Diandra Reviews It All

When I first heard about Bianca Bosker’s, Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste, I was hesitant. A book about a wine taster’s journey to discovering how to taste wine…. sounded a little pretentious. Yet, even Bosker acknowledges that the life of a sommelier, wine-taster, is known for its high-caliber snobbery. Still, as she travels the country and her life to discover the difference between the wine-lover, as she and everybody else is, and the wine-taster, a select-few, she also realizes the culture and spiritual lessons sommelier-living has to offer. Moreover, she has to have given me one of the funniest books I have read, thus far, in 2017.
First, Cork Dork, is a tale for, us, Millennials. She begins her journey as most of this generation: feeling stuck. She is the journalist that is not exactly reporting on “Water-gate” level pieces or even an Aquafina bottle. Like most of us, she graduated with a degree to find out class studies do not measure up to reality, which is why she seeks a new passion/work….. wine. Of course, most of her friends question if she is in the beginning stages of alcoholism, but as Bosker, and you, begin to meet what she calls the obsessive sommeliers, “big bottle” hunters, and rogue scientists, you witness that wine is not just a drink. Wine is a history of the world; where one bottle can tell of the Civil War of a nation or the changing agricultural laws of a country. Moreover, it is a culture that reflects humanity’s knack for building traditions, rules, and “us” mentalities that divide from the “them”. Yet, what shocked me most about sommelier culture is how spiritual it is. While, to an outsider, their habits and trades, may seem like lunacy; they are luxury-motivated in an effort to humble one’s self to life’s offered joys. As Bosker so beautifully puts it, “We obsess over finding or making food and drink that tastes better….yet we do nothing to teach ourselves to be better tasters”. Throughout the book you realize this notion goes beyond “food”, it goes for how we experience our day to day, and, for sommeliers, every day you wake up should have, at least, one new experience. That advice seems like it would come from a self-help guru rather than a man on his sixth glass at a morning wine-tasting.

Cork Dork is a surprising book because it is a humbling one. Although you will meet pretentious, prickly characters, you will also meet funny, nuanced persons, like Bosker’s friend Morgan, whose particularities are just fascinations and machinated figurings on how to live life better. Such an attempt is what Bosker is trying to do herself, live life better, of which wine was just a door to an opportunity. Personally, I am so happy she wrote of this journey because Bosker’s humor matches Gilmore-Girls pacing with Arrested Development wit. You can read a passage twenty times, and, each time, find a new joke to “ugly-laugh” over; I’m talking squinted face, hurt ribs, and involuntary tears. Bosker is hilarious and piercingly smart. Even more, she is so blatantly human, and her self-deprecation, as the book continues, grows to be more detailed. You understand that her humor is both a veil for her fears and faith in herself, which is relatable to all readers. We all want to enjoy life, but struggle to feel worthy of it. As you meet and grow to love Bianca Bosker, you have to remind yourself that she is A REAL PERSON. Bosker writes her life as if it was a 352 paged, humor novel more than a true story, yet it is this style that leaves readers charmed and smarter to both the workings of wine and the world. To Buy Penguin Randomhouse’s Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste on March 28 and to learn more about Bianca Bosker Click Here.