Ever been baffled by a wine list, stood perplexed before endless racks of bottles at the liquor store, or ordered an overpriced bottle out of fear of the scathing judgment of a restaurant sommelier? Before she became a James Beard Award—winning food and wine writer, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl experienced all these things. Now she presents a handy guide that will show you how to stop being overwhelmed and intimidated, how to discover, respect, and enjoy your own personal taste, and how to be whatever kind of wine person you want to be, from budding connoisseur to someone who simply gets wine you like every time you buy a bottle.
Refreshingly simple, irreverent, and witty,
Drink This explains all the insider stuff that wine critics assume you know. It will teach you how to taste and savor wine, alone, with a friend, or with a group. And perhaps most important, this book gives you the tools to learn the only thing that really matters about wine: namely, figuring out what you like.
Grumdahl draws on her own experience and savvy and interviews some of the world’s most renowned critics, winemakers, and chefs, including Robert M. Parker, Jr., Paul Draper, and Thomas Keller, who share their wisdom about everything from pairing food and wine to the inside scoop on what wine scores and reviews really mean. Readers will learn how to master tasting techniques and understand the winemaking process from soil to cellar.
Drink This also reveals how to get your money’s worth out of wine without spending all you’ve got.
At last there’s a reason for wary wine lovers to raise a glass in celebration. Savor the insider’s viewpoint and straight talk of
Drink This, and watch your intimidation of wine transform into well-grounded, unshakeable confidence.
Offering a fresh new approach to understanding wine, a James Beard Award-winning food-and-wine journalist provides a plan, a method, and the context to enable readers to overcome their wine anxieties.
"If you haven't lived with reading Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl every week, you have missed the reason why we humans have opposing thumbs. They're there so you can keep turning her pages. With Dara doing a wine book, the days are over of buying bottles because the labels match your home team colors. Be bamboozled and intimidated no more. Dara is about to give you the best and easiest kind of wine smarts, and gift you a good read in the bargain." —Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of The Splendid Table®, public radio's food show from American Public Media (NPR)
"Most wine books have left me feeling like I am bringing a knife to a swordfight, completely underprepared. Not this one.
Drink This is what I've been waiting for. Finally, a must-have book for the vino-challenged! For over a decade I have relied on Dara Grumdahl's insight and common sense wisdom regarding all matters related to food and wine, and now luckily, so can everyone else with this helpful, funny and accessible guide to determining your favorite wines." —Andrew Zimmern
"Dara Grumdahl is right about absolutely everything. If she calls me up at four in the morning, says 'Get dressed, get some money—and a gun—you'll need it where we're eating,' I don't ask any questions. I just go." —Anthony Bourdain
"Dara Moskowitz's writing comes across immediately; it also gets under your skin. Whether writing about restaurants, food, wine, travel, art, literature, music, architecture—or all of those things in a single piece—she is always writing about a milieu, the manners, expectations, fears, and desires of a particular place and time. She is alluring and instructive; as much as Pauline Kael or Lester Bangs. Her work shows what a critic can do and what she can be." —Greil Marcus
"Straight-forward, clearly organized and ambitiously witty, [
Drink This] makes reading about wine fundamentals interesting again. Includes many "conversations" with bigwigs in the industry, provocative sidebars, and a clever "what's to love/hate" approach to major grapes. —Epicurious.com
