How to Launch your Wine Career: Dream Jobs in America's Hottest Industry
How to Launch Your Wine Career, by Lia Thach and Brian D Emilio, did not, as I started to read, engage me. My interest in, liking of, and knowledge about wine center around the stuff in the bottle, and how it got that way. I am also repelled by too-cute adjectival modifiers I quickly encountered: the ilk of wickedly cool and awesome -teeny bopper talk. But as I got into the book, I realized it was written by and for grown-ups, and that it had been done well. Thach, now on the faculty of Sonoma State University in its Wine Business Center, had had experience in business and in wine writing and education. D Emilio, now working in human resources for Foster s Wine Estates Americas, has similar experience in and out of the wine trade, including a spell with the Clorox Company (which amuses me for some reason) Both are wine-aware and enamored.The book reads easily and is very well organized. It realistically considers every detail and alerts the reader to pitsfalls. It includes useful and interesting vignettes describing the livers of wine careerists in various roles. It is weighted toward California, and exclusively American in its purview. It is graced by a good index and by amusing cartoons by Doug Pike. --Harvey Finkle, New England Wine Journal