How To Drink by Victoria Moore

This book is playful and thorough, so a nice approach for either young or old. You do not have to know much about beverages to begin this book, and the less you know the more you might stand to gain in knowledge. However, the book has value as entertainment, and much of what is in it reflects more the taste of the author than anything approaching consensus opinion, so if you know a fair amount, you can argue in your head with her or look at what you know in a new light. I recommend the later. This is a dawn to dusk, round-the-clock, seasonal approach to drinks. The author is British through and through--her sensibilities are English first, European second, and while she is not disaparaging about Americans, she doesn't have as much of a grip on what the longitudinal trends and tendencies in the United States mean. No matter, if you live here, you are more in touch with that, and her insights and predilections are worth hearing.

Moore has been writing about drinks for over a decade, and she knows her subject. She correctly identifies the glass as being a critical element in the art of drinking. She is practical--she advises that while it indeed matters what you drink out of, that most of us have limitations related to storage and expense that make having the perfect glass for every drink untenable, but that the other extreme, of one glass fits all, is not a brilliant solution. She advises compromise and prioritizing based on your tastes--but she also adivses trying glasses out side-by-side, which in my experience yields surprsing results. There are numerous suggestions for drink-food pairings throughout the book, which are largely classic and unlikely to let you down--Moore has low expectations of cooks, though, and her recipes for non-drink items that are not the best preparation (her trifle uses a boxed custard, for example), or at least do not follow the Michael Pollan advice of shopping on the periphery of the supermarket. I would largely reccommend going to another volume for the food recipes.