Rating: 
Summary: interesting and informative romp through some great wines
Review: After reading the criticisms detailed above in the official review, I have to say that I recognize some of those flaws (especially the repititions), but I don't think they take away from the fun quality of this book. At times, I felt kind of a Dave Barry meets Robert Parker quality of writing. Here's an example regarding correct pairings of reds/whites with food: "If someone else is buying Chateau Petrus or Chateau d'Yquem, by all means drink as much of it as you can, no matter what hell you're eating. Give the food to the dog."For a good overview of just about every major grape and region, this book may be more helpful to a beginner than a more detailed Parker book which might give more than you need to know. I appreciate McInenery's taste for good wine and his lighthearted columns on his experiences. Every once in a while I'd have a jealousy attack (not all of us can quaff a Petrus or Yquem on a weekly basis), but at least I can afford to read about it. This is a great introduction to wine tasting with none of the technical stuff that should get in the way. I'll conclude with another one of my favorites "rants," this one on Robert Parker, "The self-proclaimed American Wine Advocate, who at the start of his career couldn't even speak the language, was recently awarded the Legion d'Honneur for telling the Frogs that a lot of their venerable Bordeaux and Burgundy isn't as great as it should be and some of it positively sucks." Nice to keep a sense of humor while discussing these wine topics.
Rating: 
Summary: Smart guide to wine
Review: As a beginner in wine, living in the Niagara Grape region, I felt ill at ease even asking for a certain wine at the local store, trying to describe my wife's upscale preferences without pulling her handwritten note from my pocket. McInerney helped me with romance with his romantically enclined interludes in his books in the 1980s when my soon-to-be wife, Jennifer, and I met, and now he has helped me again, telling the good red from the bad. After reading and loving Bright Lights, Big City; Story of My Life, and Brightness Falls, I was disappointed by Model Behavior. Now, I really like Jay in nonfiction. His most recent piece, "White Man at the Door," about Mississippi bluesmen T-Model Ford and R.L. Burnside, in The New Yorker was a delightful read and a startling look behind the scenes at Fat Possum Records, a blues entrepreneurial startup so hip that Richard Gere and Uma Thurman are fans. McInerney may be turning into the Joseph Mitchell of our age--his ear for language and the wanderings of those at odds with the world are stellar! Hopefully a book of McInerney essays is pending.
Rating:
Summary: Fun
Review: Easy and quick reading, fun, informative. An excellent choice for an introduction to wine.
Rating:
Summary: Making the Wine Scene
Review: I love wine, but don't know a lot, and McInerney's literary, cinematic and popcult comparisons brought a lot alive for me. Great collection of thoughts, and really useful on French wines, of which I knew little. Am equally entertained, educated and in search of a good Cote du Rhone after _Baccus and Me_. Entertaining insights into the wine world - how it's made, who makes it, hints of its mystique and heritage. Thanks!
Rating:
Summary: Not your average Wine book
Review: I'll admit it I bought this collection of wine essays because I liked the title. Also, because there was a blurb in the dust jacket about French and German wine. I began reading the chapters in order of interest, not in the order in the book. After the first essay I was blown away with the descriptions. McInerney doesn't talk about wine like the rest of them. I thought, "this guy writes so well, this is like reading a novel." Then referring to the dust jacket again I discovered he um well has experience in that area too. Despite being fun to read, McInerney packs a lot of information into each essay. This book will not tell you everything you want to know about wine - it isn't an intro to wine collecting or a reference to keep through the ages as you collect wine. It is a collection of unique musings on the wonderful subject of wine. I loved it.
Rating: 
Summary: One trick pony
Review: Jay McInerney was one of the voices of the 1980s, the era known for its conspicuous consumption, self-absorption and decadence. With this book, he seems intent on singing the same song years after the curtain was drawn. Ostensibly, this is a book about wines -- one of my passions -- and for the first few dozen pages it appears to be just that. There are some interesting and unusual observations about wine on the pages of Bacchus & Me, and Mr. McInerney deserves credit (hence the three stars) for breaking many of the crusty and useless conventions that limit most wine literature. But the more one reads the book, the more one realizes that the chapters are less about wine than about Mr. McInerney himself. He reveals himself as a shameless name dropper, and someone most interested in repeating a half dozen humorous and entertaining observations in a variety of contexts while boasting about his fat expense account and privileged access to bottles of wine that most of us will never even see. The problem is not that these lines are uninteresting or irrelevant -- as an occasional aside they would add to the intriguing take on one of the world's most written-about subjects. But in the frequency in which they appear here they can leave a throbbing in the head like an old bottle of jug wine does, when what we really wanted was one of those fine bottles of Bordeaux Mr. McInerney seems to be in love with.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying
Review: Jay McInerney's collected magazine articles on wine, while entertaining, suffer from dilettantism and namedropping. With so many serious wine regions and vintners in the world today, persons with both a global, and a broad temporal perspective on wine are extremely rare. While McInerney never claims to have such encyclopedic knowledge, neither does he refrain from making sweeping conclusions that are, I think, often erroneous. He is at his best in these pieces uncovering some oft-forgotten region or maker, but these moments are routinely spoiled by his obsession with a very small handful of personalities and with luxury goods that have no relationship whatever to wine. As another reviewer has noted, there must be a dozen or more genuflections to Helen Turley-- one would think that she was the alpha and omega of California winemaking. The loving detail with which he describes the clothes of French or Italian vintners is just silly and irrelevant. My other pet peeves with the book are the nonsensical obsession with high end wines (really, do we need McInerney to tell us that some 60-year old first growth Bordeaux was nice? wouldn't the ink be better spent on wines that are actually affordable and delicious, as so many are these days?), and the shameful disregard of the many meritorious California sparkling wines. At the end of the book, one is left with the impression that wine, for McInerney, is just another status symbol, and not an integral part of dining.
Rating:
Summary: i hope jay reads these
Review: listen: irreverence is one thing, but just blundering around with a few dangerous pieces of knowledge, blurting out the same tritenesses about wine is a(whole)nother. mcinerney tries to accomplish with numerous disclaimers the same thing that anthony bourdain so fails to in kitchen confidential; that is, he wants to say "hey, this is just me talking. i don't know much, but i'm irreverent and handy with prose" and so on. it's a losing gambit. the actual nuggets of knowledge in bacchus & me can be summed up as follows: helen turley good, la grande dame good, california chardonnay flabby and overpowering. other than that, i now know that mcinerney has garden parties, wears prada loafers, and has been given a job--writing about wine while learing about it--that many others would gladly kill him for. i was left feeling one thing after reading this book: why not me? good christ, i'd have done a better job.
Rating:
Summary: An original and entirely different wine guide...
Review: McInerney does not try to pretend to be writing a Wine Encyclopoedia. What he does deliver, in many respects, is far superior. His approach is wonderfully effective (and to toip things off, witty and entertaining) when it comes to translating the whole sensory and intellectual experience into a liverly written format. He goes way beyond the mere dry, descriptive and factual approach of the usual wine guides, and allows the reader to truly immerse himself in the experience. And have fun, and also learn stuff. Thoroughly entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Bacchus & Me
Review: My wife and I found the book so entertaining that we could hardly put it down. We alternately read every chapter to eachother out loud for fear of the other getting to laugh first.
We particularly enjoyed the authors wit and amusing parallels.
Hopefully the book will also be published in German so we can give it to all our non English speaking friends.
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