... I'd been promising to buy his first wine book, "Thirsty Work" for ages and then a copy unexpectedly came my way.
"Thirsty Work" is a fairly general book that supposedly celebrates wine, the making of wine and those who drink it. At the time it was published, Skinner was working as sommelier ... Read review
Serious but unpretentious, inspiring and fun, this book celebrates wine and all that goes ... more
into making it and all who are involved in sharing it. Matt Skinner breaks down all the information you need to feel confident when choosing and drinking wine.
Advantages: One or two useful bits, visually very attractive Disadvantages: Not in depth enough, annoying "hip" language
Every Christmas now, one of our stocking fillers to ourselves is Matt Skinner's Wine Guide for the forthcoming year. It's a handy-sized little book that we can pop into a coat pocket or handbag whenever we go somewhere different in the UK, in the hope that we might be able to pick up a bottle or two of one of Skinner's recommendations from wine merchants that don't have stores in our area. Skinner first came to my attention a couple of years back ... ...Saturday Kitchen; I liked his laid back youthful approach to wine and I felt he took some of the mystery out of the subject. I'd been promising to buy his first wine book, "Thirsty Work" for ages and then a copy unexpectedly came my way.
"Thirsty Work" is a fairly general book that supposedly celebrates wine, the making of wine and those who drink it. At the time it was published, Skinner was working as sommelier ... more
Every Christmas now, one of our stocking fillers to ourselves is Matt Skinner's Wine Guide for the forthcoming year. It's a handy-sized little book that we can pop into a coat pocket or handbag whenever we go somewhere different in the UK, in the hope that we might be able to pick up a bottle or two of one of Skinner's recommendations from wine merchants that don't have stores in our area. Skinner first came to my attention a couple of years back when he was the studio-based wine expert on BBC television's Saturday Kitchen; I liked his laid back youthful approach to wine and I felt he took some of the mystery out of the subject. I'd been promising to buy his first wine book, "Thirsty Work" for ages and then a copy unexpectedly came my way.
"Thirsty Work" is a fairly general book that supposedly celebrates wine, the making of wine and those who drink it. At the time it was published, Skinner was working as sommelier at Jamie Oliver's "Fifteen" and the approach used in "Thirsty Work" is the one he used to teach the apprentice chefs there about wine. Give that the television series that followed the establishment of that restaurant featured some fairly dozy young people, you'd expect this book to be pretty basic.
The book is split up into obvious sections such as the more commonly used grape varieties, how to taste wine, how different styles of wine are made and some quite interesting stuff on winemakers themselves; I thought the latter was particularly interesting as I find this area of wine appreciation is often omitted in books like this.
The easiest way to describe the way this book is written is like it to Jamie Oliver's style. The language used is very casual and won't suit all readers; I really like both Jamie Oliver and Matt Skinner but I do find the over-use of words like "brilliant" and "amazing" quite tiring. Some of the language is really quite cringe-making; declarations like "grapes rock" and the continual use of the expression "juice" to describe wine don't lend much credibility to the book as any kind of serious guide.
The information about wine is on the whole quite lightweight; he could certainly have gone more in depth without becoming too serious. If you really have no wine knowledge at all you may find this book superficially useful, and if you take some of the advice then you'll not disgrace yourself when turning up at a dinner party with a bottle of wine. I can see that the aim was to be inclusive and have wide appeal, and avoid the stuffiness that is often associated with wine appreciation but the heavy focus on the "lifestyle" element that is a feature of Oliver's books too, does make you think that this book is an attempt to create a brand image for Skinner, even if that means forgetting that the writing should be good too.
Where we could have more information about the wonderful world of wine, we have lots of cheesy photographs of Matt wearing a baseball cap, Matt laughing with friends, Matt doing something or other else.... The book's design is good, don't get me wrong, it's just that the content doesn't live up to the visual appearance. The photographs are actually quite appealing, many of them are unnecessary and don't add much to your understanding of wine, but the overall product is quite good-looking. In that respect I'd say this is a nice coffee table book but not one to pick up if you really want to learn about wine.
The thing that irritated me most was the reminder that the book isn't a wine guide and that you can't know *everything* about wine. It seemed to me to be an apology for the overall poor quality of the written content. "Thirsty Work" need not be an all-encompassing guide to wine but it could have been so much better.
It might be a good gift idea for a young person just developing an interest in wine, or a young student just starting a career in catering; the laid back, friendly attitude is likely to appeal to younger people as is the lifestyle that the photographs portray.
Matt Skinner is good enough a journalist to be able to move away from this kind of image that has been built around his friendship with Jamie Oliver (he evens writes the embarrassingly gushing foreword). If the annual wine recommendation books are anything to go by, he is capable of much better than this visually attractive but ultimately lightweight disappointment.
