Vintage Humor for Wine Lovers
By Malcolm Kushner  

     Bubbling over like champagne, as wicked as Brie and chocolate-covered strawberries, Malcolm Kushner’s marvelous humor book on wine demands to be sniffed, sipped, and imbibed with pleasure. Drinking in this book on wine will make you feel tipsy without the consequences. As Kushner says in the section Everything I Know I Learned from Drinking Wine: A loaded person is more dangerous than a loaded gun.

     That said, a glass or two of young Beaujolias or White Zin goes perfectly with this book.

     Kushner swirls his own witticisms, his musings on what would happen if famous authors wrote about wine (especially funny are Joan Rivers on Chablis and Dr. Seuss on Champagne: “I do not like it / Cham I am / I do not like / That pagne of cham”), trivia, trivia quizzes and humorous quizzes, and his real-life clips of studies on the mental benefits of drinking wine with quips and quotes from the drunk and the famous. Especially amusing are quotations from late beloved actor Richard Harris, whose last role as the kindly Professor Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” movies doesn’t quite jibe with the sentiment, “I’ve formed a new group called Alcoholics Anonymous. If you don’t feel like a drink you ring another member and he comes over to persuade you.”

      There’s plenty of silliness in a glass of wine, and Kushner saves most of his wickedness for the pretentious tasters, the wine connoisseurs and the sommeliers (that’s wine servers for the uninitiated). A typical description of a bad wine server: “A few m’s short of a sommelier.” A typical description of a wine critic: “Q: What’s the difference between God and a wine critic? A: God doesn’t think He’s a wine critic!”

     Kushner leaves politics at the door and spares the French for their contributions to the world of wine and talking about wine. But why didn’t he make any reference to Frasier and Niles Crane running for president of a wine club?

     New Yorker cartoons, like the heady aroma of a newly opened bottle of Napa Valley wine, add a delicious flavor to this humorous collection.