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The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World | ||
| Author: | Lawrence Osborne | ||
| ISBN: | 0865477124 | ||
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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 The Accidental Connoisseur, 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. The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World FROM THE PUBLISHER 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 The Accidental Connoisseur, 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. FROM THE CRITICS The New York Times The Accidental Connoisseur is a vital book for those who care about wine; who find hyperventilated discussions of microscopic differences between hundreds of essentially identical wines to be little more than scholastic quibbling about how many angels can dance on the top of a cork; who see the quasi religion that raises wine to the status of a Holy Grail promising ineffable pleasure to be in reality a mercenary and joyless cult, which stuffs the mad delights of Dionysus into a neo-Puritan brown bag. Osborne is a new voice in the wine world, smart, generous, perceptive, funny, sensible, free of cant and arrogance and self-interest. It's about time. ''Great Wine Writing'' just got a good deal thicker. — Peter Singer Publishers Weekly The number of serious wine books published in recent years can be counted on one hand-which makes Osborne's funny and erudite tale all the more welcome. Structured as a traditional quest, it stems from an insecurity of the author's English childhood: "I do not trust my own taste." So he embarks, Quixote-like, on 11 adventures in the wine world, jetting from France to California, then Italy, hoping to plumb the mystery of why someone would spend $600 on a bottle of fermented grape juice. At every step, Osborne, who's written for the New York Times Magazine, Lingua Franca and other publications, trains his reporter's eye-previously honed in books like American Normal-on both the big picture and telling details. At a comical lunch with viniculture icon Robert Mondavi, Osborne swiftly gets at the importance of his contribution to the industry, while also squeezing in the apt observation that Mondavi's wife, Margrit, reminds him of German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, "at once coquettish and dominant." Despite the miles logged, Osborne's journey is primarily an intellectual one, and his writing will be appreciated by high-minded readers: "Wine is always the lightning conductor of an irrepressible and often iniquitous cosmopolitanism." By the last chapter, Osborne can't say exactly what Chateau Lafite Rothschild tasted like, and he has just encountered the foulest bottle of his life. But he also sounds strangely contented, because he's found the rare world where aesthetics still matter-even if the terminology and the people who employ it can be maddening. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. Library Journal Like many people, freelance journalist Osborne (American Normal: The Hidden World of Asperger Syndrome) lacks confidence in his ability to assess the varied characteristics of wine. Accordingly, he set out to explore these mysteries and records his findings here. His odyssey takes him from Italy to California to France and back, interviewing vintners as diverse as Robert Mondavi of Napa and independent winemaker Pierre Siri of Bordeaux. He learns that wine should have layers of flavor (often detectable only by super-sensitive palates); terroir, with flavors echoing the soil that produced the grapes; and intensity and subtlety. In the end, it also comes down to a bit of serendipity. Osborne's flowery writing style demands patient readers and detracts from his findings. His real strength lies in the passionate discussions with winemakers and growers. An additional purchase for larger public libraries.-Andrea Dietze, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. Kirkus Reviews A wide-ranging journalist/author takes to the oenophile road. "Is there anything better than drinking?" Osborne (The Poisoned Embrace, 1993, etc.) asks. "When the happiness of drinking overwhelms you, you cannot resist it." But Osborne felt terribly self-conscious about drinking wine, wondering whether his choices were the promptings of others or the authentic response of his tongue to something good. Wanting to feel comfortable with his likes and dislikes, to breathe free of the floodtide of wine opinion, off he went to California, France, and Italy to educate himself. That meant, in measure, coming to know himself, as well as something about what the winemaker was after. He had to dig into the notions of taste and the realities of terroir, into hugeness versus finesse, into the usable nuggets of prejudiced wisdom from the wine police threshed from the ego and dross. By temperament, Osborne is drawn to the stranger byways and backrooms of winemaking; he's not about to pass up a sampling from Angelo Gaja or lunch with Robert Mondavi (though both had him sweating his self-confidence), but he's happier in the company of California garagiste Bill Cadman, a man of "dark forces, mistakes, passions, and truculent convictions," or bad-boy alchemist Randall Grahm. Like Kermit Lynch and Simon Loftus, Osborne is looking for a connection between grape, place, and himself, a trifecta that, with growing exposure to ideas, intentions, and product, he hits more often than he would at the racetrack. His prose has a pleasing, gentle flow, with eddies of humor and yeastiness; Osborne displays a hungry mind, and a gift for taking in the landscape even if he dislikes the wine: "a distant field of mustardswitching off for the night," or "cypresses stabbing into the dark blue air . . . silhouettes of umbrella pines along the hills." He takes the showboats down a peg, but he isn't a self-conscious iconoclast, just an odd fellow looking for a mouthful of happiness. Personable and keen-minded.
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