New year, new gatherings! In this new year, we are expanding our tastings and gatherings. Many of you joined us for our Community Tastings, Wine Classes with Isaac, or our Cocktail Basics classes with Kaly last year. This year we wanted to add another series to dive deeper into a few ideas and concepts. I am always reading various food books and we thought it was time to roll out the MONGERS BOOK CLUB with some of the most fun books I have come across.
We will meet 4 times this year to discuss a book and have a tasting that supports our discussion. The first four books will be:
- Wild Chocolate by Rowan Jacobsen March 2nd, 3 PM - 5 PM
- Adventures from the Wine Route by Kermit Lynch Date coming soon
- Cheddar by Gordon Edgar Date coming soon
- Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon Date coming soon
I have read and thoroughly each of these books. We chose them because they represent a wide range of our products. They are also all written by incredibly well-respected members of the food community.
Rowan Jacobsen is the author of several food books that Will and I have enjoyed. His book American Terroir is a beautiful look at some of America’s Regional treasures. I had the pleasure of meeting Rowan while he was on tour for his book Apples of Uncommon Character. He is incredibly knowledgeable and has a fun voice. As soon as I put down Wild Chocolate I knew we needed to gather people together to taste and discuss.
Adventures from the Wine Route
For our second book, we will “travel” to France with the legendary Wine importer Kermit Lynch. Kermit brings in some of the most celebrated French wines from storied producers. He has helped define what we drink in this country for decades. He has a shop in the ‘other Berkley’, Berkeley, CA, but he also imports wine that we can get through distributors. This book was inspiring and talks about such delicious producers that we had to add it to the list.
Cheddar
Now, I know what you may be thinking. Why did it take 3 books to get to a cheese book? There are a lot of books out there about cheese. But few are as entertaining as Gordon’s books. Gordon Edger is also the author of Cheesemonger: Life on the Wedge as well as the buyer at Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco. Being a San Francisco Cheesemonger for a period of time, I was able to become friends with Gordon. He is warm and knowledgeable, and he is one of the best ambassadors our profession has.
Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon
Lastly, we have to go back to my beginning. Zingerman’s is where I cut my teeth. Ari has taught me a tremendous amount and continues to be one of my advisors and mentors. After all, my formal Zingerman’s story starts when I attended a bacon tasting and requested a job description. Like all of Ari’s books, it’s chock full of great stories, history, and recipes.
We hope you will make it to our book talks and tastings. If you can not make it, read the book anyway. We promise it will be worth the time!
Stay Hungry,
Zach Berg