Wine can be a fascinating hobby, and if you are interested in wines beside as a way to wash away your pizza there is a lot to learn.

Jay McInerney is a well-known American novelist, perhaps most famous for his 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City. From the mid-1990s, McInerney started writing a wine colums. These columns have been collected in two volumes, Bacchus and Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar (2000) and A hedonist in the cellar. Adventures in wine (2006).

A hedonist in the cellar. Adventures in wine is not a book for beginners. To enjoy the book, you should already have a very firm grasp of the various varieties of grapes, and a lot of wine terminology. Otherwise, it will be too difficult to grasp the basic meaning of the book.

Another consideration is that before reading the book, you should make up your mind about how seriously interested you are in wine. Basically, the wines discussed in the book are wines which most readers will never drink. Unless you want to read the book merely as an entertainment, completely separate from your wine drinking experience, readers who would like to use the book as a guide to knowing what to drink should realize that all wines in the book will set you back at least 20 USD a bottle, and many will costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

Obviously, Jay McInerney developed his expertise in only a few years. As a writer for a magazine, he must have enjoyed wonderful opportunities of being invited or sent out to vineyards and go to tastings, interview owners or vineyards and offered unique bottles of wine. Particularly helpful in this was Julian Barnes, who, as we learn is an aficionado of great wines and generously shares these with his friends. In the same circles, McInerney also makes personal acquaintance with Jancis Robinson, a well-known British wine critics.

A great advantage of reading the book nowadays is the ability to look up all wines mentioned in the book on websites or apps such as "Wine Searcher". Such apps or web sites can provide more detailed information about the vintage and other details of the wines described in the book.

A hedonist in the cellar. Adventures in wine is very entertaining. Unlike most critics, who merely spew unintelligible wine notes, full of adjectives describing the most unlikely aromas, flavours and smells or any type of exotic fruit or flower, tied in with terminology of soil, and minerality, Jay McInerney, of course, writes very well. Not shunning some technicalities, McInerney spices his columns up with interesting stories, anecdotes and a healthy dose of humour. Covering six years after the previous book, which was published in 2000, A hedonist in the cellar. Adventures in wine also, still, makes many references to the author's experience during the period 1985 - 2000. Some anecdotes are repeated.

Although A hedonist in the cellar. Adventures in wine was published in 2006, the content is still very up to date, and if you want to impress your sommelier, as the author pretends to teach you in one section of the book, you may still succeed by following his advice. Wine lists of the trendiest and most expensive fine dining restaurants will feature many of the wines described in the book. The book features all types of wines, of many varieties of grapes from many wine regions in the world. There are a number of columns about Champagne, but also Chartreuse verde and Armagnac.

While not particularly accessible to beginners in the field of wine, A hedonist in the cellar. Adventures in wine is very informative for the "intermediate" wine aficionado. ( )

Too dry for me - even if it's all about wine ( )

This collection of McInerney's wine columns for House and Garden show why he is one of the better wine writers at work today. He's as likely to compare a wine to a movie or a song as he is to compare it some fruit no one has ever tasted. He doesn't try to be encyclopedic, and you'll never read about how many hundreds of wines he tried at one sitting. Instead, you get to read someone who loves wine and loves metaphor. It's a pretty enjoyable combination. ( )