Cork Dork: A Wine-Fuelled Journey into the Art of Sommeliers and the Science of Taste

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Preserving Your Passion: A Glimpse into Luxurious Wine SanctuariesFor the discerning oenophile with a penchant for collecting rare and exquisite wines, ensuring the proper storage of these liquid treasures is. Whenever I make the unwise decision of having a non-water beverage alongside a plate of pasta or stir-fry or whatever it is, I feel like I’m writing with a completely new and unfamiliar set of punctuation. If there is a wait for a table when you arrive there is a large bar area where you can stand or “pitch” up in while having a glass of wine and even some cheese if you like. In this context, Bosker’s journey in Cork Dork, which involved quitting her job and spending a year at 10 a.

With boundless curiosity, humour and a healthy dose of scepticism, Bosker takes the reader inside underground tasting groups, exclusive New York City restaurants, mass-market wine factories and even a neuroscientist’s fMRI machine as she attempts to answer the most nagging question of all: what’s the big deal about wine? Speaking as someone who barely knows a good Bordeaux from a bottle of Boone’s Farm, I was charmed and entertained by this book.Laws say if one objection is made to an application, the matter must be decided by committee and the bar closed its doors while it waited for a decision. If you have already read this one, let me know in the comments some of your favorite quotes, or if you’ve decided to add it to your must-read list! Bosker believes these manipulated wines can be a starting point for a wine journey, that they can spark curiosity rather than slake it. 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. The descriptors get wackier and wackier, not just things like green apples or blackberries, but "wet asphalt", "surgical glove", asparagus pee", "dried cardboard", and "salami farts".

One day, she listened to sommeliers reeling off descriptors, from dusty-road to stale beer, apple blossom to dessicated strawberry. Also, when you’re at a restaurant, is it better if you pick your wine yourself, or if you ask the sommelier to pick it for you? If Bosker finds troubling the “mindset of wine connoisseurs telling people what to taste,” you could hardly find a better poster child for that approach than Paul Grieco, despite the casual wear and strange facial hair.It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. For me, being able to identify a wine is a very different proposition from learning to love it and enjoy it. If you have wondered about the mysteries of wine, and the airs of people who claim to know something about it, Cork Dork is essential reading.

Through her adventures, she unravels and demands entrance to secret meetings that obsessive sommeliers, big bottle hunters, and rogue scientists meet to obsess over wine. The brouhaha finally culminated in a series of tweets by Eric Asimov, the New York Times’s wine critic. However, if you still need convincing, I’d recommend listening to the wine episode of the greatest food podcast of all time, Gastropod, which features an extensive interview with Bosker herself. Scientists only realized some 70 years later that the whole tongue is sensitive to each of the five tastes – that is, sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. For 18 months, she shadowed renowned wine fanatics, hoping to understand their obsession and to become a certified sommelier herself.In the op-ed, Bosker attacked one of the sacred cows of the wine industry – the idea that the fewer chemicals you add to your wine, the better. Duncan Hines, a traveling salesman who jotted down notes on clean, good restaurants around the US to send to family and friends, was the OG self-made restaurant critic. 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. Bosker went on to serve as The Huffington Post’s executive tech editor until 2014, when she quit her job to find out “What’s the big deal about wine? Her articles have appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the New Yorker, among other publications.