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

“Eat a lot of food, taste a lot of fruits. You have to taste all different citruses. You have to try the peel, the pit, the juice from ripe oranges, under-ripe oranges, over-ripe oranges, navel oranges, a Meyer lemon, an under-ripe green lemon, a lime . . .” So it wasn’t oysters and caviar. But if chewing grapefruit skin would make me a better taster, I was game. Then another pro talked me into adding a little dirt to my diet. “Lick rocks when you’re walking around outside,” suggested this sommelier, who obviously did not live in Manhattan, where this pastime will either get you poisoned or committed. “I lick rocks all the time.” “What kind of rocks?” I asked, more out of polite curiosity than a desire to emulate him. “Any rocks that I haven’t licked before,” he told me. “It’s fun to taste the difference between red slate and blue slate. Red slate has more iron in it—it has more of a bloody meat flavor. Blue slate has more of a wet, river-stone taste to it.”