Passion on the Vine, by Sergio Esposito
This is a book about wine and food. And then some. And then some more.
There can be little doubt that Esposito is a very good writer. He also loves wine and food – Italian wine and Italian food, to be precise. He wants to bring Italian wine to the world stage, and he wants to introduce the world to the Italian way of life, and I think he does a fine job of both.
If this book were set in Spain, I would immediately buy 10 copies for my friend CP, so that as she wore them out one by one, there would be replacements. As it is, I’ll buy her 1 copy and she will LOVE it. I liked it, but I didn’t really love it.
Confession #1: I’m not a “foodie”. I don’t like to cook, I don’t like to grocery shop, and I rarely know or care what kind of cheese I’m eating. when I read a medieval book like Game of Thrones, where the authors love to include entire paragraphs listing out the food dishes that are being served at big events, I literally skip right over to the next paragraph because I find long, description paragraphs about food tedious and kind of boring (Sorry GoT food fans!). By the 3rd or 4th chapter of Passion, I felt a bit the same way. I’ll wait a moment for the food lovers to pick themselves up off the floor …… By the end, every chapter seemed like just another repeat of the last chapter(s) and I had lost interest in the (beautifully written) descriptions of what they ate and how they cooked it.
Confession #2: I like to drink wine, I like the taste of wine, I like big earthy reds and crisp flavourful whites. But I am a very poor taster of wine, if I am judging myself by modern-day standards. I can never taste what other people taste (until someone says “there’s a note of black cherry” at which point I realize “yes, yes there IS a note of black cherry!). So a book that covers the assorted tasting notes of a couple dozen Italian wines is not the best fit for me. That said, I do have to give Esposito some credit for bringing wine tasting back to what we would call First Principles in math, which is to say experiencing the wine, savouring its complexity and connection to the land rather than reducing the wine to its individual flavours and aromas.
Rating: For foodies and wine connoisseurs, this is definitely a book for you! For everyone else, let’s order some pizza and open a nice bottle of Chianti.
Okay, good thing I was in bed reading this or I would have fallen on the floor. Not because of any GoT stuff, but because you are such a food appreciator and always make a big fuss about anything I cook. I need to read this book. Please lend me your copy. If I drool on the page or cover it with spaghetti sauce splats I will definitely replace it.
I love good food (and you make really good food), but I don’t want to cook it and I definitely don’t want to read how it’s made. Here’s something you don’t know about me … reading menus at fancy restaurants drives me NUTS!!! The descriptions don’t really move me, and honestly I don’t even know what most of the words mean. Sometimes I order items simply because they have the most words I recognize hahaha!!