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From celebrated novelist Jay McInerney, whose extensive writing on wine has been called "crisp, stylish and very funny" (New York Times Book Review), comes an intelligent collection of great writing about wine
About the author
Jay McInerney is the author of twelve books, most recently
Bright, Precious Days. His other novels include
Bright Lights, Big City,
Model Behavior and
The Good Life, which received the Grand Prix Littéraire. His short story collection
How It Ended was named one of the 10 best books of the year by the
New York Times. McInerney's work has appeared in
New York Magazine,
Vanity Fair, the
New Yorker, the
New York Times Book Review,
Guardian, the
Times Literary Supplement and the
New York Review of Books. He writes a monthly wine column for
Town & Country and was previously the wine columnist for the
Wall Street Journal and
House and Garden. Many of those columns were collected in
Bacchus and Me and
A Hedonist in the Cellar. In 2006 McInerney won the James Beard MFK Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing. In 1989 McInerney was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library.
Summary
In this richly literary anthology, Jay McInerney—bestselling novelist and acclaimed wine columnist for Town & Country, Wall Street Journal, and House and Garden—selects over twenty pieces of memorable fiction and nonfiction about the making, selling, and of course, drinking of fine wine.
Including excerpts from novels, short fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction, Wine Reads features big names in the trade and literary heavyweights alike. We follow Kermit Lynch to the Northern Rhône in a chapter from his classic Adventures on the Wine Route. In an excerpt from Between Meals, long-time New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling raises feeding and imbibing on a budget in Paris into something of an art form—and discovers a very good rosé from just west of the Rhone. Michael Dibdin’s fictional Venetian detective Aurelio Zen gets a lesson in Barolo, Barbaresco, and Brunello vintages from an eccentric celebrity. In real life, and over half a century ago, Jewish-Czech writer and gourmet Joseph Wechsberg visits the medieval Château d’Yquem to sample different years of the “roi des vins” alongside a French connoisseur who had his first taste of wine at age four.
Also showcasing an iconic scene from Rex Pickett’s Sideways and work by Jancis Robinson, Benjamin Wallace, and McInerney himself, this is an essential volume for any disciple of Bacchus.
Additional text
Praise for Jay McInerney:
“The best wine writer in America.”—Salon, on The Juice
“As bracing as high-acid Riesling.”—Washington Post, on A Hedonist in the Wine Cellar
“His wine judgments are sound, his anecdotes witty and his literary references impeccable.”—New York Times, on Bacchus and Me
“Brilliant, witty, comical and often shamelessly candid.”—Robert M. Parker, on Bacchus and Me
“Splendid vino vignettes [that] pique both curiosity and thirst.”—Entertainment Weekly, on A Hedonist in the Cellar
“An immensely pleasurable and literate splash in to McInerney’s favorite glass over the last decade.”—Daily Beast, on The Juice
“A whirlwind tour of the wine world with a wry companion who is clearly at home and enjoying the subject.”—Danny Meyer, on Bacchus and Me
