A Hedonist in the Cellar: Adventures in Wine. Jay McInerney - Softcover

McInerney, Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747591326 ISBN 13: 9780747591320

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2007

Synopsis

Jay McInerney, internationally celebrated author of Bright Lights, Big City, turns his hand here to his lifelong love affair with wine. Peals of wisdom are offered on the subjects of the best wine for romantics, the parallels between Californian wines and floundering Hollywood stars, the choice of wine for the author's own debauched forty-eighth birthday party, the 'high-testosterone grape' that is Colin Farrell, absinthe, 'the wild green fairy', and what wine is best drunk with chocolate. At the same time McInerney is a genuine connoisseur, taking the reader on a tour through the wine regions of the world and imparting tried and tested advice on grapes and vintages, bouquets, noses and finishes.

About this title

Review:

Those who find most wine writing hopelessly recondite will eagerly quaff novelist Jay McInerney's A Hedonist in the Cellar, a collection of his essays originally published in House & Garden. Whether talking about a California chardonnay ("like a Ginsu blade concealed in a peach"); the wines of the Cote Rotie ("like Fitzgerald, [its] reputation was almost moribund at mid-century"); or the super Valpolicellas of Italian vintner Giuseppe Quintarelli ("his [wines] should be opened only in the presence of gods and stinky cheeses"), McInerney brings a novelist's gift and idiosyncratic wit to his personal investigations, which touch on the Rieslings from the Finger Lakes, the "forgotten whites" of Bordeaux, new developments in the wines of Chile and Argentina, spirits like Armagnac and artisinal champagnes, and much more. McInerney is a stimulating appreciator, so readers poring through his essays happily absorb viniculture and modus operandi, among other technical matters. In essays like "Translating German Labels" and "How to Impress Your Sommelier," they’re also prepped in buying and ordering. A wide-ranging tour of the wine world in sum, Hedonist is for all wine lovers, who will find in it much of what's been missing from so much other wine and food writing: the wit to do it well. --Arthur Boehm

About the Author:

Jay McInerney, whose wine column appears monthly in House & Garden in the USA, is the author of seven novels, the most recent of which, The Good Life, was published by Bloomsbury in 2006. He lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing plc
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0747591326
• ISBN 13: 9780747591320
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272