Title: Bacchus & Me – Adventures in the Wine Cellar
Author: Jay McInerney
Genre: Non-fiction/Wine & winemaking
This post is something of a metareview, as I am reviewing someone’s else reviews. Of wine, in this case. These particular wine reviews are a collection of columns from House & Garden magazine, plus one article written for The New Yorker. The advantage in this case is having them all in one place, with some special bonus materials (which I’ll get to in a bit). It’s one of the very few books I own in which I’ve highlighted a passage (apparently when I originally bought it several years ago).
In my experience, wine writing—even the accessible, wine-for-unmitigated-morons level of wine writing—takes itself very, very seriously. McInerney suffers no such problem, and makes accessible wine writing actually accessible. While there a references to some of the “notes” one might expect to find in a given wine, the author is far more like to compare wines to music, movies, celebrities, and sex acts. To wit: “If Asti [Spumante] is basically Jerry Springer, Moscato d’Asti is more like Dennis Miller.” Obviously, one need not be an expert to enjoy the writing, and if you’re a novice, the sheer volume of information is couched in enough relaxing content to help you avoid information overload.
In addition to chapters full of advice, recommendations, and anecdotes—related and un—about the various kinds of wines (white/green/gold pink, sparkling, red, dessert) there are also a handful of articles about specific wine makers, and some more general discussions, such as what wine to serve with turkey, the various standard bottle sizes, and possibly the most useful thing I’ve ever read about wine, “Cliff Notes for the Cellar,” a list of ten rules…starting with why you should never serve asparagus with wine and ending with purchasing advice for Burgundies, “stay the hell away from the Cote d’Or, the source of more heartbreak and tears than country-music radio.”
While the specific vintage recommendations are a bit dated now that the book is seven or so years old, I have no doubt they’re good, mostly because McInerney is one of those people whose knowledge of wine comes from drinking a lot of it. Sometimes so much that, he admits occasionally, his notes get a little sketchy. The bonus materials, though, are pretty awesome. I can pass on the list of the world’s most romantic wines, because there are artichokes in Eastern Europe with more romance in their little vegetal hearts than there is in mine, but the food and wine pairing recommendations (traditional and contemporary) are awesome both from a culinary perspective and for their breadth. Everything from the traditional Port & Stilton to Riesling with dim sum to Australian Chardonnay with Kraft macaroni and cheese. (The author notes that both he and his children prefer the squeeze cheese rather than the powder, and that almost any ten-dollar New World chardonnay is improved by this dish.) This book also has the most readable glossary I’ve run across in a long time.
Oh, and the highlighted passage? From a column originally entitled “Big Red Monster from Down Under”.
Though it may seem absurd to generalize, the typical Australian Shiraz bounds up an introduces itself with a slap on your back, sticks a pot of jam in your nose, then offers to put you up for the night and lend you money