Cork Dork: A HoseMaster of Wine™ Book Club Selection

I’ve been wondering for a couple of years when a book like “Cork Dork” would come around. It seemed inevitable to me that an enterprising journalist would one day decide that writing about what it takes to become a Certified Sommelier in the world of fancy schmancy restaurants would make for an interesting book. I’m glad that journalist was someone as talented as Bianca Bosker. This could easily have been a dreadful book, just as “SOMM” was a dreadful film for me to watch. Instead, it’s a wonderful read. I especially admire Bosker’s prodigious research about wine, and about our senses of smell and taste, and her unflagging sense of humor. I rarely laugh when I read, but Bosker made me break out into noisy smiles quite a bit. I blamed the dog.

In her acknowledgments, Bosker mentions Susan Orlean and John McPhee as inspirations, but reading “Cork Dork” made me think more about the late George Plimpton. Plimpton, founder of “The Paris Review,” and quite the literate raconteur, may have reached the pinnacle of his popular fame with his book, “Paper Lion.” “Paper Lion” is about Plimpton’s desire to find out what it’s like to be a quarterback in the NFL. He talks the Detroit Lions into allowing him to train with them for a season, and takes us along. Plimpton is a writer with a gift for the extraordinary and telling detail, and his misadventures in the NFL are very funny and surprisingly poignant. The book made Alex Karras, a defensive lineman for the Lions, into a star. It’s Karras who famously knocks out a horse with a punch in “Blazing Saddles.” Bosker shares Plimpton’s keen eye for detail, and she also sports the exuberance of youth. In a business as stuffy as the wine business, these qualities serve her wit well. Bosker also echoes Plimpton’s editorial game plan. Plimpton, of course, takes a beating as a quarterback, has to win over the skeptical pro players who slightly resent his presence, yet he triumphs in the end. Bosker is often humiliated in her attempts to understand wine and work the floor as a sommelier in exclusive, service-oriented restaurants, she is warned by many Master Sommeliers about the folly of her task as she gives herself a year to accomplish what has taken others many years, but, of course, in the end, well, you know… And she’s worked pretty tirelessly to make Morgan Harris, a young New York sommelier, her Alex Karras, though Harris struck me as less horse pugilist and more horse’s ass.

The book is really eleven set pieces organized into a whole. You may have read parts of “Cork Dork” already, one chapter as a “New Yorker” piece, “Is There A Better Way to Talk About Wine?,” and part of another chapter served as a piece in the Opinion pages of the “New York Times,” “Ignore the Snobs, Drink the Cheap, Delicious Wine.” The latter piece stirred up the hornet’s nest of natural wine’s alt-right. The eleven chapters stand on their own, you’ll learn a lot about your senses of smell and taste, and how sommelier’s brains are different than yours (I’m a prime example of that), but it makes for a very clunky ride taken as a whole. A chapter about working the floor in a fancy New York restaurant, a visit with Ann Noble in California, a brain scan in South Korea, a wine exam in Virginia… All of it’s interesting, but most people trying to become Certified Sommeliers don’t have expense accounts that cover their curiosity. Much of that serves to make Bosker less sympathetic to the reader, harder to identify with, which works against her. And yet her talent is so great, she wins us over and makes us glad we signed up for her journey. I may have a crush on her.

Bosker has talent, and, apparently, a great agent. (So, really, it doesn’t matter one iota what I think about her book.) “Cork Dork” is a stereotypical work of participatory journalism. Poor man’s Plimpton. The risk in that kind of journalism is that the work can eventually come to be about the writer, and not the subject. John McPhee is the master at this sort of creative nonfiction, and clearly someone Bosker (among many others) idolizes. McPhee has a talent for knowing what to leave out in his work. In his work, you always sense his presence, his intellect, but he is very much in the background most of the time. You see through his eyes, but you don’t think McPhee is his own subject. In the end, “Cork Dork” is very much a book about Bianca Bosker. Don’t get me wrong, she seems like someone I’d like to know, though there’s fat chance of that (though, I, of all people, understand that a voice should not be mistaken for the actual person writing in that voice). Wine transforms her, though I’m not sure I cared. It’s certainly not why I decided to read the book.

I want to be clear about a few things because I ramble like Professor Irwin Corey with head trauma. Bianca Bosker is a flamboyantly talented writer. I could read her work all day long. She’s genuinely funny, and wit is a precious asset that’s absent in most wine writing. She does have McPhee’s work ethic. She doesn’t want to just understand a subject, she wants to master it, destroy it, and perform an autopsy on it. “Cork Dork” is a great glimpse into obsessive personalities, especially Bosker’s. I’d read it for that, and be grateful I’m not one. If I have issues with the book, it’s not about the quality of the writing. I’d go on any journey to which Bosker invites me. I’d already been on much of this journey long before Bosker could hold a pen, so I bring an old and odd perspective to the book. But I loved the book for its youthful bravado, and for Bosker, especially when she stops to think about what a stupid obsession wine can become.

When Bosker travels to Virginia to take the Certified Sommelier Exam she meets Annie Truhlar. I found Annie’s story to be the most interesting, and the most revelatory, in the book. Annie is the one “sommelier” (she isn’t really) in the book who loves wine with a passion, and not obsession. I got tired of the obsessed sommeliers in the book who give up what’s actually important in life, love and family, for a life in wine. I know a lot of people like that in the biz, and I feel sorry for them. (I wish Bosker had spent a bit more time talking about the rampant alcoholism in the trade, but I get that she didn’t.) It seemed that Bosker’s view of wine, and of being a sommelier, changed after her time spent with Annie as they endured the Certified Sommelier Exam together. Annie can barely afford the money to take the test. She’s never been able to go to a La Paulée kind of event, which is Bosker’s subject in one of the chapters, or even taste any Champagne tête du cuvées before she’s tested on them. She’s never dined at Eleven Madison Park, and probably thinks it’s the name of a Korean M.W. Annie just loves wine. It’s her story that holds the book together for me. She’s a breath of fresh air amid all the fetid breath of too many yammering young sommeliers. Annie Truhlar is the one person in the book with whom I’d like to share a great bottle of wine, aside from Bosker herself. Annie, you’re ever in Sonoma, call me!

I cannot imagine this book will have much resonance for those who love wine but don’t live in New York. It will teach you a lot, but won’t speak to you. It’s a very New York-centric book. I found that tiresome. There were endless and casual dismissals of California wine throughout the book, which is very New York somm. In her quest to learn about wine, Bosker learned far too much elitism, despite the chapter excerpted in the “New York Times” about how Treasury manipulates cheap wine to taste good, which she defends to a degree, but which, of course, takes place in California. Reading the book made me grateful to have grown up in the wine business outside of New York. So much of what Bosker writes about on her path to becoming a sommelier was foreign to me. I wasn’t unaware of it, as I’m not unaware of the behavior of dung beetles, with which sommeliers have a lot in common, but the book reads like this is how the wine world and the restaurant business works everywhere. That’s certainly not true. I found myself disliking almost everyone in the book, aside from Bosker herself and Annie Truhlar. Ah, but that’s me. However, if you’ve never been a New Yorker, or worked in the New York wine trade, you might be rather perplexed by much of “Cork Dork.” I actually wondered why Bosker would want to be part of that group. They read more like Swiftian fools to me than wine lovers.

If you read this stupid blog regularly, I think you’ll like “Cork Dork.” I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it. It’s in paperback, it’s cheap! Buy Bosker’s book! I mean it. It's not even ten bucks on Amazon. She’s such a great young writer. She deserves our support. I’ve had my say here, but this is a book easily worth reading and recommending to friends that love wine. All my reservations aside, it’s terrific work.

I’m obviously not a professional book critic. There’s a very vapid review that the “New York Times” published (it’s a good review, which the book deserves, but it’s emptyheaded, and I get the feeling the reviewer might even know Bianca, though I don’t know that). And there are some of the most transparently fake blurbs I’ve seen on a book cover in a long time. For example, late in the book Bosker recommends “Wine Folly” to her readers for their summations of grape characteristics. And then there’s a blurb on the back cover from Madeline Puckette calling “Cork Dork,” “The ‘Kitchen Confidential’ of wine.” That’s pretty shameless. It’s more the “L.A. Confidential” of wine, really. Jay McInerney, whom Bosker meets at La Paulée, has a blurb proclaiming her a “gonzo nerd prodigy.” So you know he grabbed her ass. The blurbs are completely FAKE NEWS! Sad.

Bianca, I love your writing. “Cork Dork” shows the wisdom and the foibles of youth. With no added sulphur.

Napa Valley Then and Now: A HoseMaster of Wine™ Book Club Selection

A few months ago I wrote a Blind Book Review of Kelli White’s “Napa Valley Then and Now.” I
love writing Blind Book Reviews. It may be my favorite all-time HoseMaster premise. I certainly abuse it like it is. The best part is, I don't actually have to read the books, which are so often dismal or derivative, and I don't have to lie about having read the books like most of the other wine book reviewers in the blogosphere. I just admit I haven't read it, and then I talk about it anyway. It's so liberating! Sort of like Trump with the Constitution.

I ran into Kelli White at a party in Yountville not too long ago. She and I had never met. Kelli was very gracious about my stupid satiric review (and believe me, many authors are not), and even presented me with a copy of her book. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with it. I felt a little silly, a bit awkward with this new book. What the hell does one do with a book? I finally figured out to put it on my Kindle, but that broke the damn thing.

So I began to read Kelli’s book. Out of idle curiosity at first, and then for enjoyment. I have never written a review of a book I’ve actually read on HoseMaster of Wine™. I wasn’t convinced I should. But then I skimmed many of the reviews of Kelli’s book, and most of them were dull, poorly written and had very little insight. Hell, I can do that! The worst of them were putrid, as well as poorly written and devoid of thought. You know who you are. We gripe about the quality of wine reviewing online, but these book reviews seem to have been written by people who learned English from Scooby Doo cartoons, and literature from Cliff’s Notes. My blind review of Kelli's book was insane, but I like to think it wasn’t dull.

I haven’t written a critical book review since college. I decided Kelli White’s book would be a fun starting point, though, depending upon how this goes, it may also be my finish line. Though Kelli and I have become casual friends (that might be presumptuous—Kelli?), I will attempt to be as objective as possible. My starting point is that “Napa Valley Then and Now” is an important book for any serious wine lover to own. Though I’d rather know a lot fewer serious wine lovers. Serious wine lovers, go and buy “Napa Valley Then and Now”! And leave me the hell alone.

A lot has been written about the physical size of the book. It’s the first wine book I’ve ever owned that has its own terroir. I had the heater on in my room one day, and it started a thunderstorm. Yet, I’ve come to love its size. Like I love the feel and weight of an Imperial of a great wine. It seems like too much, and yet you find it somehow comforting and abundant. White’s book is an abundant book in so many ways. Abundant in history, abundant in useful and historic tasting notes, abundant in her raw talent as a writer. It also weighs a lot. But I’m old-fashioned; I like a reference book with heft. White’s has physical heft, but also intellectual heft. I can’t explain it. I have come to love that it’s so large. Reminds me of my Dad’s ’58 Buick. I loved that car. It was a two-hour hike to the back seat.

There cannot be very many people who have tasted more older vintages of California wines than Kelli White. Probably Charlie Olken and Stephen Eliot of “Connoisseurs’ Guide,” and a few collectors I know, but that adds up to a small number of humans. Many of the older wines reviewed in White’s book I’d had when they were released—but I’m old. In her position as sommelier at PRESS in St. Helena, Kelli and her fiancé Scott Brenner used Leslie Rudd’s resources to assemble an unrivaled list of vintage Napa Valley wines. The majority of wines White writes about in “Napa Valley Then and Now” were sourced directly from the wineries. Not a Rudy fraud among them. Though, after this brilliant book, that’s probably next. No one has, to my knowledge, done this before, assembled this kind of wine knowledge as well as tasting notes of older vintages—not for Napa Valley. I’ve always referred to Michael Broadbent’s books for tasting notes on older Bordeaux. Amazingly, she’s only 36 (I started as a sommelier at 36!), White’s book is now my resource for tasting notes on older Napa Valley wines. It’s a very valuable resource.

Before she gets to writing about the 200 Napa Valley wineries she chose for the book, White writes some wonderful pages about her own criteria for tasting “…I prefer narrative tasting notes,” White writes, “and am wary of the way a number can reduce a wine’s worth to a single fixed value.” That’s perfect tone, and smartly said. The brief history of Napa Valley that follows is especially wonderful reading. White is a very talented, if still unpolished, writer (I cringed when I read “undeniably unique”) whose ability to communicate an enormous amount of information in a relatively brief section is breathtaking. There are better, more in-depth, histories of Napa Valley, which she acknowledges, but none as concise, entertaining and easy to read. White’s strengths as a writer—precision, pacing, insight, style—are on glorious display. I found that I was not only learning a lot, I was thoroughly enjoying her company. It may not rise to the heights of literature, little wine writing does, but it is very fine work. When reading White’s brief history of Napa Valley, I felt as I once felt reading an old Decanter wine column of Gerald Asher’s. There isn’t higher praise than that. If you ever plan a trip to Napa, just those sixteen pages will enlighten you more than a hundred stupid guide books.

The section on the appellations of Napa Valley is also very useful and informative. I was relieved to read it and find nary a single use of the word, “terroir.” Only a very confident and skilled writer, and White is all of that, could manage that. White summarizes succinctly the climate influences and soil types (always a yawn to me—like naming all the crus of Barolo—I just don’t care) of each appellation, and passes along interesting factoids (there’s a word I hate, “factoid”—sounds like a nasty polyp on your face). About Yountville, the hippest town in the Valley, White points out, “The buildings that now beckon with their restaurants and tasting rooms used to house an impressive selection of barrooms and brothels, with taxis lined out front to ferry the overindulged.” Not much has changed, except taxis are now Ubers, and brothels are now natural wine bars, with all the attendant and similar off-aromas.

As White herself points out, “It is quite likely the older tasting notes that give this book its true worth.” I did not read the winery profiles in alphabetical order. How anal would that have been? It would be like planting a vineyard in alphabetical order, the Abouriou next to the Alicante, next to the Barbera. Has Randall Grahm done that yet? If I have reservations with “Napa Valley Now and Then,” most lie in these pages, the bulk of what is a bulky book.

The tasting notes are fantastic. I might cite a hundred examples, but here are three. “2000 Maya [Dalla Valle’s prestige red wine]—One of the more soft-spoken and poetic vintages of Maya, the 2000 displays soft, refined fruit, an easy charm, and a compelling bouquet of baked cherries, mulch, sarsparilla, and mint.” I want that.  White can be sweet and lethal at the same time, a perfect quality for a wine writer. About a Scholium Project 2010 Androkteinos Syrah (is anyone more gleefully pretentious than Abe Schoener) White writes, “…scents of salted, candied violets, dried black currants, sweet garden soil, and smoked meat, punctuated with a ton of VA.” The wonderful back and forth of something that sounds appealing, dried black currants, with something that doesn’t, sweet garden soil, with the time bomb of a ton of VA at the end of the sentence gives you a real sense of the wine. That you might want to stay the hell away from it. Of a 1959 School House Pinot Noir (Oh, I’ve always loved School House—a real wine geek’s geek wine) White says, “Surely one of the greatest Pinot Noirs ever made in the United States…It was perfect, with a shockingly youthful nose of rich cherry fruit, a kiss of sweet earth, brown spices, and a beautiful floral tone.” I find this precise without being too precise. Though Kelli seems to be eating a lot of sweet dirt lately.

Writing tasting notes is a difficult, challenging, and unrewarding task. I would never read a lot of them in one sitting, I don’t care who the author is. White excels at it. Again, that’s like excelling at writing recipes, but try it, it stretches your sensory vocabulary and abilities. She makes it look easy. To a great degree, the book’s success is centered on those notes, on their reliability and precision. Tasting notes are easy to parody. Writing ones that are not self-parody is very challenging. White has a fine touch with tasting notes. I can’t think of higher praise than to say I wish I could taste alongside her.

There are too many wineries in the book. Too many selections smell of politics. Some of the new wineries in here don’t deserve to be. There are few notes for many of them, and White’s lack of enthusiasm starts to leak through. She’s going through the paces, and her own interest flags. I hated reading about newer projects. Too often the winery summaries smelled of a bad Laube article on “Ten Wineries to Watch.” They were treacle in an otherwise scintillating book. It is a mystery to me how quite a few of her selections made the cut, when, for example, Trefethen did not. Skip those, they don’t belong here.

I also felt White gives some folks an easy pass. There’s too much David Abreu worship, far too much. A lot of stricter environmental laws came to pass in Napa Valley as a reaction to Abreu’s disregard for simple nightmares like erosion. Yes, he’s an important figure in Napa Valley’s current history, but not simply a positive influence. White doesn’t need to be harsh, simply more objective and willing to be a little bolder and more opinionated. But she’s 36, and so supremely talented, that perhaps what she needs is simply more confidence in her gift.

The long sections on the truly historic wineries in Napa, among them Charles Krug, Mayacamas, Louis M. Martini, School House, Inglenook, Lail, Robert Mondavi and Stony Hill, are an incredible resource, and will be, I believe, for many future generations of wine lovers. White's comprehensive tasting notes of older vintages are a treasure trove, a serious study of wines that have been shamefully underestimated and overlooked. I am so envious of Kelli, that she was able to taste so many remarkable wines. She precisely and with great eloquence completely dismantles the old wisdom I’ve heard in the wine business for my entire long tenure in it, that California wines don’t age as well as their European counterparts. That has always been false. Leftover Old World elitism repeated ad nauseum by the uninformed, inexperienced and ignorant. With her deft use of language, original and valuable tasting notes, her enviable background and piercing intelligence, Kelli White has performed a miracle for the folks who made Napa Valley what it is today. Napa Valley has always commanded high prices. With the work of the young and talented Kelli White (I just may hate her), Napa Valley may finally command the high regard it richly deserves.

This is the best reference book for the historic wines of Napa Valley. It’s virtually the only one. It holds endless treasures. Flawless? No. Essential? To my mind, absolutely. It’s $95. That seems like a lot, but when you consider that $95 barely gets you a bottle of decent Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon these days, it’s a steal. You've spent far more money on crap less valuable.

"Napa Valley Then and Now" isn't available on Amazon, or anywhere else that I'm aware of. You can, and should, purchase it on her website:

www.napavalleythenandnow.com

Or write her at kelli@napavalleythenandnow.com. Tell her the HoseMaster sent you.