Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste

by Bianca Bosker

Terroir, a snug wine bar in the East Village that blasts Iggy Pop and the Who and keeps its wine list in graffiti-covered binders. He called it one of his “‘spiritual homes’ in the wine world.”

Immanuel Kant, who agreed vision was “noblest,” scorned taste and smell as “nothing but senses of organic sensation.” (He singled out smell as the “most ungrateful” and “most dispensable” sense, which “it does not pay to cultivate.”)

spiciness is a temperature sensation that activates pain receptors, not a taste that acts on taste buds.)

only an ignoramus wears perfume to a wine tasting.

Wine & Spirit Education Trust, have their own versions of the grid.

Le Nez du Vin,

lactic acid (present in milk)

assumes this impacts lactose intolerant people

True Taste that the key attributes of wine quality can be summed up in just six words: “harmony,” “texture,” “layers,” “finesse,” “surprise,” and “nuance.”

two pieces of information: (1) what they want to spend, and (2) what style of wine they want to drink.

“Service is the technical delivery of a product.

Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel,”

“Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when som...

Wine Folly website offers handy CliffsNotes on each one’s flavor profile).