We're just days away from the official release of a fascinating new wine guide from the duo behind the website WineFolly.com, Madeline Puckette and Justin Hammack. The book, whose official title is Wine Folly: the Essential Guide to Wine, contains 230 pages of maps, infographics, and helpful insights into the obscure mysterious mystefying virtually impenetrable quasi-impenetrable subject of wine, that will teach you what you need to know so that the sommelier doesn't take you for a rube and your dinner date doesn't take you for a pretentious asshat.
A sommelier herself (certified by the Court of Master Sommeliers, no less), Puckette won the "wine blogger of the year" title at the International Wine & Spirits Competition in 2013. She's also a graphic designer who brings a welcome intellectual rigor to her presentations. And if you find the editorial restraints of the book a bit limiting, just go online (winefolly.com). Now, we don't all absorb information in the same way, so this book isn't going to make you an instant wine expert, but it will help you take a big step in the right direction: practical information (maps, serving tips) that could help your confidence in the wine shop or at the dinner table.
Many things to admire here, not the least of which is that Puckette organizes the book by grape variety (not "varietal") rather than by growing region (not "terroir"). So the next time you see a wine made from unfamiliar grapes (like Torrontes, like Mencia), just flip open this book and you'll get a crash course.
Ten years ago, nobody knew who Paul Clarke was. Hell, Paul Clarke barely knew. Bored, slightly buzzed, "On May 16, 2005, instead of putting on a movie or goofing around online or frittering away my time in some other unproductive way, I decided on a different alternative."
And here's where it led. Earlier this summer, by now Seattle's best-known writer about spirits, Paul Clarke, published a handsome volume called Cocktail Chronicles. Clarke too is an award-winning blogger (2014 Best Cocktail & Spirits Writer); his book is an approachable guide to the cocktail renaissance. "It's not, he insists, "a lab manual for taking the cocktail experience to a molecular level." Nor is it an historical monograph tracing the details of our forebears as they developed and mixed the drinks we enjoy today.
Instead, The Cocktail Chronicles is a collection of approachable, and easily replicable drinks that all share the same thing: a common deliciousness. Clarke's motto: "Cocktails should be fun."
And he enjoys Negronis! The beauty of bitter! No fewer than 11 recipes, from the straight gin+Campari+vermouth to variations with Suze or Prosecco,.Aperol or Cynar in the place of of Campari. I'm a traditionalist myself, but have no problem if a duly licensed mixologist decides to issue a license to an Agavoni (reposada tequila) or a Kingston (rum). It's not the mixologist's job to pass moral judgment.
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