The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World

Customer Reviews

pedants pedants!

It's amazing how these pedants will give a book ONE STAR while still on page 9, over a pedantic quibbling over a totally minor point which is,in any case, ambiguous. Memo to Mr.Pedant :
Osborne's point is that critics who claim biological uniqueness are suspect. Know what? He's right.In any case, has science "prooved" anything about such subjective variabilities? No it hasn't. Are we biologically different from our neighbor when it comes to taste? Who knows? Osborne's whole point is that with wine it's psychological not biological. Science pedant types, of course, don't understand non-literalistic arguments. Which is why they should never be allowed to review books.

Well, one can't stop them. Just enjoy the damn book!

Not just about wine

Wine is the pretext the author uses to question what really constitutes "taste." The narrator enters what is purported to be the pinnacle of the modern wine world to learn why their products carry such an exalted cache. He and the other common people he encounters have trouble identifying the tastes that the experts (i.e. judges of what is and is not tasteful) have reported. He can't even recollect the Lafite he sampled. What he does recall are the places and the settings of wines he enjoyed. Read the book to learn more about the winemakers and judges who try to dictate what you are suppossed to like, but come away from it with the knowledge that "taste" resides within the individual. I'll be re-reading this one in the next few weeks after the ideas brought up in it have had time to percolate through a bit.

Subtle and gentle odyssey

The exceptional reviews "The Accidental Connoisseur" has gotten are easy to understand. This is not really a wine book : it's more like a protracted mulling over the nature of the tourist economy, on capilalist fetich and on the nature of place. Thorouhgly recommended for its intelligence and insights.