Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking: Uncork your Creative Juices
89 out of 100

Published Friday, December 2, 2011

Overview

New York Times author Michael J. Gelb, with this book, claims to ‘open our eyes to the remarkable power of wine to unleash creative potential, awaken our genius and forge bonds with friends and co-workers’. This is a fantastic description, I liked the idea of drinking and musing, which the book is sort of about. The book is a meandering introduction to wine and a history of wine and art, with a healthy dose of quotes and poetry.
I don’t believe it has helped me uncork my creative juices, but may give others an opportunity to explore wines and other people’s creative musings on wine. The book is full of quotes and poetry on wine and may be a soft introduction to wine for those who enjoy this type of thing.
The book starts by looking at how the left and right hand brain works. He tempts us with ideas of drinking wine and producing poetry but this part sounds more like the beginning of an infomercial than something truly useful. While Michael often talks about wine and poetry to be creative, his practical guide on this is very short and comes near the end of the book
The wine section guides you through a fairly standard introduction to tasting and understanding wine. Michael is a true name dropper, rattling off vintages and producers that he likes. These come in waves of names and vintages, that are too deep and fast to be useful, especially as an audio book where you can’t underline or make references. But, I am deeply suspicious of name droppers, which I usually assume is a smoke screen, a way of saying look at how clever I am, and makes the listener feel out of the loop. This is especially true for the book’s intended audience of wine newbies or those with limited knowledge.
The book is full of historical references to wine and he does refer significantly to Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci both of whom he has written about in the past. That’s not to say that some of his historical references are not interesting, it’s just that it is more a book of historical wine drinkers and the social conviviality than understanding how the brain can be altered in a creative way with wine.
His wine and food combinations are a collection of classical combinations which I think pretty much sum up the book. He talks with great verbose about the delights of food and wine and lists many combinations that he has enjoyed. But referring to a long list of vintages and food is great, but without a nub of understanding why they work it is in effect a collection of foods and wines that go well, sadly there are too many to remember.
He also rattles off some of the more famous paintings which at best have a tenuous link to wine. I spent nearly an hour looking up the images he refers to which in an audio book is slow going and does not translate well in audio. Similarly he lists wine-inspired music and architecture which lack any of the content that would help understand why the wines influenced the work.
At times he uses a faux English accent so wide of the mark and almost comical in it absurdness, but he does have a great quote in the glossary of British wine terms that made me snort with laughter. He describes wine the English would class as ‘frightfully immature’ as a wine that Americans and Australians might consider properly aged and ready to drink. This might ring true amongst some wine snobs?
What I found disappointing was the promise to help make the reader more creative with wine, but in the end it was more a basic introduction to wine with lots of wine poetry, art and music. If the book had been more honest about this rather than slapping a title on the front that is doesn’ t live up to, I think I would have enjoyed it more.

As a introduction to wine and the history of wine and art it is very good. As a book that helps you uncork your creative juices, it is a failure. So in deciding on the rating for this book I have ignored what it says it is about and focus on what it delivers. A wordy introduction to wine, and wine art.



I rate this book 89 out of 100