It is a must-read for anyone who is interested in wine, whether you are a seasoned expert or a novice.

That I am a sack of water and organs that’s going to be here on the Earth for eighty years if I’m lucky. In this book, readers will follow Bianca Bosker, a journalist taking a year and a half journey to learn and live the life of wine.

Bosker flexes her journalism background as she educates her reader on how restaurants came to be, what the first sommeliers were like, and how our bodies interact with smell and taste. Eventually, Bosker passed her sommelier exam, proving wine can be mastered and understood with dedication. With boundless curiosity, humour and a healthy dose of scepticism, Bosker takes the reader inside underground tasting groups, exclusive New York City restaurants, mass-market wine factories and even a neuroscientist’s fMRI machine as she attempts to answer the most nagging question of all: what’s the big deal about wine? She held her breath as she watched Véronique Rivest, the first female finalist in the World’s Best Sommelier Competition.

We drink wine, enjoy wine, and attend wine tastings when we get the chance, but liking and enjoying wine is far different than knowing wine.But Bianca Bosker’s book stands out as being spectacularly successful in teaching us about wine, in making us love wine, and in presenting a tone of unfailing good humor. As a successful journalist, she decided to take a hiatus from her to dedicate an entire year to becoming a Master Sommelier. The book starts with Bosker's introduction to the world of wine, in which she describes her initial encounters with wine and her lack of knowledge and understanding of it. Intellectually, we know that they have a useful function and are a cheerful adaptation in a complex ecosystem. A few of them would go on to take the exams that would see them become Master Sommeliers, the top of the sommelier pyramid.