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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An essential primer on food’s favourite companion, Bianca Bosker’s incredible book offers an investigation into taste, smell, and restaurant culture any foodie will appreciate.” Then Bosker takes all this access and opportunity and distills it into knowledge that she passes on to the reader with wit, sarcasm, and glorious humility. Cork Dork is a brilliant feat of screwball participatory journalism and Bianca Bosker is a gonzo nerd prodigy.This hilarious, thoughtful and erudite book may be the ultimate answer to the perennial question of whether or not wine connoisseurship is a scam.” 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.”

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker: 9780143128090

Daily reminders and a streak heatmap keeps you motivated and helps you form good wine study habits one day at a time. Don't break the chain otherwise your wine study streak will reset to zero! The “tongue map”, which they forced me to learn in elementary school, has been debunked (p. 83, 88). Pro: history of wines and sense of smells, steps to become a sommelier, types of wines, blind tasting, secret meetings, informative, humor, cover, step-by-step instructions, very well written,

You’ll never feel lost in front of a wine list again." –Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley of " Gastropod ," via The Atlantic

‘Cork Dork’ Sniffs, Swills and Spits Through the World of

Today's wine jargon (e.g., “layers of grapefruit and minerality”) was invented by a group of scientists at the University of California, Davis, in the 1970s, or, as the author put it, wine's “naturalistic, food-based lexicon is about as traditional as disco” (p. 203). Throughout the book, Bosker is not only drinking wine and having a good time, but veers off into exploring many wine-related areas. The science of smell, and of taste. The type of people who are avid wine collectors. The new controversial practice of creating whatever type of wine you want in a factory, including being able to replicate some very expensive wines. The terminology of sommeliers and wine merchants (necrophiliacs, hand sells, trigger wines, and cougar juice, for a few). And what to watch for when dealing with a sommelier.

The op-ed set off a host of passionate responses from industry insiders. “Bosker (and… Treasury, obviously) would prefer us drinking chemically infused alcohol juice than wines made by artisan growers,” wrote Marco Kovac in New Worlder. “Treasury and others of their ilk should run and grab this concept for a press release,” wrote Alice Feiring on her blog. “Its message? ‘So what if we load up wines with process and additives? We make wines of pleasure.’” Bosker proceeds to bring the flash-card discipline of her Chinese studies to wine, and in the final chapter, she presents us with her “A” grade — an fMRI scan shows that her brain has been altered. When drinking wine, her brain lights up like a sommelier’s, not a novice’s. 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. She's the girl at the party I always hate, but have to invite, because she's friends with BlahBlah and we'll never hear the end of it if she's slighted. Also, she'll probably show up even if she's not invited and make more if a scene than if an invitation had been extended. Pairings: 2015 Pedernales Texas Albarino & 2014 Silverado Vineyards Petit Verdot. I selected both of these wines because they are unlikely gems in the wine world, just like Bianca Bosker’s Cork Dork. Sommeliers have very specialized jobs to do, Asimov explained, whether it’s pairing wine and food, speed tasting, or identifying wines blind. “It’s not a model for enjoying and loving wine, in my opinion,” he said.

Cork Dork Restaurant - Westlake Village, , CA | OpenTable Cork Dork Restaurant - Westlake Village, , CA | OpenTable

Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Fortune, Smithsonian, Bustle, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Booklist, and more Always perceptive, curious, and entertaining, the author describes her experiences with precision and a wry sense of humor…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.” Do you like wine? I like wine. Do like a well researched book with an engaging writing style, entertaining stories plus a hearty dose of clear and informative information? I found this book to be all of those things....but again, I like wine so I was interested in this journey. In this delightfully written and keenly observed book, Bianca Bosker helps us become connoisseurs not only of wine but also of people whose passions would more aptly be described as obsessions.” –Walter Isaacson, author of The Innovators Some might consider those fighting words; not Bosker, who seemed to view the anger her op-ed ignited as confirmation. “One of the things that I found concerning about that reaction is that it speaks to this mindset of wine connoisseurs telling people what to taste,” she explained. “And one of the things that I hope to do with the book is to show people how to taste for themselves, because I think that is a much stronger foundation to create thoughtful drinkers than to say, ‘This is good wine, and this isn’t.’”The brouhaha finally culminated in a series of tweets by Eric Asimov, the New York Times’s wine critic. “Big fan of @bbosker, but not buying the premise or the conclusion,” he tweeted. “I do think people who say they care about wine should be able to distinguish between processed and relatively unprocessed wines.” Bosker breaks open the world of your favorite beverage...[bringing]readers on her year-plus adventure of learning about everything from production to consumption." –Bustle, "The 20 Best Nonfiction Books Coming In March 2017" After high school, she went to Princeton, where she majored in East Asian Studies. There were a lot of 9 a.m. Chinese classes and a lot of flashcards with Chinese characters, foreshadowing the wine journey to be undertaken a decade later.