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

to taste better is to live better, and to know ourselves more deeply. And I saw that tasting better had to begin with the most complex edible of all: wine.

Sauvignon Blanc—from Sancerre in France, Marlborough in New Zealand, Santa Ynez Valley in the United States, and Margaret River in Australia—until

Romantic love alters women’s sense of smell to deflect attention “away from potential new partners,” effectively binding them more intensely to their mates. Odors also strengthen the attraction between mothers and their infants, whose natural aroma causes a dopamine surge in the reward areas of the mothers’ brains—“almost like they were sniffing some kind of cocaine,”

smelling four intense odors—rose, eucalyptus, lemon, and cloves—twice a day, for three months.

Complexity is the capacity for a wine to keep delighting, with layers and depth and variety. The finish describes the length of time the wine’s flavor lingers in your mouth after you’ve spit or swallowed. A mediocre wine finishes quickly, a good one sticks around.

Tim contends that we each have unique sensitivities to flavors that should steer us toward the wines we like.

There are more than sixty additives that can legally go into wine. A

“Mother nature has odd tastes,” she warned. “Sure, God will make wine. You just might not like it.”

there is some mystery to it—just as no single chord elevates a piano riff from melodious to haunting, and no one color determines which paintings stop us in our tracks. If greatness could be given by a formula, it would become trivial. But we know it when we taste it. And in the way the memory of it lives on.

Indian Valley was smoky. Cooking smells began to emerge as the farmland disappeared. San Rafael smelled like sweet-and-sour chicken; Larkspur like potatoes cooking with rosemary. The hulking shadows of Muir Woods provided a final blast of nature—resinous pine and bark, moss, with a hint of shoe polish. I smelled the salty brine of sea air mixed with a thick, soapy perfume of detergent and garlic even before I saw the signs for San Francisco. It was then that I realized I’d driven the whole way without turning on the radio. I’d had other things to pay attention to. CHAPTER NINE The Performance Since I finally had the right words to talk about wine, I was eager to try my hand at recommending bottles to others. But if you think it’s hard to get a

“Likes: French fries. Dislikes: anchovies, desserts in Indian restaurants, blue food (excluding blueberries), kimchi.” I

“There’s just no good way to run a restaurant unless it’s slightly illegal.”)

“tasting isn’t about the wine. It’s about you and how well you’ve honed your ability to detect its truth.”

altered by the chemistry of our bodies, the architecture of our DNA, or the backdrop of our memories. Wine exists only for you, or me, and it exists only in that instant. It is a private epiphany in the pleasure of good company. So don’t let it slip by. Savor it.

Like Paul Grieco, try to taste the wine for what it is, not what you imagine it should be. Like the Paulée-goers, splurge occasionally.