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What Makes Bianca Bosker A Cork Dork?

Bianca Bosker Cork Dork for ONS Clothing

The world of wine is similar to filing tax returns—it’s something best left to professionals. Isn’t life just too short to learn all the different grape varieties, etiquette, and flowery French terms we’ve heard tossed around from wannabe sommeliers? Pick a bottle, cross your fingers, and go. Bianca Bosker thinks otherwise. The once-upon-a-time professional tech journalist (and casual drinker) discovered the world of wine where taste reigns supreme and dedicated her time to the pursuit of notes and flavor. Her NY Times Bestseller book CORK DORK follows her quest through underground tasting groups and exclusive New York City restaurants to answer the question on everyone’s mind: What makes that wine so special? We got the chance to ask Ms. Bosker a few questions about her adventure on becoming a certified sommelier. Read on below.

Starting off, your book CORK DORK recently debuted as a New York Bestseller, congrats! Can you tell us a little bit about the concept behind the book?

I used to be the sort of casual drinker who spends Saturday nights agonizing between bottled and boxed wine, not Burgundy and Bordeaux. But when I discovered this world of elite sommeliers and flavor fanatics—aka “cork dorks”—I was hooked. These people lick rocks to train their palates, divorce spouses so they’ll have more time to study soil types, and spend their days off at high-stakes competitions that are essentially the Westminster Dog Show, with booze. I’ve always been obsessed with obsession, and I became fixated on understanding what drives these cork dorks. Why wine? Was it all B.S.? Or was I missing out one of life’s ultimate pleasures?

I also quickly realized that these tasters had the sort of super-senses I associate with bomb-sniffing German Shepherds, and my curiosity became a more personal concern. At that point, I’d spent five years working as the tech editor for an online website. And I realized while these cork dorks lived a life of sensory cultivation, I lived a life of sensory deprivation, all screens and websites. That made me wonder what I might be missing—in a glass of wine, at the table, and in life. So I set out to figure out what that was.  I quit my job as the executive tech editor at The Huffington Post, started over as a “cellar rat”—the lowest of the low in the wine world—and from there started training to become a sommelier.

“I’ve always been obsessed with obsession, and I became fixated on understanding what drives these cork dorks.”

Bianca Bosker Cork Dork for ONS Clothing

We love that you have such a fun approach to an industry that has a rep for being a bit pompous. What led you to the world of professional wine drinking?

As I spent more and more time with sommeliers—drinking at late hours in their apartments, honing my palate in exclusive blind tasting groups, being hazed in the art of spitting—I grew fascinated by a subculture I didn’t see reflected in anything I’d seen or read about wine. For a beverage that’s ostensibly all about pleasure, the current generation of sommeliers, or “somms,” puts themselves through an astonishing amount of pain.

I think that’s part of what makes CORK DORK different. The wine industry tends to paint a very fairytale portrait of itself—it’s exceedingly generous with the romance and tradition. With CORK DORK, I was determined to pull back the curtain on parts of the wine world that are rarely explored—to probe the soul of wine and the science, the high and the low. And what I ultimately found is that the reality of wine connoisseurship is far more interesting (and complex) than the romantic, even sanitized version most people encounter. Less a journey from grape to glass, mine was a journey from grape to gullet that went everywhere from Michelin-starred restaurants and extravagant wine “orgies,” to neuroscientists’ labs and mass-market wine factories.

“I gave up coffee, perfume, scented laundry detergent, brushing my teeth at certain times of the day, any liquids above a room temperature, extra salt, and, of course, daytime sobriety.”

For those who may not know, how would you describe the job of a sommelier? And what goes into becoming one?

In the most basic sense, sommeliers buy wines for a restaurant, then sell and serve them to guests. But the most talented among them are also creators in their own right, using wine, language, setting, psychology, and the senses to craft a singular experience, through liquid in a glass. Much more than cork pullers, they are storytellers.

The sommeliers who inspired me also treat wine less as a job than a way of life, and the process of reaching their upper echelons can make law school look like a relative cheap, easy walk in the park. They’ll train with voice coaches, memory experts, sports psychologists, and take dance lessons to learn to move more gracefully across the floor. They work long hours late into the night, practically seven days a week—then spend their precious few off hours reviewing flashcards, cramming from wine textbooks, or blind tasting. There’s also a decent amount of self-deprivation that goes into it. Per the palate-training advice I got from my somm mentors, for example, I gave up coffee, perfume, scented laundry detergent, brushing my teeth at certain times of the day, any liquids above a room temperature, extra salt, and, of course, daytime sobriety.

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What were you doing before you started your journey to become a sommelier?

Back then, I’d spent five years at The Huffington Post as the executive tech editor. I was what cork dorks call a “civilian”—an outsider, a rank amateur, who didn’t deserve to join the sanctum sanctorum of their tasting groups or work the floor. Which is exactly what I wanted to do. So I had to earn it. Just to give you a sense of how intense it is: I finally gained admission into a blind tasting group run by aspiring Master Sommeliers—a sort of secret society hiding in plain sight at one of New York’s top restaurants—under one strict condition: given my level, I could taste the wines and observe them tasting, but I couldn’t speak.

If we’re being honest, choosing a wine can be pretty intimidating. You’re at a restaurant holding a list of 100 wines, the sommelier roles around and you panic! Any tips on working with the sommelier and finding the perfect wine?

Many diners treat the wine list as a multiple choice exam where they have to settle on the “right” answer by the time their sommelier comes back to the table. But when I went out to eat with my sommelier friends, I found the more they knew about wine, the less specific they often were when ordering wine. If they trusted the sommelier, they’d provide her with just two pieces of information: what they wanted to spend, and what flavors they desired. The latter could be as specific as “I had a superb Scar of the Sea Chardonnay the other day—what do you have like that?” or as vague as “I like white wines that taste like grass.” The somm, who knows the list better than a guest ever could, guides them from there.

If you could put a number on it, what’s the most we should spend on a bottle of wine?

What a question—that totally depends! If you can afford to go big—well, hey, life is short. But if your budget is more in the range of a hardcover book, you can still drink well.

Bianca Bosker Cork Dork for ONS Clothing

You’re also pretty active on social media, especially on Instagram. Where did the idea for #Pairdevil come from?

Unfortunately, wine still strikes many drinkers like the snooty aristocrat of alcohols. They see it as this elite indulgence best reserved for special occasions—an anniversary or steak dinner, not a Wednesday night. But I think of wine as something that can make occasions special. My goal with #pairdevil was to make wine more fun, less intimidating, and more approachable by providing inspiration for pairing wines with the food we actually eat real life, slovenly as it might be. Hence me showcasing wines to pair with everything from Shake Shack to Ramen Cup of Noodles. (I post a new #pairdevil every Wednesday—check it out on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.) I also find that even the most confident people often turn to mush when it comes time to pick out a wine. And I wanted to put my hangovers, flashcard memorization, and the unspeakable things I did to my liver in the name of my somm training to good use.

Do you have any other projects we should look out for?

There are so many more stories about wine I still plan to tackle and tell. My research for CORK DORK inspired countless questions and turned up numerous avenues that I’ve been steadily exploring in pieces for outlets like The New Yorker online and Food & Wine. I just wrote a story called “Is Terroir Real?” for example, and another on sexism in wine and my experience as a woman breaking into the good-ol’-boys club.


Bianca Bosker is the author of the New York Times bestseller CORK DORK: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste, out now from Penguin Books.

 

If you liked this story, check out more in our Urban Transplants issue.


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