Rating: 
Summary: It's not just about the wine, is it...
Review: At first I found myself wondering if there was enough to the idea of one man's search for his "taste" to sustain a book... and in the end, I say a resounding "yes." This is a very literate account of a very personal journey undertaken by someone who (we come to suspect) knows a LOT more about his subject than he ever really lets on. And putting aside, for the moment, the question of agreeing or disagreeing with Osborne about the over-Internationalization of the wine industry, at the end of the journey, one realizes that it it has a lot less to do with the wine than it does with the journey itself... and the variously strange, funny, bizarre, but always revealing and ultimately human interactions that comprise the journey.The book is laugh-out-loud funny in places - and perfectly reflective of those conversations one has after a bottle or two or more of wine with accidental companions everywhere. And I daresay, should have more of. I tend to side with Osborne (and many others) in questioning the accuracy, utility, etc. of the Parker/Spectator wine "grading" systems, which have led (as the author suggests) to the development of a single, California-driven International style whose bland sameness is a cause for alarm. Osborne raises this question, but essentially appeals to the reader to make their own determination, even as his own research into the matter reveals his own bias. I enjoyed taking this journey with Osborne... and I learned a lot along the way. Did I agree with everything here? I did not... but I'm pretty sure that Osborne wouldn't have wanted me along for the ride if I did agree (I wouldn't have been as interesting a drinking companion)... but I would have been equally unable to answer the question "What is taste?" Great question, and a great pleasure to tag along as this man tries to find an answer for himself.
Rating:
Summary: It's not just about the wine, is it...
Review: At first I found myself wondering if there was enough to the idea of one man's search for his "taste" to sustain a book... and in the end, I say a resounding "yes." This is a very literate account of a very personal journey undertaken by someone who (we come to suspect) knows a LOT more about his subject than he ever really lets on. And putting aside, for the moment, the question of agreeing or disagreeing with Osborne about the over-Internationalization of the wine industry, at the end of the journey, one realizes that it it has a lot less to do with the wine than it does with the journey itself... and the variously strange, funny, bizarre, but always revealing and ultimately human interactions that comprise the journey. The book is laugh-out-loud funny in places - and perfectly reflective of those conversations one has after a bottle or two or more of wine with accidental companions everywhere. And I daresay, should have more of. I tend to side with Osborne (and many others) in questioning the accuracy, utility, etc. of the Parker/Spectator wine "grading" systems, which have led (as the author suggests) to the development of a single, California-driven International style whose bland sameness is a cause for alarm. Osborne raises this question, but essentially appeals to the reader to make their own determination, even as his own research into the matter reveals his own bias. I enjoyed taking this journey with Osborne... and I learned a lot along the way. Did I agree with everything here? I did not... but I'm pretty sure that Osborne wouldn't have wanted me along for the ride if I did agree (I wouldn't have been as interesting a drinking companion)... but I would have been equally unable to answer the question "What is taste?" Great question, and a great pleasure to tag along as this man tries to find an answer for himself.
Rating:
Summary: Thank God Somebody Finally Wrote this book
Review: I am a stauch opponent of the Robert Parker/Wine Spectator hardline and the way in which they try to reduce the pleasure of wine drinking to a quasi-art (or is it a pseudo-science?). Whatever you'd like to call it, it's a big con that's been going on for way too long. God knows how many bottles of mediocre and unmemorable wine -- and how many boring, one-dimensional California wines! -- I've bought on the basis of their pretentious numbering system and bombasitc vocabulary ("contains essences of hyssop, toasted pine cones and boric acid"). Finally someone has pierced through this delusional nonsense. Simply put, Lawrence Osborne's book is a delight from cover to cover. The chapter on Robert Parker ("An Idea of France") is worth the price of the book alone.
Rating:
Summary: great read
Review: I just read a rave review of this book in the London Financial Times by Jancis Robinson, one of the world's preeminent wine critics. She called The Accidental Connoisseur "the most entertaining book ever written about wine."
I must say, I agree. This is that rare thing - a book which doesn't describe wine so much as explore its place in our culture. Robinson points out that wine is arriving at a new place in our society and that this is virgin literary territory ( she should know, she knows the literature like no-one else alive - see her impressive book archive on Amazon ). Anyway, she says that Osborne has done something delightfully original here, combining a rich and "trenchant" prose with an open-minded, discursive attitude. Wine is place, and so an exploration of place is a great way to explore wine and the people who fashion it. It's something that wine writers almost never do. In the end, wine is used as a metaphor for wider things, a conceit which the author never lays on us too emphatically. The question over what taste is is a profound one, but one that Osborne explores with the lightest of touches. It's a difficult thing to pull off, but I agree also with Victor Hazan's comment on the back cover, namely that it's a "marvelous book, period...a classic."
Rating:
Summary: great read
Review: I just read a rave review of this book in the London Financial Times by Jancis Robinson, one of the world's preeminent wine critics. She called The Accidental Connoisseur "the most entertaining book ever written about wine."
I must say, I agree. This is that rare thing - a book which doesn't describe wine so much as explore its place in our culture. Robinson points out that wine is arriving at a new place in our society and that this is virgin literary territory ( she should know, she knows the literature like no-one else alive - see her impressive book archive on Amazon ). Anyway, she says that Osborne has done something delightfully original here, combining a rich and "trenchant" prose with an open-minded, discursive attitude. Wine is place, and so an exploration of place is a great way to explore wine and the people who fashion it. It's something that wine writers almost never do. In the end, wine is used as a metaphor for wider things, a conceit which the author never lays on us too emphatically. The question over what taste is is a profound one, but one that Osborne explores with the lightest of touches. It's a difficult thing to pull off, but I agree also with Victor Hazan's comment on the back cover, namely that it's a "marvelous book, period...a classic."
Rating:
Summary: Throw away Immer, Parker, Kramer, Spectator, and buy this!
Review: I love this book because it recognizes that nothing is sacred. The self-important upper class and elite wine circles everywhere don't want to believe it, but this book shows how most of our ideas/decisions about wine are not actually based on your own reality, but rather on the reality of somebody who needs to make money off of your ignorance. I spent 3 months learning about wine at the Le Cordon Bleu Hospitality and Restaurant Management program, and I consider this book to be of greater importance than all of my previous wine studies combined. The section about Barolo is pathetic, I will admit that. Of all the producers Osborne could have visited, he goes to Brovia! How pathetic considering that Sandrone and Mascarello are available.
Rating:
Summary: Throw away Immer, Parker, Kramer, Spectator, and buy this!
Review: I love this book because it recognizes that nothing is sacred. The self-important upper class and elite wine circles everywhere don't want to believe it, but this book shows how most of our ideas/decisions about wine are not actually based on your own reality, but rather on the reality of somebody who needs to make money off of your ignorance. I spent 3 months learning about wine at the Le Cordon Bleu Hospitality and Restaurant Management program, and I consider this book to be of greater importance than all of my previous wine studies combined. The section about Barolo is pathetic, I will admit that. Of all the producers Osborne could have visited, he goes to Brovia! How pathetic considering that Sandrone and Mascarello are available.
Rating: 
Summary: Lawrence, Read the Literature!
Review: I really dislike finding blatant errors in a book, especially when I'm only through the first chapter of "The Accidental Connoisseur", Introduction: A Matter of Taste. I'm ready to put it aside. Why? Well on page 9 the author states "the human tongue doesn't vary from individual to individual; its anatomical structures are constant." Really! I guess Mr. Osborne needs to read the extensive literature on human perceptions of taste and odor in wine. As long ago as 1993 Linda Bartoshuk of the Department of Surgery (Otolaryngology) of Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, wrote "Genetic variation in taste ability occurs across and within species. For example, about 25% of humans are relatively unresponsive to a variety of sweet and bitter compounds (non-tasters) while another 25% are unusually responsive (supertasters). Supertasters have about four times as many taste buds as non-tasters and have smaller and more densely packed fungiform papillae." (Genetic and pathological taste variation: what can we learn from animal models and human disease? Bartoshuk LM., Ciba Found Symp. 1993;179:251-67.) More information can be found on Tim Jacob's site. Perhaps even more interesting is Dr Bartoshuk's criticism of the Tongue Map in the same article; "The study of patients with taste disorders (i.e. 'experiments of nature') suggests that the old tongue maps (e.g. sweet on the tip, bitter on the back) that often appear in textbooks are wrong. If they were correct, severing the taste nerves that innervate the front of the tongue would result in a loss of the ability to taste sweet, etc. This does not occur." Richard Gawel has an interesting discussion of this as well. I'm hoping that Mr Osborne's search for an understanding of taste turns out to be better than his ability to do literature searches. Further Notes (5/3/04) Having now finished this book I'm afraid I cannot change my score of one star. There are so many faults with this book that it would take more than the 1,000 word limit to cover them all, so I'll limit myself to a few highlights. One of a number of factual errors has been noted above. Another major concern is trying to figure out the purpose of the book. For the author "Wine is a dangerous game". He does "not trust my own taste", and so "To discover my own tastes in wine, I would have to discard both books and science, and go into the world of wine and drink." But by the end of the book the author is simply learnt that he is more aware of his ignorance of wine. What is disturbing throughout the book is that the author seems to take little joy in his wine journey, his Irreverent Journey. He shows little appreciation for the established figures of wine in both Europe and California, their egos, their wines, or the high prices their wines command. But such controversy is not new to the wine world. Osborne does seem to have more affinity for the wine mavericks, those that criticize the egos and the high prices, but still he remains reluctant to let his taste buds commune with them while drinking their wines. By the end of his journey he seems bored with his search, and the last few chapters might have been better in a travel guide of Italy. The greatest concern is that Osborne's wine world is a small world, indeed. It primarily consists of a few interviews with winemakers here and there in the US, France, and Italy. What happened to Spain, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or Chile? Where are the interactions with those who actually drink wine? What about discoursing with wine connoisseurs, professional and amateur alike? For yes, Osborne also seeks to be a connoisseur! Osborne's wine world is so limited, its no wonder his search was unfulfilled. There may be another reason why Osborne fails to learn taste during his wine journey. Simply put, he seems to have very little taste. The clue to this comes from his own statement (p133) "I cover my food with mountains of salt; I like my chocolate as black and bitter as pitch." My original concern with this book is Osborne's ignorance of the biology of taste, and this is his undoing. By any definition his taste buds are so poor that he may well qualify as a "non-taster". One is thus left to ask the question, what am I going to learn from the journey of a non-taster as he seeks, unsuccessfully, to acquire taste?
Rating: 
Summary: What inspired the raves?
Review: I was disappointed in this book, given some of the rave reviews it has received. I was looking for an entertaining book about enjoying wine. I enjoyed Bacchus & Me more, and I'm enjoying Noble Rot far more, and learning a lot more, too.
In some ways, this book plods along as the author goes from interview to interview asking what winemakers and personalities think of terroir... Do they believe in it? Does their wine exhibit it? Should we care about it? But none of the answers really go anywhere and the author never seems to draw a conclusion.
Like another reviewer, I felt like the author was showing off his vocabulary. I wish he had shown it off whenever one of his interviewees asked him for his opinion about a wine. His response seemed to be endlessly that he kept his mouth shut and waited to hear what he should be thinking about it.
Because the book focuses on ruminations about terroir... It lacks what could be entertaining or interesting stories about where he is... or adventures I could get absorbed in. Brief descriptions of the architecture and how it matched or didn't match the wines, and descriptions of how he got drunk then drove away (deplorable) weren't doing it for me. I wish the author had described how he arranged these tastings, too.
When the author moves to Italy, the storytelling improves, and in fact, the authors final stop in Southern Italy to visit an older British woman is quite memorable. The last couple of paragraphs were wonderful and earned an extra star for what was otherwise a dry book about wine.
Rating: 
Summary: Pointless and Meandering
Review: I'll read most any book about wine, but this one truly was ill-conceived and quite literally pointless. Indeed, the author effectively concludes that the whole exercise of the book makes no sense. He admits that he has learned nothing about wine during his "journey" and, hence, conveys nothing. The book also contains a host of factual errors, which were distracting until one reaches the point in the book when one realizes that there really isn't much there for these flaws to detract from - at which point you just let them pass like so much of the author's meanderings. Why was this perhaps workable first draft rushed to print? Why didn't the editors work with the author to craft some type of thesis for or framework around the all the disjointed reportage? They could have done some fact-checking while they were at it too. But they didn't. As a result, this book is really half-baked - or, if you will, not nearly fully fermented.
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