Book Review: He Said Beer, She Said Wine

I recently received a review copy of He Said Beer, She Said Wine and was really excited to get into it. I love wine, and usually have a dozen or so bottles at any given time. I try to run the gamut, having everything from sweet Riesling and Dry Gewurtztraminer to robust Cabernet and Syrah. A lot of my friends, however, are into beer (and scotch, but that's another story). Usually the only beer I have in my house is the Corona I like, the Guiness my husband likes, and whatever said friends have left behind from their last visit. In fact, there's a bottle of Chimay in the fridge door, and a few other miscellaneous bottles that roll around in the produce drawers.
      (Don't fret, I have produce, I just don't keep most of it in the refrigerator!)

After the above confession, I wouldn't be too surprised if author who covered the beer-half of the book (Sam Calagione, who bears a passing resemblance to David Duchovny) were to come here and bash me over the head with a hefty bottle of XX Bitter Golden Ale. I was looking forward to a crash course in beer varieties without my head exploding like a Heinekin left in the hot sun.

So the first impression of this book is made by the gorgeous food photography. I could lick the pages. I sat down with the book after dinner a couple nights, and found my self hungry again. And thirsty: the beverages are photographed in well-lit glassware appropriate to the contents. Also, the design of the book in general is, for lack of a better word, cute, and I don't mean that disparagingly. The pages that talk about fish pairings are bordered with fishnet. The cheese pages are bordered with woodgrain, to invoke a cheeseboard. The page numbers are adorned with either beer bottlecaps or rings of wine-stain (which is a curious choice), or both bottlecaps and stains, to indicate whether the page discusses either or both. A final note on the design, which you might find petty, is that the body copy is in a fine-lined sans-serif font, (which means straight lines and curves, without embellishment, like this), instead of a serif font (that has little thingamajigs on the ends of each line, like this). To me, the sans-serif font makes it sort of difficult to read on paper. I'm not even 40 and I found myself squinting. I'll forgo critique of the myriad of font choices, because only a handful of people will feel the same pain.

Next, to the characters: Marnie and Sam each have impressive resumes, and each is extremely qualified to handle his/her section. Marnie is pictured in plain-yet-elegant dresses with a smart haircut (my hair will never lay that flat!). She looks like she'd have a great laugh. Sam is shown in untucked, spread-collar shirts and dockers, looking very much like the kind of guy who'd be as comfortable tending bar as bellying up to one. I mean this in a good way. The book is based, of course, on the He-Says-She-Says of which libation is more appropriate for a given food, and that feeling seasons each section.

On to the content! we start with a "primer" for each beverage. How they came to be, what they're made from, and the ingredients and techniques used to produce the individuality of each drink. Well done, and very appropriate for a newbie or a not-so-seasoned afficionado.

Then, they go food-by-food, picking out a couple items from each genre (for spicy foods, they choose chorizo, kung pao chicken, jambalaya...you get the idea) and pair those choices with wines and beers. Throughout, there are graphs and charts and tables and grids, and that gives the impression of a textbook. I think that many people appreciate an graphical approach than column after column of dry text. Even though they DO include that archaic tongue map. Twice. (sigh)

The part of the book that does the least for me is the "Which Drink Wins" section that follows each food category. Each author says a paragraph extolling the virtues of his or her preferred drink, while degrading that of the other. Here's one of the first examples. The following transcription is truncated, I grant you, but it sounds like a playground argument of "my dad can beat up your dad".
      Marnie: ...there's a reason we have 'wine and cheese' parties and not 'beer and cheese' parties.
      Sam: we DO have beer and cheese parties. What do you serve with pizza... Pizza is nothing more than a giant melted cheese sandwich.
      Marnie: We're talking about real cheese, not 'cheez' with a 'z'.
Also, esoteric as it may be, I will mention that I felt the layout of this feature is dizzying. Bold, all-caps, serif, sans-serif, script font, headline fonts...the typographer must have been drinking both beer AND wine when setting this one up. Again, I'm sure I'm in the minority of people who even notice.

The last part is The Great Debate At Home, which includes recipes and specific beverage selections, as well as detailed instructions as to how to do your own side-by-side evaluation.

Actually the REAL last part is the makeup -slash- confession by each author that maybe (wine/beer) is not the end-all be-all of beverages, and that perhaps a good (beer/wine) does have its place at the table.

So what's my final verdict? I feel it serves its pupose excellently... provided its purpose is to give someone a more-than-basic overview of how to match foods and wines. Take away the debate and the textbook aspect, and I'd be inclined to see this as a coffee-table book, something to be paged through casually while ogling the food porn and making you lust for a glass of something... anything... But with those essential parts, you get a fun, uncomplicated and very approachable book that will do its best to encourage you to be more adventurous with what you eat & drink.

I might even have to crack open that Chimay to enjoy with the roast beef I'll be having for dinner!

Review: Jancis Robinson's Wine Course

Netflix: Jancis Robinson's Wine Course

Just watched this 2-disc DVD, and it was very interesting and quite entertaining. It's slightly out of date (pre-sideways, it raves about merlot!) I confess that Jancis grated on my nerves for the first episode, but by the end, I would happily sit down to a glass of wine or twelve with her!

...and I'm lusting after a French Sauvignon Blanc called Asteroïde. At over $1000 a bottle, I don't think it's going to be a satisfied lust, but hey, if all my dreams were attainable, what would I have to look forward to? Not to mention, I'd happily sit down with it's maker, Didier Daguenau. 20 minutes with a pair of scissors (and maybe a nice shirt? //giggle//) and he'd be teh hotness. How could you not want to spend time with someone who thinks like this:

"I make wine to give people pleasure. I sell happiness. It's a good job to be in. I want my wine to be a good moment in people's lives. It's like good food, beautiful music, a beautiful painting. I think that wine should be considered as art in the same way as painting or music. Unfortunately there are not many who think like that. Often they've inherited their vineyard. It's not a trade they have chosen, or if they have chosen it, it's because they think they can make a lot of money. In my opinion, 80% of growers are thick. Of the 20% that are left are the people that work because they to achieve something good... something well made to please people. Often these people are loners because they upset others because they do something different. But they are the ones that are close to the truth."

Oh yeah, and he says this all in French....swoon...

People wax poetic about his methods, technique and the intensity of this wine. Not bad for a wine varietal that most people associate with cat pee.

Whoops! I left a blog in the draft!

I reviewed "Educating Peter" by Lettie Teague but I left it in the drafts section of my blog. So please click & check it out!

Last thing I ate or drank: thai iced tea with rice milk... which by the way, it curdles! It tastes better with sweetened condensed milk, so although rice milk and splenda are a perversion, it's satisfying the craving.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink in Los Angeles

Book Review: "Educating Peter" by Lettie Teague

The full title of this book is Educating Peter: How I Taught a Famous Movie Critic the Difference Between Cabernet and Merlot or How Anybody Can Become an (Almost) Instant Wine Expert

I will cheat, just a teensy bit, by posting an excerpt from the amazon page:

Lettie Teague knows wine. She has been the wine editor at Food & Wine magazine for almost a decade. After many years of fielding these questions, Lettie was determined to debunk the myth that learning about wine is hard. She decided to find just one wine idiot and teach him a few fundamentals -- how to order off a restaurant wine list without fear, approach a wine merchant with confidence, and perhaps even score a few points off a wine snob.

If you're so inclined, you can also listen to the Splendid Table interview, which you can find here OK, now that you know the gist, I will offer my opinion, which is why Ms. Teague's people graciously sent me this book: to review it and post it on this blog.

I loved this book. I read it through voraciously, sometimes up to two hours at a sitting while I waited for the rest of the world (well, my world) to wake up. Big pot of hazelnut coffee, spa-type waffle robe, flip-flops, and this book, outside on my back patio. I felt as though I should have been taking notes. As I read it again, I plan to have a pen and paper handy. (and dammit, I have a no-renew-because-there's-a-waiting-list book checked out.)

The book is fun, although as a read a passage out loud to my friend, he said, "it sounds like someone ran it through a thesaurus and replaced all the normal words with longer words, so it sounds more impressive," which is kind of accurate, (I don't think the average reader should have to pull out a dictionary (or dictionary.com) to comprehend a book like this, but beyond that i thought it was a fun read.

Anyway, yeah, it's a keeper, and very well worth the price of admission, if you consider that you'll have learned several tricks to avoid bad wine that you'd otherwise pour down the sink. And it's also good to have a few good wine-drinking terms up your sleeve for tossing around at dinner!

My only comment would be that I'd have liked to see her talk about how to actually drink wine before the very last chapter. It sounds as though she let that poor Peter go around like a dolt until he got to the restaurants.


Last thing I ate or drank:

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink in Los Angeles