num_pages: 346
description: For readers of Anthony Bourdain Susan Orlean and Mary Roach a surprising entertaining and hilarious journey through the world of wine.Like many of us tech reporter Bianca Bosker saw wine as a way to unwind at the end of a long day or a nice thing to have with dinner and that was about it. Until she stumbled on an alternate universe where taste reigned supreme a world in which people could after a single sip of wine identify the grape it was made from in what year and where it was produced down to the exact location within acres. Where she tasted wine these people detected not only complex flavor profiles but entire histories and geographies. Astounded by their fanatical dedication and seemingly superhuman sensory powers Bosker abandoned her screen-centric life and set out to discover what drove their obsession and whether she too could become a cork dork.Thus begins a year and a half long adventure that takes the reader inside elite tasting groups exclusive New York City restaurants a California winery that manipulates the flavor of its bottles with ingredients like Mega Purple and even a neuroscientist's fMRI machine as Bosker attempts to answer the most nagging question of all: what's the big deal about wine? Funny counter intuitive and compulsively readable Cork Dork illuminates not only the complex web of wine production and consumption but how tasting better can change our brains and help us live better.
language: None
title: Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste
publisher: Penguin Books