Product Description

In the two decades since Bright Lights, Big City reinvigorated contemporary fiction, Jay McInerney can claim a great many accomplishments, including the mantle that Salon has given him: “the best wine writer in America.” Of his previous collection, Bacchus and Me, Robert M. Parker, Jr., concluded:  “Brilliant, witty, comical, and often shamelessly candid and provocative.” And The New York Times added: “McInerney’s wine judgments are sound, his anecdotes witty, and his literary references impeccable. Not many wine books are good reads; this one is.”

In A Hedonist in the Cellar, he gathers more than five years’ worth of essays and continues his exploration of what’s new, what’s enduring, and what’s surprising, giving his palate a complete workout and the reader an indispensable, idiosyncratic guide to a world of almost infinite variety. Rieslings from the Finger Lakes, Armagnac from Gascony, powerhouse amarones from Valpolicella, the most fearsome critics in England, chocolate-friendly bottles from all over the globe, new developments in Chile and Argentina—these are only some of the delights now ready to be savored in a collection driven not only by wine itself but also the people who make it and those whose enjoyment is matched by their curiosity. 

Full of terroir and flavor, svelte personalities, and keen insight into the trade, these are irresistible essays for anyone enthralled by the manifold pleasures of wine.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #403653 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-24
• Released on: 2006-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Amazon.com Review
Those who find most wine writing hopelessly recondite will eagerly quaff novelist Jay McInerney's A Hedonist in the Cellar, a collection of his essays originally published in House & Garden. Whether talking about a California chardonnay ("like a Ginsu blade concealed in a peach"); the wines of the Cote Rotie ("like Fitzgerald, [its] reputation was almost moribund at mid-century"); or the super Valpolicellas of Italian vintner Giuseppe Quintarelli ("his [wines] should be opened only in the presence of gods and stinky cheeses"), McInerney brings a novelist's gift and idiosyncratic wit to his personal investigations, which touch on the Rieslings from the Finger Lakes, the "forgotten whites" of Bordeaux, new developments in the wines of Chile and Argentina, spirits like Armagnac and artisinal champagnes, and much more. McInerney is a stimulating appreciator, so readers poring through his essays happily absorb viniculture and modus operandi, among other technical matters. In essays like "Translating German Labels" and "How to Impress Your Sommelier," they’re also prepped in buying and ordering. A wide-ranging tour of the wine world in sum, Hedonist is for all wine lovers, who will find in it much of what's been missing from so much other wine and food writing: the wit to do it well. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
Those who've ever thought wine writing was a bit sniffy will find McInerney's cheeky and informative squibs on wine a generous, almost ham-handed pleasure. In this collection of short essays, reproduced from his monthly column in House & Garden, the increasingly avid reader is enveloped in the various wines he tastes. It's sexy. But it's not just wine that's sexy here, it's also the people who have "caught the wine bug" and dedicate themselves to making their own labels. McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City; The Good Life) ferrets out the small winemakers, investigates their ethos and tastes their efforts with the same glee and tireless interest he dedicates to the big bottlers. This sense of discovery permeates each essay as he links the wine to its history, where the grapes come from and the culture that goes into its making. Readers will learn more than even the most dedicated oenephile can use, but everyone can be inspired to find the next bottle of something special for any occasion. (Oct.)
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From Booklist
Acclaimed novelist McInerney continues his successful second career exploring wine. McInerney's writing reflects a sound balancing of the objective (science, geography, technique) and the subjective (taste, pleasure, consumption). Befitting his origins, McInerney's writing brims with literary metaphor. Bordeaux is Tolstoy; Burgundy, Turgenev; Cote Rotie is Fitzgerald; Hermitage, Hemingway.^B When those comparisons fail, movies and music come to his aid. Although McInerney holds French wines as the standard, his vision of the widening wine world ranges from South America to South Africa, New York to New Zealand. McInerney appreciates the connectedness of wine and food. He advocates pairing German Rieslings with spicy Mexican and Asian cuisines. Nevertheless, he senses that Italy's rich, complex Amarone overwhelms food with its multiple muscular echoings of fruits and flowers. McInerney's unfussy prose and his celebration of lesser-known wines make him one of the most transparent of wine writers. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Education With Humor
This is a fabulous book for wine lovers, from beginners to connoisseurs. The series of vignettes are funny and very informative. We're pretty far along with wine, but we learned a lot of great stuff while being entertained. It's a book you want to give all your wine-loving friends for Christmas.

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Reviewed by Joyce Sparrow

Onophiles and grocery store wine shoppers will do well breaking out an atlas to follow the world-wide wine adventures of fiction writer and House and Garden wine columnist Jay McInerney as he travels from California to France and many European stops to learn more about the enjoyment of wine. Readers will want a note pad and pencil at their sides to jot down McInerney's many wine suggestions.

These 52 essays show the knowledge McInerney has gained since his early years in Syracuse, New York where, as a graduate student in writing, he spent many hours as a clerk at the local cordial shop, which he refers to as a boozeteria, two miles from Syracuse University. In between frequent customers and a few armed robberies, McInerney spent many of his shifts reading the shop owner's viticulture books. Later in his career as a novelist, he was given a chance to write the House and Garden wine column, which led to his opportunity to learn the details behind how some of the best wines and wineries came to be. His column continues today.

Foremost, McInerney is a storyteller who entertains readers with tales about his wine discoveries. Many of the essays take the confusion out of wine pairing. "Odd Couples" explains how Champagne goes well with most Japanese food. In "What to Drink with Chocolate" McInerney finds the best wine to pair with chocolate. "Fish Stories from Le Bernadin" proves eight out of ten sea creatures prefer white wine to red. McInerney captures the culture of the vineyards and relays the history of wines from the Catholic monks to present day viticulturists.

Much to his credit, McInerney downplays his growing expertise to reach the common wine drinker. He offers advice on how to impress the restaurant sommelier and even offers guidance on the correct pronunciation of the word: some-el-yay.

Overall, this collection provides a fun education for the average person who enjoys an occasional glass of really good wine.

Armchair Interviews says: Recommended for the novice and expert wine drinker alike.

One for the spit bucket
"Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well but you are surprised to find it done at all."-Samuel Johnson

I want to get one thing straight before I begin: I wouldn't know Jay McInerny from Hugh McElhenny, so I don't want anyone to think that this review is colored by my previous experience with McInerny as a novelist or anything else. I understand this book is a compilation of short articles he wrote for the magazine House & Garden over a five-year span in the early part of this decade, although there are no dates on individual entries. That's too bad, because in 2007 there's virtually nothing new in the entire book, and if it turned out he wrote them all, let's say, in the period between 2000-2001, at least we'd know he was blazing some new ground at the time and it just took the rest of us a while to catch up. Instead I would describe the net effect as a romp through very well trodden territory with a half-baked, way-too-clever-for-his-own-good guide.

In the introduction, McInerny informs us that he came by his gig at House and Garden by accident, when a friend and editor suggested he combine his growing passion for the grape with his writing. Hence the Johnson quote above- should we be impressed that a novelist knows anything about wine, or perhaps go with the flow and quote Maximus from Gladiator, dripping blood in the center of the arena and shouting, "are you not entertained?"

My standard-bearer in this genre is Gerald Asher, who for 30 years has written brilliantly incisive articles about wine in Gourmet (The Pleasures of Wine). I know Gerald Asher, at least his wine writing, and Jay McInerny, Sir, is no Gerald Asher.

I'm going to begin my serious critique with the most nitpicky of comments. I hate typos and errata in books about wine. Maybe no one can tell when typos occur in a novel. But they are well nigh inexcusable in any work where people are theoretically relying on the author for accuracy and a minimal level of expertise. I refuse to accept the claim that a wine writer of any caliber understands his subject if he can't spell a place name right or spend the time to proofread, even if he once identified a bottle of '82 Haut Brion blind. Here are just two examples (curiously, both blunders I noticed relate to Italy, which, like Rome, seems to be where many unskilled wine gladiators go to die.) (1) Gamberro or Gambero? The famous Italian wine guide Gambero Rosso is spelled both ways within two pages. (2) Somewhere he refers to the town of Spoleto but it's written Spoleta, which is doubly unfortunate because it actually has nothing to do with wine-it's an Umbrian town famous for its annual classical music festival, also mirrored in Charleston, SC. My point is, what else in here is a trap for people who think he's trustworthy? Were these names misspelled in the magazine and someone just hit the copy and paste key? On a related note, why is a chapter entitled "The Maserati of Champagne" not placed in a section of the book called "Bubbles and Spirits?" The whole effort comes across as casual, superficial and sloppy, like maybe he was still drunk while he was writing and never went back for a fact check-hell, it's not a novel, after all.

But the two main reasons I found myself increasingly wincing as he pranced along were more significant. First, I suppose it goes with the territory, but I have to say I found his frequent use of metaphors, especially literary ones, both pretentious and unreliable. There are multiple references to wines as sports cars, including Maserati (see above), Ferrari and Mercedes-never linked to the country of the wine's origin- but unfortunately no steady, dependable Civics that can give you a lot of mileage for everyday consumption. Different first-growth Bordeaux are stylistically Turgenevs, Tolstoys and Dostoyevskys-at least he can spell them right-though I have no idea what he's talking about. A poor South African winemaker is described as "the gruff Charles Barkley-sized black sheep of the family," which is such an unintentionally inappropriate and hilarious analogy I had to include it even if it doesn't refer to a wine. I can't wait for his book on basketball.

Which brings me to the final complaint. Perhaps the book's most annoying feature is the seemingly random perspective the individual essays take relative to the reader's presumed knowledge of wine. I'm sure many will have already decided I'm an unrepentant geek of some kind because I don't appreciate the wit and accessibility on display here, or that I'm focusing on the bad instead of the good, but I would think that McInerny owes it to his readers to talk to them at a consistent level instead of a voice that's literally and figuratively all over the map. From one paragraph or essay to another he either speaks to the audience in an instructive and engaging tone like he was the grand prize in a "win an evening with Jay McInerny" winetasting sweepstakes for H&G subscribers, or he prattles on with the most abstruse, incomprehensible name-dropping drivel about wines that only a billionaire can afford.

Just to show this is a balanced review, I will credit the author for trying to sprinkle most essays with a few recommended examples of whatever he's talking about. When exploring the wide world of wine, we all need someone we can Lichine on, and if you want to, you can Lichine on he. Although I hate to see it in print, I must also give him credit for outing the fabulous though increasingly expensive wines of Montefalco's Paolo Bea.

I'm about done here. My recommendation would be for you to try to read a few of the short chapters before you buy this book to see if it hits the mark for you. But if I were writing in the clever McInerny style, I'd be compelled to return to my opening and say something like, while Hugh McElhinney made it into the football Hall of Fame, this book is going into my wine writing hall of shame