4.0
The Accidental Connoisseur
ByPublisher Description
What is taste? Is it individual or imposed on us from the outside? Why are so many of us so intimidated when presented with the wine list at a restaurant? In
, journalist Lawrence Osborne takes off on a personal voyage through a little-known world in pursuit of some answers. Weaving together a fantastic cast of eccentrics and obsessives, industry magnates and small farmers, the author explores the way technological change, opinionated critics, consumer trends, wheelers and dealers, trade wars, and mass market tastes have made the elixir we drink today entirely different from the wine drunk by our grandparents.
In his search for wine that is a true expression of the place that produced it, Osborne takes the reader from the high-tech present to the primitive past. From a lavish lunch with wine tsar Robert Mondavi to the cellars of Marquis Piero Antinori in Florence, from the tasting rooms of Chateau Lafite to the humble vineyards of northern Lazio, Osborne winds his way through Renaissance palaces, $27 million wineries, tin shacks and garages, opulent restaurants, world-famous chais and vineyards, renowned villages and obscure landscapes, as well as the great cities which are the temples of wine consumption: New York, San Francisco, Paris, Florence, and Rome. On the way, we will be shown the vast tapestry of this much-desired, little-understood drink: who produces it and why, who consumes it, who critiques it? Enchanting, delightful, entertaining, and, above all, down to earth, this is a wine book like no other.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Accidental Connoisseur Reviews
4.0
“Finally an author that writes at a high reading level. There were a decent number of words I needed to look up, though it didn’t take away from the story. I felt like I was learning both about his wine journey and increasing my reading ability. Many books these days are too simplistic and this was such a breath of fresh air.”
“GoodReads Summer Reading Challenge 2018 task: Read a book about drinks or drinking
Though I prefer mixed drinks, I do sometimes drink wine. I am by no means a wine expert though. This book had some interesting factoids about wine in it and I found it fascinating how there is very much a science to how American vineyards make wine. The book had bits of humor and irreverence throughout (for example, the author referred to the wine in a Catholic mass as "Our Lord's hemoglobin".”
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