Book Review: Strong Water

This review appeared in the March 2025 issue of the Oregon Wine Press.

“Strong Water: Tales of a Master Sommelier’s Life in Food, Wine, and Restaurants”
by Tim Gaiser, MS
2024 - Networlding Publishing, 242 pages

In his irreverent new memoir "Strong Water," Master Sommelier Tim Gaiser takes aim at wine's pretensions while sharing colorful anecdotes and insights from his three-decade career. Tales of backstage restaurant antics interweave with practical tips and personal musings that demystify wine and food, proving they're for everyone – not just those who can pronounce "Gewürztraminer."

At a moment when the wine industry battles lagging sales and flagging interest, defending the status quo would seem to fall to Gaiser, one of only 300 Master Sommeliers worldwide and the 20th American to attain the title. He has served as director of education and as education chair for the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas, and his first book, "Message in the Bottle: A Guide for Tasting Wine" (2022, Networlding Publishing), is a technical resource for those seeking to pass blind tasting tests. But the audience for "Strong Water" is broader as it recounts hilarious restaurant mishaps – real and imagined – alongside flights of insight that take wine as a mere point of departure. This is a book about a lot more than wine.

Gaiser's project grew from a disciplined commitment to writing he made during the pandemic. At the suggestion of a writing teacher, he embraced the habit of drafting 500 words daily on any topic. From his over 1,000 resulting essays, "Strong Water" presents 45 arranged under seven headings: Restaurants, Food, Wine, Potpourri, Tales of the Sommelier, Notes from the Road and Humor. These groups of concise vignettes sidestep a traditional biography timeline to craft an intimate mosaic of life in wine's inner circle.

Tim Gaiser, MS

A Life in Wine

The renegade tone of Gaiser's writing comes through as he describes his first restaurant job at an all-night pancake house in his hometown of Albuquerque: "Biff's was a cross between a chameleon and a community theater for aliens at the edge of the universe. That is to say, its personality changed multiple times throughout the course of a day."

This humble beginning led Gaiser to a bartending job at a vermin-infested jazz club, serving wine in San Francisco's fine dining scene and going off on numerous global wine and food excursions. He eventually transitioned from restaurant work to wine education, but he acknowledges that "the restaurant business never leaves you regardless of when you leave the floor, behind the bar, or in the kitchen." Nightmares still interrupt his sleep.

Even after a career during which he had seen it all, he concludes, "Sharing wine and a meal with friends and family is perhaps the most satisfying thing we can do. I can't think of anything better."

Thinking About Wine

Gaiser came to wine after a career as a classical trumpet player and credits that background with helping him pass the Master Sommelier examinations. "Perhaps the most important connection between music and wine is how they make us think," he writes. “Extensive training in either can create complex and refined patterns of thought not necessarily found in other endeavors.”

His skillful synthesizing of wine's abstractions into cogent thoughts and extending them into what he describes as "random" associations is a feature that makes "Strong Water" valuable to readers across the wine-loving spectrum.

From what to do when "put on the spot with a wine list the size of the Gutenberg Bible" to sparkling wine safety tips, the value of learning to blind taste and a whole chapter on the thorny topic of wine "texture," there is something for everyone here. The voice of an experienced teacher resonates as Gaiser explains wine without, as he writes, "any 'you kids get off my lawn' sentiment."

He concludes the book by imagining the meal he would eat if he knew the world was coming to an end.

"Strong Water" rewards a cover-to-cover reading, and its short chapters make it eminently browsable. Whichever way you approach it, you will find hard-won wisdom and wit about food and wine accompanied by ruminations about why any of this matters.