A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste
by Bianca Bosker
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2017
352 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
Counterintuitive, compulsively readable, and hilarious, Cork Dork illuminates how tasting better can help us live better - and will change the way you drink wine forever.
Amateur drinker and professional tech reporter Bianca Bosker didn't know much about wine - until she stumbled on an alternate universe where taste reigned supreme, a world of master sommeliers who could, after a single sip, identify the grape a bottle was made from, in what year, and where it was produced, within acres. Where she tasted "wine," they detected not only complex flavor profiles, but entire histories and geographies. Astounded by their fanatical dedication and seemingly superhuman sensory powers, Bosker abandoned her screen-centric life and set out to discover what drove their obsession, and whether she, too, could become a "cork dork."
Thus begins a year and a half long adventure that takes the reader inside elite tasting groups, exclusive New York City restaurants, a California mass market wine "factory," and even a neuroscientist's fMRI machine as Bosker attempts to answer the most nagging question of all: what's the big deal about wine?
"Starred Review. Readers will certainly come away from the book knowing more about wine and likely eager to explore it further, but even those less inclined to imbibe will be intrigued by Bosker's insights into the nature of smell and taste and the ways training and attention can increase one's pleasure in them." - Kirkus
"Bosker's mix of science, food writing, and memoir will be enjoyed by many." - Publishers Weekly
"A marvelous journey through the mad, manic, seductive subculture of wine and wine lovers." - Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief
"The Kitchen Confidential of wine." - Madeline Puckette, author of Wine Folly
"I loved this book." - Mary Roach, author of Gulp
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bianca Bosker is an award-winning journalist who has written about food, wine, architecture, and technology for The New Yorker online, The Atlantic, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Food & Wine, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The New Republic. The former executive tech editor of The Huffington Post, she is the author of the critically acclaimed book Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China. She lives in New York City.
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