Food Read: Educating Peter

If Educating Peter seems to be an unlikely name for a book in the food realm, it may prove even more shocking to learn that this book is actually about wine. Yes, Lettie Teague, wine editor at Food & Wine magazine, wrote the 2007 book to chronicle her adventures in teaching her good, but wine-ignorant, friend Peter Travers (film critic at Rolling Stone magazine) a thing or two about wine. Actually, her goal was to teach Travers, who proclaimed his love for "fatty" Chardonnay, more than a thing or two about wine. Rather, she wanted to, "teach someone enough about wine that he or she would be able to read a restaurant wine list without fear, approach a wine merchant with confidence, and perhaps even score a few points off a wine-snob friend".

I have to admit that I had high expectations for this book. After hearing a light-hearted interview of Teague and Travers on The Splendid Table, I purchased the book in the hopes that it would be more engaging than the other wine books I was muddling through at the time. It was more engaging at first, but then...it lost me for a while. Meaning, about halfway through the book, I set it down and didn't pick it back up for at least a month.

I did eventually finish Educating Peter, and I have to say that in the end, it's not a bad book. To Teague's credit, she does cover a lot of ground in 250 pages - everything from wine vocabulary and bottle shapes, to wine regions old world and new, to pairing wine with food. But I wonder if she tried to do too much with this book by trying to cover so much ground, while still including Peter's reactions to each topic. The factual information about wine seems to be less than complete in the beginning, where engaging anecdotes of teaching Peter rule the text. Then in the middle, where wine-producing regions are detailed in sequence, the shear quantity of information seems to crowd out the "Peter-isms" for the most part, and left me wishing for more. The interesting thing is, this book is marketed as being targeted toward true wine novices. I would not consider myself to be a wine expert now, but when I bought this book, I was a true novice - at least close enough to be able to weigh in on this claim! I have to say that this book went a bit beyond the novice realm in so thoroughly detailing regions, producers, and even vintages. Despite being a relatively detail-oriented person, I found myself wondering how I would ever remember all of these details, short of carrying the book around with me!

Surprisingly, I did retain many more of those specifics than I ever expected, and, despite barely making it through the first time, I am actually considering reading the book again. Having come so far in my wine knowledge since I first bought it, I think I will be better able to appreciate what this book has to offer now. And, despite Teague's sometimes obvious wine-snob tone, I am interested in what she has to say. The bonus? The book's format should make it a breeze to re-read.