The History of the World in 6 Glasses

I read this book called the History of the World in 6 Glasses a while back and didn't bother writing about it, but I find myself quoting it almost daily and still thinking about it all the time. That's the sign of a fabulous work of non-fiction.

Imagine you want to get together with some friends and shoot the shit and socialize about the latest sports or gossip about work or maybe even spy members of the opposite sex who are doing the same at the table just a few feet from you. So you get everyone together and you get to your watering hole and order a pitcher of beer. Clink your glasses together to symbolize you're all sharing a human experience and burn a night blowing off steam and just being yourself for once. It's nearly four thousand years ago in Mesopotamia.

That's what this book does for its readers: it connects us to our history and humanity and shows us where we're going. And it reads like Tom Standage is in such awe of his subject manner that he really can't believe no one has ever bothered to write this book before him.

I love, love, love this book. It reaffirms my faith in humanity and what I'm doing as a beverage connoisseur.

I Basically Want to Be Jon Taffer

People ask me a lot why I make videos about drinking and why I want to continue my wine, beer, and spirits education and why I have a wine club and a cocktail club. I usually say something about how this generation's lifestyle, one where we're pushing back having kids if we have them at all, one where we are the first true beneficiaries of globalization, is probably the first able to enjoy some of the finest things in life. And I believe that. But the truth to why I'm so interested in drinks culture is because I want to be Jon Taffer.

Jon Taffer is a bar consultant. His Wikipedia says he lives in my hometown, Los Angeles, but I swear I've heard him say he calls Las Vegas home in an episode of his show, Bar Rescue. I love Bar Rescue. It's essentially Extreme Makeover for bars, but it goes into taste profiles, the mechanics of crowds, and even the science of service. Between the participants' shouting matches and tears, I often learn something worth knowing. And Taffer's quote during the show's credits, "I don't embrace excuses; I embrace solutions," is a golden mantra anyone can incorporate into a private victory.

The beverage world is an exciting place. Jon Taffer is one of its heroes.

I work almost exclusively with restaurants and bars, and I often wish I were in a more educational position where bar owners and managers would listen to me more effectively. But Jon Taffer shows us that even the people who have ostensibly paid him to educate them are rarely willing to admit that they might not know everything and just listen. He has to vituperate and cajole just to get heard!

Still, I wish I had his job. Someday I'll be as good as he is. Maybe I'll even have my own show.

I Loved Need for Speed and I'm not Afraid to Admit It

I'm not a gamer. The last console I owned was a Game Cube, and I loved it. And I still love video games, but there comes a time in a man's life when he has to prioritize what he spends time on. The last game I remember playing religiously was one where you souped up a car, got it painted with racing stripes and installed ground effects, and then raced it against outlaws and cops through city streets. It was called Need for Speed. It's a Top Gun reference.

It was kind of like a racing-game-cum-role-playing-game themed after the Fast and Furious movies. I love the Fast and Furious movies. Their chase scenes make the one in Bullit and the French Connection look like grandpas on go-karts. They make the Dukes of Hazzard look like Grumpy Old Men.They play it fast and loose with the laws of physics and even faster and looser with the laws of man and the sanctity of human life, all while playing up a fantasy world filled with exotic cars and exotic women who are hot, sassy, dangerous, and in desperate need of a good man to steer them straight. These films aren't the basest form of entertainment, but they come close, and I have very low tastes... especially when it comes to pure escapism reminiscent of what I loved as as kid.

Aaron Paul is a good actor. Everyone loves him from Breaking Bad, and if you loved him there, you'll love him here. He has to be good because the story here is ridiculous. It's basically Top Gun with super-cars. But it's no more ridiculous than Game of Thrones, and everyone's eating that crap up, so turn off your brain and watch the cars fly. Basically, I laughed, tensed up during the chases/races, cracked up laughing again, and had a great time with this movie. I wish they'd somehow write Aaron Paul into Fast 7 to take the late Paul Walker's spot. I wish the filmmakers would disregard the critical reviews of this movie and make ten more right in a row. I wish I had an Xbox or something so I could play Need for Speed right now!

I Read Making Sense of Wine

I read a book by Matt Kramer recently called Making Sense of Wine and thought it was quite good. It's hard to find a decent, readable book about one of my favorite topics, so it's refreshing to have stumbled upon this one on Audible.com. Most wine books read like the driest textbooks you ever encountered in grade school; thus very few are on Audible. They are unlistenable.

Matt Kramer is famous in the wine world, having written for Wine Spectator for so many years, and this book showcases his talent in a way that would please wine n00bs and l33t drinkers alike.

What I liked: 

• Exploring the notion of connoisseurship in order to give the reader a context and a why when it comes to geeking out about wine. It's almost like "we're about to get really nerdy about wine, and here's why that's OK."
• He puts things in an historical context without getting boring about it. Honestly, the history of wine is one of the most fascinating things about it, despite wine people's best efforts to make it tedious, so it's great that Matt Kramer is able to make history interesting and relevant to the reader.
• This line: "It's not a good buy if the wine in the bottle has already said au revoir." The whole book would be worth reading for that line. Cracked me up.

What I didn't:

• The recipes in the book were graciously kept for the end, but I felt they were pretty unnecessary except to please a publisher who thought they couldn't get away with putting the book in the food/cooking section of the bookstore without them. It would have been more interesting to talk about food pairings in a geographical setting, e.g., "they eat a lot of big, fatty cheeses in France with their tannic Cab's, and they eat a lot of unctuous meats with their Rioja's in Spain."  But there's really no need to go into exact recipes when it comes to wine. If I ever wrote a book about wine, and I thought a certain dish would go well with a certain varietal, I'd just say Google this or that.