First Big Crush: The Down and Dirty on Making Great Wine Down Under

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.

Anyone who thinks that wine books are pompous or boring has a pleasant surprise in store. This book is delightfully funny. Yes, there is a funny side to wine when Eric Arnold is in control. But it's not just funny; it's also informative. I am a huge fan of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and have even visited there. Nonetheless I learned a lot about the Kiwis and their approach to wine from the book. That is making my enjoyment of their wine even stronger. From screwcaps to terroir the book covers it all with a crisp freshness that is as enjoyable as one of those New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs.

Lately there have been a number of travel memoirs in the "how I took a year off and did something crazy in a foreign country" mode. Usually these travels have been inspired by a great emotional upheaval in the writer. Consider the current bestseller, "Eat, Pray, Love" in which the author goes off to Italy, India and Indonesia to recover from a love affair and reinvent her life. Or the past bestseller, "Under the Tuscan Sun" which also had a writer take off to find a new life after tumult in the old one. However, there was no such sturm and drang in the life of 29-year-old Eric Arnold. He set off for a year to New Zealand to become immersed in grapes and the wine-making process for no better reason than he thought it was a good idea. After a few years of working at various hack writing jobs he decided to chuck it all for an up-close look at the burgeoning wine industry Down Under. What we get is a short description of the farming community of Marlborough situated in the southern island of New Zealand, and a ton of details on the growing, pruning, and picking of grapes and then squeezing and squishing them through modern steel tanks. During the year, Eric joins in the everyday work of the winery (which includes some close encounters with errant steel hoses and tank closures) and the more rarified tasks of tastings and competitions. This is winemaking 101 with a few side pictures of New Zealanders at work and play. While the men work 12-hour days during the season, play consists of mostly drinking, fighting, finding girls and losing their teeth at the occasional Rugby match. The snobbism of wine sophisticates seems at a variance with the down-to-earth reality of grape-growing and wine mixing. Arnold points out that this is a farm isolated in the middle of a country where sheep outnumber people by a wide margin. He also throws in some off-color jokes to let us know this is testosterone country. Although he portrays himself as a slacker, he comes through all the wet, harried days to become a more mature man. Or at least a more mature drinker who can now judge wine with the best of them rather than just quaffing down the stuff to get a buzz. Since he now has a job at Wine Spectator he must have learned something. And he does his utmost in 245 pages to teach us what that is. Barbara Hudgins, author of "Crafting the Travel Guidebook"

Very entertaining look into the world of wine making. The story is fun and you feel you are right there along with the author. It was so hard to put down, I finished reading it within 2 days.

So you've seen the film Sideways and know how geeky wine aficionados can get about their favorite grape. Hey, you've been there too after a few glasses of Pinot Noir or Cabernet Sauvignon. Once upon a time you felt pretty slick about your wine savvy, but now you're curious to learn more. How is wine made, anyway? What happens during the harvest? Are grapes stomped, Lucille Ball style, by humans standing in a large wooden cask, or is it a mechanical process? Duly motivated, you zip off to the store and find dozens of books detailing how wine is made. Yet after skimming the dry, dense, detailed paragraphs that remind you of your high school chemistry textbook, your eyes glaze over. Enter Eric Arnold, whose new book, First Big Crush, is a colorful, laugh-out-loud funny account of his tenure during a New Zealand grape harvest, filled with wacky real-life characters. Of course, I should have figured as much. The first time I saw Arnold, on a WineSpectator.com video clip, he was cleaning the interior of a wine tank, gangly jean-covered legs waving in the air. This guy, I thought, is up for anything. What first brings Arnold, then an unemployed editor, to Alan Scott Wines in New Zealand is the prospect of getting paid to lazily drink wine in the sun. Very quickly, Arnold discovers winemaking is real work, and dangerous at that. One day, he shows up for his assigned task without boots, expecting to simply push a button. To his surprise, he's expected to kick a half-ton container of grapes, and nearly loses a toe. Instead of sympathizing, Arnold's New Zealand colleagues taunt him, asking why he's walking like a girl. Arnold's first-person voice is candid and bold, his literary style so lively you won't feel you're reading text as much as you are experiencing the harvest at Arnold's side. In one scene, he is told to walk through the rows of grape vines with a bucket and randomly grab fistfuls of grapes. What activity could possibly be more repetitive and boring? Arnold must have thought long and hard about how to make the process of grabbing grapes colorful and descriptive for the reader, for here is how he chronicles it: "Essentially, you're simulating the world of a machine harvester, which doesn't discriminate, ripping everything off like it just got out of prison and the vine is the dress on a twenty-dollar whore." In the course of these hilarious 245 pages, you also learn a great deal about Arnold and his twenty-something, slightly slacker-esque, and very male way of viewing the world. For instance, when discussing his relationship with a French girlfriend, he writes, "I'm afraid this isn't the part where I tell you that she took me back to France and taught me everything there is to know about Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne. She had so little interest in food and wine - plus she didn't smoke and she shaved her armpits - that they must have kicked her out of France for not being French enough." First Big Crush is a highly entertaining but soli