Customer Reviews

The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is really a travel memoir about one man's journey into the wine world, and not necessarily a "wine book." Understand that and you can get a lot of pleasure out of this one. For those who love tongue-in-cheek humor, it's also worth a few laughs.

I'm a reader, but also a wine enthusiast. I don't drink wine often, but I try to read up and stay informed. Imagine my surprise when I was given this book as a gift. You see, I am familiar with Lawrence Osborne's fiction, having read his first novel years ago. Ania Malina (King Penguin) But I had no idea that he wrote about wine.

First and foremost, Mr. Osborne is a very accomplished writer. His fiction has somehow flown under the radar in the states. The flowery writing style he uses in this book differs from his fiction and brings more of his own "voice" to the memoir. While he can be a little wordy, he comes across more as genuine and not at all pompous. He is very honest and openly admits the gaps in his wine knowledge. Yes, he does take a few sarcastic jabs at some of the wine makers, but he does so respectfully. Clearly, he simply disagrees with some of the places the wine world is going, with $1000 bottles and ivory tower ratings.

The book takes you through a dozen or so excursions to wineries in California, Italy and France. By the end of the book, the writer seems tired of the wine world and is comfortable just to enjoy wine for what it is.

Considerations
- This book is not for those seeking wine education. It is a great travel journal about one man's quest to scratch the surface of the wine culture.
- The author's random insertions of historical background throughout his travels seemed at times to be out of place or overdone. It is informative and I definitely learned. A little rearranging and some more edits would have made it better for me.
- I can see how some would criticize the lack of a traditional climax. This memoir still made sense to me as a real experience. I disagreed with some of the author's ideas, but in the end, the author's perspective comes across as genuine.


Overall, I enjoyed this book and plan to read it again in the future. I only wonder why 4 years have passed since the author's last book. I hope you'll give this one a try.

Enjoy!

This book is easy to read--a common-sense book that looks at the puffery of the wine scene. I bought additional copies and gave them to a couple of wine-loving friends. Wish I could read a book of this caliber each month.

Under the quixotic travelogue disguise lurks a gently insightful, open minded and intelligent assessment of how we think about wine. For those who care about wine, this is a gem of a book.

I was disappointed in this book, given some of the rave reviews it has received. I was looking for an entertaining book about enjoying wine. I enjoyed Bacchus & Me more, and I'm enjoying Noble Rot far more, and learning a lot more, too.

In some ways, this book plods along as the author goes from interview to interview asking what winemakers and personalities think of terroir... Do they believe in it? Does their wine exhibit it? Should we care about it? But none of the answers really go anywhere and the author never seems to draw a conclusion.

Like another reviewer, I felt like the author was showing off his vocabulary. I wish he had shown it off whenever one of his interviewees asked him for his opinion about a wine. His response seemed to be endlessly that he kept his mouth shut and waited to hear what he should be thinking about it.

Because the book focuses on ruminations about terroir... It lacks what could be entertaining or interesting stories about where he is... or adventures I could get absorbed in. Brief descriptions of the architecture and how it matched or didn't match the wines, and descriptions of how he got drunk then drove away (deplorable) weren't doing it for me. I wish the author had described how he arranged these tastings, too.

When the author moves to Italy, the storytelling improves, and in fact, the authors final stop in Southern Italy to visit an older British woman is quite memorable. The last couple of paragraphs were wonderful and earned an extra star for what was otherwise a dry book about wine.

This was recommended to me by a former sommelier, and with good reason--this is a book about the way wine should be in the larger scheme of things. Think beyond Kendell-Jackson Chardonnay and Yellow Tail Shiraz. Wine reflects a time and place, not sugar craving. Osborne is a terrific writer, but not a wine expert, and that's exactly what makes this book so engaging. Highly recommended.

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.

The Accidental Connoisseur is such a well written, well informed, and personal account of one man's love of worthwhile food and wine that the only way anyone interested in the topic might be put off by the book is if they have a problem with the personality of writer, bon vivant, and accidental connoisseur Lawrence Osborne.

Unfortunately, to many Americans, Mr. Osborne may come across as a bit pompous. But if that misunderstanding takes place, it is just because he is what I will ambiguously term A British Man From A Certain Social Class. I don't know if he has a public school (i.e. prep school) background, but my guess is he does. Oxbridge is likely. And if that's true, it means he uses a vocabulary and draws parallels that may seem designed to show off his well-rounded education. That doesn't bother me, and I in fact considered it part of the book's charm -- especially when mixed with healthy doses of friendly self-deprecation, deadpan dry humor, and an erudite writing style that are also trademarks of the South Kensington-type crowd with similar social distinctions.

So step one to figuring out whether or not you'll enjoy this book is to determine whether or not you will appreciate that kind of writing. If you think you will, then there really isn't a step two -- except maybe clicking on the "add to shopping cart" tab you'll notice on the upper right-hand side of this page.

The book is made up of a series of 11 adventures the Quixotic Mr. Osborne conducts, covering the world's greatest wine-growing areas. The thread that ostensibly connects these adventures is that Mr. Osborne is trying to understand the world of wine better: Is any wine really worth hundreds of dollars? Can you really taste the characteristics of the land where the grapes were grown in the wine? What makes certain combinations of food and wine better than others? What makes a great wine great?

My guess is that Mr. Osborne figured out the answers to a lot of his questions by the end of his journeys. And what's nice about it is that with The Accidental Connoisseur, we can come along for the ride.

I found myself truly enthusiastic about this book from the first chapter. I liked the writing, it was funny, sardonic, tongue-in-cheek, not typical in the world of wine writing. The memoir at the beginning...describing the Beaujolais he believed he was quaffing as our Lord's hemoglobin as a Catholic school boy... I thought it was going be unique...the humor, the "irreverent" tone.

This is a "not bad" book but not truly "irreverent". Despite his attempts at trying to downplay meeting Robert Mondavi and Piero Antinori, getting together with rustic winemakers in Italy and California, it doesn't really work. There are moments of humility here, modesty but not many. After awhile I couldn't relate to Osborne's observations, describing cuisine I've never heard of or tasted. The narrative structure also tires - Osborne goes from winery/winemaker to winery/winemaker describing the buildings, the people, the atmosphere with little real enthusiasm, following through with formulaic efforts, each chapter a variation of the previous.

All in all, the book feels spoiled (should I say "corked"?). After the first few chapters, I started to see the pattern. There is reverence here. It's the ideal "wine snob" book. The title is aimed at everyday people, people not into the "hoopla" of wine. There's hoopla here, just hidden. Osborn really isn't much of an accidental connoisseur, just a journalist who name drops and mopes about criticizing the way wine has changed in the world.

If you're someone just looking to learn about wine, its pleasures and pursuits, check out Natalie Maclean's "Red White and Drunk All Over" If you want something more with a bit more enthusiasm, "Wine: A Life Uncorked" by Hugh Johnson. Johnson writes brilliantly, he is an aristocrat but it feels like he truly appreciates the life he has had and the experience of wine. Get Osborne's book from the library if you're truly curious. Maclean and Johnson's books are treasures.

Osborne is amusing and highly quotable, with an offbeat view of the wine world with some really intelligent insights.

A few favorite quotes:

"What do you taste?"
"Grapes."
"Good, that's what's in it."

"Wine summons ghosts out of the cupboard."

"If wine is like sex, this is like yoga," I said.
"Yoga. You're saying it's like yoga? ... I'm not sure I get you there. You mean athletic?"
"Virtuous. Unsexy."
"Ah, you mean American."

And his conversations with winemakers are fascinating, here Antonio Terni:

Debating the role of terroir: On the other side are those who think that grape varieties and what's done in the winery are the crucial elements. These wines, Terni says, are ''like airport architecture''; they have ''a sort of nowhereness.'' Italians call such wines internazionale, which is a polite way of saying ''big, fruity stuff that Americans like.'' Terni is proud to make both kinds. He adds, ''I do hate all this pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation about wine.'

Osborne asserts early on that he knows little about wine, but soon proves quite the contrary. Delightful.

Robert C. Ross 2007 2008

An interesting, well written book that eliminates bias that most wine writers tend to place into their books. There is little pretension, and a genuine desire to learn that shows through these pages.