"Cork Dork," by Bianca Bosker

Continuing in the vein of my 8/19/18 post about the chef Eric Ripert’s memoir, I turn to a book -- a sort of memoir -- about learning the world of wine. “Cork Dork” (Penguin, 2017) (clever title!) is well-summarized by its subtitle: “A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste.” Author Bianca Bosker is a journalist who decided she wanted to immerse herself in all things related to wine, and she did so in a big way (and with a large measure of obsessiveness herself!). She took classes, joined tasting groups, followed sommeliers around in their fine restaurants, spoke to scientists, studied for wine certification tests, and tasted, tasted, tasted all types of wine. Her base was in New York City, where she lives, but she traveled across the United States (especially to California, home of so many great wines) and to Europe as well. Some sections of the book are rather technical, but Bosker mostly manages to convey information in an interesting way that drew in even this only-mildly-interested-in-wine reader. (I love good food from various cultures, and fine and varied restaurants, and I occasionally drink a glass of wine, but I am not very knowledgeable about it, and don’t have any urge to go to any particular effort to learn more.) It is quite a feat that Bosker makes the book interesting for both the wine enthusiast (e.g., my son-in-law, who read and enjoyed the book) and the reader who is less so (e.g., me). The strength of this book, for the non-wine-fanatic reader, is the stories Bosker tells about her adventures and about the people she meets along the way. She has an eye for the telling detail that brings a story to life. I especially enjoyed the engaging, revealing, and often funny stories that took place in restaurants where the author observed and worked. Like most people, I enjoy the sense of seeing what happens “behind the scenes.” And I definitely learned a lot about wine in the course of reading the book.