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Zusatztext 69407544 Informationen zum Autor Bianca Bosker is an award-winning journalist who has written about food, wine, architecture, and technology for The New Yorker online, The Atlantic, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Food & Wine, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The New Republic . The former executive tech editor of The Huffington Post, she is the author of the critically acclaimed book Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China (University of Hawaii Press, 2013). She lives in New York City. Klappentext INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' PICK "Thrilling . . . [told] with gonzo élan . . . When the sommelier and blogger Madeline Puckette writes that this book is the Kitchen Confidential of the wine world! she's not wrong! though Bill Buford's Heat is probably a shade closer." -Jennifer Senior! The New York Times 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. Astounded by their fervor and seemingly superhuman sensory powers! she set out to uncover what drove their obsession! and whether she! too! could become a "cork dork." 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? What she learns will change the way you drink wine-and! perhaps! the way you live-forever. "Think: Eat! Pray! Love meets Somm." -theSkimm "As informative as it is! well! intoxicating." -Fortune Introduction The Blind Tasting Perfume was the first to go, but I’d been expecting that. Scented detergent followed, then dryer sheets. I wasn’t sorry to give up raw onions or hot sauce. Not adding extra salt was rough at first, tolerable for a bit, then miserable. When I went out to eat, everything tasted like it had been doused in brine. Losing Listerine wasn’t so bad; replacing it with a rinse of citric-acid solution and watered-down whiskey was. I went through a dark phase when I cut out coffee. But by that point, I was used to being a little slow in the morning. Daytime sobriety was ancient history, along with all hot liquids, the enamel on my teeth, and my Advil supply. All this was part of the deprivation routine I cobbled together at the advice of more than two dozen sommeliers, who, over the course of a year and a half, became my mentors, tormentors, drill sergeants, bosses, and friends. You might be wondering why I’d spend eighteen months getting coached by a bunch of pinstripe-wearing bottle pushers. After all, aren’t sommeliers just glorified waiters with a fancy name ( somm-el-yay ) who intimidate diners into splurging on wine? That was pretty much how I saw them, too, until I handed myself over to an elite clan of sommeliers for whom serving wine is less a job than a way of life, one of living for taste above all else. They enter high-stakes wine competitions (sometimes while nine months pregnant), handle millions of dollars in liquid gold, and make it their mission to convince the world that beauty in flavor belongs on the same aesthetic plane as beauty in art or music. They study weather reports to see if rain will dull their noses, and lick rocks to improve their taste buds. Toothpaste is a liability. They complain about that “new glass” smell, and sacrifice marriages in the name of palate practice. One sommelier, whose wife divorced him over his compulsive studying, told me, “Certainly, if I had to choose between passing ...
