Corks and screws : an irreverent journey to the world's most famous vineyards in the world

Corks and Screws is for those who imagine that behind the elegant wine chateaux in France and Italy lies a rarified world of superior sophistication that is the result of centuries of carefully tending to the vines and letting one's tastebuds do the talking.

For Osborne, who grew up on Sainsbury's Beaujolais, there is only one way to find out and journey from France to Italy to California to all the most famous wine regions to discover the secret life of the wine trade.

He discovers that the carefully crafted image of condescension that surrounds the wine world couldn't be further from the brutal truth.

From the humblest bottle for a fiver to the greatest grand cru worth thousands of pounds, a fierce battle is being fought without hostages by a motley cast of princes, rogues and crazed Californian technocrats who would want nothing better than to squeeze the words of Jilly Goolden in vials to liven up their wines--had they ever heard of her.

Eloquent, witty, obstinate and not-easily fooled, Osborne exposes what really goes on in the cellars of the most celebrated wines of this world.

Any hint of wine-snobbery you may have cultivated will not survive the reading of this book.