to sommelier competitions to scientists’ labs to the front end of New York’s fine-dining restaurants, Bosker takes us from the armpit of the wine industry to the science behind it. Reading Bianca Bosker is like sitting down with a brilliant, curious friend for an after-work drink, and suddenly finding it’s midnight and the table is littered with empty bottles.That I am a sack of water and organs that’s going to be here on the Earth for eighty years if I’m lucky.