We know what you’re thinking: Another wine book?
Before you turn up your sniffer, hear us out: “Cork Dork” (Penguin Books, $17) sounds kind of awesome. Even if the subtitle — “A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste” — is a tad long.
Author Bianca Bosker was an executive tech editor at the Huffington Post, but left to explore the all-consuming world of wine, determined to explore how and why sommeliers — or cork dorks — push themselves so hard in the name of fermented grape juice.
How’d she do it? By immersing herself into a sommelier’s life, conducting 8 a.m. tastings, lifting and sorting heavy bottles as a cellar rat in a top Manhattan restaurant, and foregoing coffee, spicy foods and sometimes even toothpaste so she could taste better. Ultimately, Bosker walked away with her own certification from the Court of Master Sommeliers and a bank account-crippling weakness for old Champagne.
We so get that.
