Wine Girl
A sommelier's tale of making it in the toxic world of fine dining
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards Drink Book Award 2021
Longlisted for the André Simon Food & Drink Book Awards 2020
'Hugely entertaining' Jay Rayner
'A brilliantly Bourdain-ish tale of a young woman making her way through the sexist American fine-dining world' Observer
Aged twenty-one, Victoria James was named the US's youngest sommelier, working in Michelin-starred restaurants, serving the finest wines.
The groping patrons she learned to handle, but, behind the scenes, the world of high-end dining was a mess of fractious relationships and unacknowledged abuse. It would take hitting rock-bottom for Victoria to find her way back to the industry she adores.
Wine Girl is the memoir of a young woman breaking free from her traumatic childhood. It's the story of overcoming a notoriously misogynistic business, and of the restorative power of a glass of wine with friends.
'Addictive' Stylist
'A must-read' Daily Telegraph
'I glugged at the gossipy bits and sipped at the sad parts . . . you'll raise a glass to her extraordinary resilience' Sunday Times
**NOW WITH EXCLUSIVE ADDITIONAL CONTENT: WINE PAIRING RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EACH CHAPTER OF THE BOOK**
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this gritty, eloquent memoir, James, who became the country's youngest sommelier at 21, talks about overcoming sexual assault and sexism as she built a career in the restaurant business. The book, which spans James's life from age seven to 28, opens with an overview of her unstable childhood, which included an absent mother and alcoholic father. James worked in greasy diners as a teenager and painfully describes being raped by a customer after a shift. She briefly turned to drugs after the attack, then got clean and moved to New York, where she landed a bartending job at an Italian restaurant. Her first sommelier job was at Michelin-starred Aureole, where she learned how to make wine recommendations and how to scan a customer's appearance to determine how much money they might spend. Often dismissed by customers who disliked taking advice from a woman, she relentlessly studied wine and won awards, among them the prestigious Sud de France Sommelier Challenge. James grippingly discusses working at several high-end restaurants and wading through ugly swamps of unwanted advances and crude comments before finding a happy home at Michelin-starred Cote, where she is the beverage director. This is a captivating story of resilience from a sommelier who hustled hard to conquer her profession.
