(Salon) - Like many people, when Bianca Bosker would sit down and order wine with dinner she would wonder, “What am I getting out of this $15 glass?”

She knew there was this idea of wine being a civilized pursuit on par with appreciating art and poetry. “And I appreciated art and poetry, but did not appreciate wine. It really was for me this personal question of ‘What am I not seeing here? Can I learn to appreciate it?’”

So she set out on a yearlong journey to do just that. She left her job and completely immersed herself in the world of wine — stretching her senses by working as a “cellar rat,” training with sommeliers, speaking with experts on taste and smell, and smelling things no human should have to.

The result is “Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste” (Penguin, March 28). Bosker talked with Salon by phone about what appealed to her about the wine world, how to best communicate with your sommelier, and how to use the smells of the subway to improve your palate.