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Learn to COOK - First Big Crush: The Down and Dirty on Making Great Wine Down Under
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List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $16.32
Your Save: $ 7.68 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Scribner
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 663.200993
EAN: 9781416537694
ISBN: 1416537694
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2007-09-18
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
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Editorial Reviews:
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The story behind the bottle, First Big Crush is Eric Arnold's wild account of his year immersing himself in all things wine...and somehow not winding up in rehab. Never having held a meaningful job for very long (and getting fired from most of them), Eric Arnold heads to New Zealand -- to Allan Scott Wines -- seeking adventure and hoping to learn a little bit about wine. What could be better than working outside in the fresh air and drinking wine all day? Before he knows it, he is dirty, wet, cold, and at the mercy of a tank of wine that just might explode and take him with it. So begin Eric's adventures in the world of wine. He gets sunburned, sore, and drunk -- and then does it all over again the next day. First Big Crush is a story that is as outrageous as it is compelling. Here are tales of first pressings, pruning, and tasting competitions. There are also rowdy nights at the local pub, girls, meat pies, girls, rugby, and tales of hunting wild pig. Along the way, each step of the winemaking process is explained in a way that humans can actually understand. Almost against his will, Eric becomes an expert.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: A fraternity boy's drunken rant
Comment: Trash. I cannot believe how such a great topic was ruined by Eric Arnold's immature writing and drinking. I was so looking forward to a wonderful informative book on NZ winemaking, but I couldn't get past Eric's being drunk all the time and talking like a freshman frat boy! Grow up.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Read the "dirty" in more than one sense
Comment: Eric Arnold spent a year in New Zealand's Marlborough winemaking region. Years earlier he spent a day touring the area: "And from my very first sip of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc at ten-thirty or so on that morning, I knew it, too -- I was tasting something special. My mouth zipped and zinged, and though I couldn't describe the flavors I was tasting, I was sure of only one thing: I wanted more. I was hammered by noon, with five wineries still to go. At one point I stole the tour guide's microphone in the van and started singing karaoke -- "The Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson -- even though I didn't know the words. I might've taken off my shirt, too, but I don't remember. From winery to winery and sip to sip, the wines just got better and better. From the time I got back home to Brooklyn, whenever I was in a wine shop I either bought wine from New Zealand or asked for something similar. Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc was my new Hogue."
The memory of that firts Sauvignon Blanc sticks in Arnold's memory:
"For a few years after that trip I was still guzzling whatever New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc I could find at night, and spending my daylight hours working the copy desk at a small business magazine. It was better than working for the Nazi devil woman at PBS, but the same could probably be said for cleaning up monkey shit at the zoo (which, I imagine, is very similar to working at PBS). So out of a desire to drink more, work less, and maybe satisfy a little curiosity, up sprang the idea of just throwing myself into the lifestyle: getting a job at a winery and writing a book about it."
Arnold initially knows nothing about winery work, but you have to admire his cheerful attitude, no matter what reality throws at him. He learns about rugby, pig hunting, and hard working rural New Zealanders. He finds two particularly difficult areas: the finer points of pitchforking and pruning winter vines in the cold fields. He concludes:
"Vineyard work sucks...I have no idea why, but many people who drink wine think that making it is some sort of relaxed, cushy lifestyle. And I don't understand it , because I've never eaten a juicy steak and imagined how romantic and luxurious a life I'd have if I started raising cattle in Wyoming. Similarly, I've never met anyone who got a massage and moved to Sweden or shot heroin and moved to Afghanistan."
Arnold is excellent at describing the difficulties and joys of working in a vineyard and in a winery. His language may be a bit racy for some readers, his humor a little too broad. Overall, I found the substance worth a few "Oh, grow up" moments.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Plow through the puerile...it's enlightening
Comment: The author's unrelenting use of tacky sexual simile might be difficult to deal with if the overall content of the book wasn't quite so interesting...his 'hands dirty' insight to this small piece of the wine making business is compelling, though, and I found myself ignoring his hormonal excess. This is one that I'll read again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: immature, forced and generally just embarassing
Comment: you know when you're with a group of people, and one person is just trying way too hard to be entertaining and you just feel embarassed for him? this is how eric arnold comes off in this book.
look, i'm all for a fun wine read. the last thing we need is another dry 'how to' wine guide or buttoned up encyclopedia. and i'm certianly no prude when it comes to off color humor or language. but within the first 30 pages of this book, arnold uses more bad sexual one liners than i can count on all my fingers and toes, and has used the F word at least twice as much. all well and good, if it worked. but the jokes are lame, they don't land, and you just feel like the author is a teenager trying to show the older kids how cool he is.
i wanted to like this book. i loved the accidental connoisseur by lawrence osborne, and thought this sounded like it too could provide an interesting, informative, yet informal and light hearted look at a wine experience. unfortunately any hope for this is destroyed by the author's juvenile, labored writing. skip this one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding book
Comment: You will really enjoy this book. An inside look, very humorous and entertaining as well as informative.
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