National Humor Month Includes Lots Of Wine

National Humor Month Includes Lots Of Wine

Lots of literary folks know it's National Poetry Month but who knew it was also National Humor Month? Happily, I did. (LOL!) Any wine writer worth their weight has heavy tomes about the subject“”Jancis Robinson's Wine Grapes, the Oxford Companion to Wine, Hugh Johnson's World Atlas of Wine and the newly updated Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia. But likely they also have a few humorous wine books because, well, people, ya have to lighten up! Some of these are classics and some might be one-offs, but there's something for everyone who wants to LOL, ROTFL, LMAO or, if you're old-school, ha-ha or hee-hee. Top of my list is the classic, The Illustrated Winespeak: Ronald Searle's Wicked World of Winetasting (Souvenir-now Profile Press, 1992) A long-time New Yorker cartoonist, Searle, appointed to the Order of the British Empire, paired wine tasting terms with cheeky illustrations poking fun at oenophiles' jargon such as "distinctive nose," full bodied" and so on. First published in 1983, reissued in '92 and through the years, you can still find copies online, worthy a place on your shelf or that of a wine-loving friend. Find. Lang's Compendium of Culinary Nonsense and Trivia by George Lang (Clarkson Potter, 1980) is