The one aspect of the book that occasionally turned me off is the fact that one of the main recurring characters, a sommelier and friend of the author’s named Morgan, hews very closely to that tired old trope, the brilliant eccentric man who can also be extremely annoying. Cork Dork is a brilliant feat of screwball participatory journalism and Bianca Bosker is a gonzo nerd prodigy. 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. She starts working as a server in a wine bar, and it's there that she meets the master sommelier, Aldo Sohm, who becomes her mentor.

The information and science "stuff" that Bosker explains so accessibly, has applications on tasting and enjoying any food or beverage.It has a past and it expresses the personality and character of a people and a region, especially in the Old World, Asimov explained. With boundless curiosity, humor, and a healthy dose of skepticism, Bosker takes the reader inside underground tasting groups, exclusive New York City restaurants, California 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? That the Hakkasan group chose Houston, a rising culinary destination with a surplus of monied residents, over New York or Los Angeles or even Vegas or Miami, is compelling to me. Whether you are an inspiring wine dork, just wanting to learn the basics, or a veteran looking for a rare find, there are no wrong answers when tasting wine.

I literally judged this book by the cover, which displays a blurb comparing this book to Kitchen Confidential. Even though this formula is in printed form, it must be memorized and spoken aloud during a tasting group session. The brouhaha finally culminated in a series of tweets by Eric Asimov, the New York Times’s wine critic. Her goal was to figure out how much of this revered title was based on true skill versus pretension. 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.In his column and his book, How to Love Wine: A Memoir and a Manifesto, Asimov devoted his career to making wine more accessible and helping his readers embark on a journey of their own. 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. 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. Eventually, Bosker passed her sommelier exam, proving wine can be mastered and understood with dedication. Professional journalist and amateur drinker Bianca Bosker didn’t know much about wine—until she discovered an alternate universe where taste reigns supreme, a world of elite sommeliers who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of flavor.

The key message here is: There are some simple ways to cleverly detect a wine’s characteristics, and some simple terms to describe them. Then there’s “minerality,” a word Bosker once told a patron at Terroir Tribeca never to say ever again.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. I should say that I lost my sense of smell for several months in 2014, and the experience was sufficiently awful that I’ve been on the lookout for ways to improve my olfaction ever since, both in the hope that it won’t go away again, or that if it does that it’ll come back more quickly–or, worst case scenario, that if it doesn’t come back, at least I’ll be able to say I’d enjoyed it fully. Bosker introduces lively characters, from sommeliers to scientists…An interesting look at those with an unquenchable thirst for those unique bottles of vinicultural perfection. A savory romp…[that reveals] not just the intricacies and nuances of flavor that vary from grape to grape, but why wine has become such a social staple for the entire world—and how the way we drink it can potentially change our lives. So, she quit her reliable job in journalism, and she spent her mornings tasting and her afternoons hungover.

She describes the lengths to which some of these people will go to acquire rare and expensive bottles of wine. The first is Morgan Harris, a sommelier described to Bosker by other sommeliers as Rain Man, so intimidating do they find his encyclopedic knowledge of wine.

When you read the book as a love song to the cult of the sommelier, rather than a demystification of wine, the New York Times op-ed makes more sense. This wine packs a punch with dark fruit flavors, such as blackberry and cherry, and floral/herbal notes, such as violet and lilac. It's about learning how to listen to your senses, to more deeply experience and appreciate the world around you, and everyone could use another glass of that.