Chin Chin

Magers & Quinn Booksellers is pleased to announce an evening of wine information you can really use. On Friday, December 4, at 7:30pm, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl will be in the store to talk about her new book Drink This: 473 Answers to Your Most Impolite Questions About Wine (available November 24).

If you've been baffled by a wine list, stood perplexed before endless racks of bottles at the liquor store, or ordered an overpriced bottle out of fear of the scathing judgment of a restaurant sommelier, Dara is here to help. Before she became a James Beard Award-winning food and wine writer, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl (formerly of the City Pages, currently at Minnesota Monthly) experienced all these things. Now she presents a handy guide that will show you how to stop being overwhelmed and intimidated, how to discover, respect, and enjoy your own personal taste, and how to be whatever kind of wine person you want to be, from budding connoisseur to someone who simply gets wine you like every time you buy a bottle.

Refreshingly simple, irreverent, and witty, Drink This explains all the insider stuff that wine critics assume you know. It will teach you how to taste and savor wine, alone, with a friend, or with a group. And perhaps most important, this book gives you the tools to learn the only thing that really matters about wine: namely, figuring out what you like.

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl draws on her own experience and savvy and interviews some of the world's most renowned critics, winemakers, and chefs, including Robert M. Parker, Jr., Paul Draper, and Thomas Keller, who share their wisdom about everything from pairing food and wine to the inside scoop on what wine scores and reviews really mean. Readers will learn how to master tasting techniques and understand the winemaking process from soil to cellar. Drink This also reveals how to get your money's worth out of wine without spending all you've got.

"Dara Grumdahl is right about absolutely everything. If she calls me up at four in the morning, says 'Get dressed, get some money--and a gun--you'll need it where we're eating,' I don't ask any questions. I just go."--Anthony Bourdain