Jay Mcinerney: Bacchus and Me, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Rezension

"Brilliant, witty, comical, and often shamelessly candid and provocative thoughts about the world of wine and many of the people who produce it." - Robert M. Parker, Jr.

"McInerney has become the best wine writer in America." - Salon. com

"McInerney's wine judgments are sound, his anecdotes witty and his literary references impeccable. Not many wine books are good reads; this one is." - The New York Times

"In the fruity, buttery world of wine writing, there's nothing else like it." - Atlanta Journal

Klappentext

Jay McInerney on wine? Yes, Jay McInerney on wine! The best-selling novelist has turned his command of language and flair for metaphor on the world of wine, providing this sublime collection of untraditional musings on wine and wine culture that is as fit for someone looking for "a nice Chardonnay" as it is for the oenophile.

On champagne: "Is Dom Pérignon worth four bottles of Mo't & Chandon? If you are a connoisseur, a lover, a snob, or the owner of a large oceangoing craft, the answer . . . is probably yes."
On the difficulty of picking a wine for a vegetarian meal: "Like boys and girls locked away in same-sex prep schools, most wines yearn for a bit of flesh."
On telling the difference between Burgundy and Bordeaux: "If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died, it's probably Burgundy."
On the fungus responsible for the heavenly flavor of the dessert wine called Sauternes: "Not since Baudelaire smoked opium has corruption resulted in such beauty."

Includes new material plus recommendations on the world's most romantic wines and the best wines to pair with a meal

Auszüge aus dem Buch

In the Pink

Rosé

Never have I felt quite so worldly as I did on my very first real date, when, after considered perusal of the wine list, I masterfully commanded the waiter at the Log Cabin restaurant in Lenox, Massachusetts, to fetch me a bottle of Mateus Rosé. In its distinctive Buddha-shaped bottle, with its slight spritz, it represented a step up from the pink Almaden that my friends and I sucked down in order to get into the proper Dionysian frame of mind for the summer rock concerts at Tanglewood. (And that seemed a classic accompaniment--rather like Chablis and oysters--to the cheap Mexican pot we were smoking at the time.) Later, of course, as I discovered the joys of dry reds and whites, I learned to sneer at pink wine; it seemed--as Winston Churchill once remarked regarding the moniker of an acquaintance named Bossom--that it was neither one thing nor the other. A few summers ago a bottle of Domaines Ott rosé in conjunction with a leg of marinated grilled lamb cured me of this particular prejudice; I thought I'd died and gone to Provence, though in fact I was at my friend Steve's birthday party in the Hamptons.

Rosé denotes neither a region nor a grape but a color; it is wine made from almost any variety of red grapes from which the skins are removed after brief flirtation with the clear, fermenting juice. The shade of the wine is a function of the length of contact between skins and juice. (Rosé champagne, confusingly enough, is made with the addition of still red wine to a sparkling white wine base.) At one time some of the "red" wines of Burgundy were actually pink, prized for their delicate oeil-de-perdrix (partridge's eye) color. The color of a rosé wine varies from faint copper to raspberry. And the color of these wines is half their charm. Emile Peynaud, in his classic The Taste of Wine , identifies such rosé hues as gray, peony rose, cherry rose, raspberry rose, carmine rose, russet, apricot, onion skin, orange hued, and salmon. Appreciation of such a palette requires the brilliant sunlight of a summer day.

Some years ago, on a stifling July afternoon in Tennessee, my wife and I hosted a garden party to celebrate the christening of our twins. Refusing to settle for beer and Bloody Marys, I decided to offer my guests their choice of Perrier-Jouet champagne or Domaine Tempier rosé. The Tempier was really the perfect choice for the weather and the food--grilled chicken, vegetables, and lamb. Yet I noticed that nobody was drinking the rosé; moreover, I was getting some strange, pitying looks, which at first I attributed to the fact that I had inelegantly sweated right through my linen suit. Finally, standing at the bar, I heard the bartender offer a guest her choice of champagne or white zinfandel. Stifling my first impulse, which was to cuff him sharply about the face and neck, I took the man aside and offered a few trenchant observations, as follows: So-called white zinfandel, with its pinkish or copper tint, is technically a rosé, but generally speaking these California blush wines have every reason to be embarrassed, dim and cloying as they are. At least one hundred makers, led by the prodigious Sutter Home, crank out ten million cases of the stuff each year.

The quality may evolve in time, but for now the makers of California's more interesting pink wines tend to use the word rosé for wines that are more flush than blush. The bartender, on being apprised of these facts, agreed to start offering rosé to my guests (who remained unimpressed), and I agreed to try not to be a neurotic geek. Rosés, after all, are not supposed to require a lot of fuss.

Anyone who starts analyzing the taste of a rosé in public should be thrown into the pool immediately. Since I am safe in a locked office at this moment, though, let me propose a few guidelines. A good rosé