Everybody knows someone who is extremely passionate about one topic or another. Someone who knows absolutely everything about, say, sports statistics. Someone who has read thousands of books on the battles of WWI. Someone who can talk your ear off about their favorite Marvel characters. Michael Amon describes himself as “that guy…except with wine.”

A certified sommelier and wine expert and the person set to become the 60th American to ever qualify as a Master of Wine, Amon might be best known as the writer behind the wildly popular blog Drinking and Knowing Things. Now he’s taken his blog and made it into Drinking and Knowing Things, the book. Why? Because he wants to make the world of wine more fun, more accessible, and more of a personal journey. Instead of spending tons of money in stuffy wineries, Amon recommends a more attractive approach:

I would recommend that you use this book as follows: There are fifty-two wine recommendations in here….Find someone or someones who are interested enough in learning about wine that they will go on the journey with you. They don’t have to have any knowledge of wine, only an interest in it and a desire to learn more.

Every week read one of the recommendations, which will take you like ten minutes, and order a bottle of that wine. I’ve put recommendations for specific bottles into the book to make it easy for you. Drink the bottle with your partner-in-wine and see what you think about it.

I guarantee that if you do this, after three months you’ll start to feel much more comfortable about wine. Within six months, you will be more knowledgeable about wine than anyone you know, and will likely become the de facto sommelier of your social circle. At the end of the year, you’ll be able to go toe-to-toe with any sommelier or wine expert. And you’ll have fun doing it.

But you’ll need to be open minded and willing to get outside your comfort zone. 

Hang out with your friends, try something new, and see what you think. Is that really all there is to becoming “the de facto sommelier of your social circle”? As Amon notes, readers can see for themselves, one bottle at a time, in a guide that Kirkus Reviews calls “a brash but charming and fact-filled book for increasing one’s wine knowledge.”

When Amon isn’t running the Winery Solutions and Services practice at the Big Four consulting firm where he is a senior partner or teaching at the Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine, he loves traveling around the world, doing things like diving with sharks and racing motorcycles. He even founded a wine company in the Himalayas, the Bhutan Wine Company, simply because he was shocked to learn that there wasn’t an existing wine industry there. Of course, this involved several years of work and cooperation with the local government, but it was a labor of love that grew out of his passion for wine and the people who make it.

It’s that open-mindedness and sense of adventure that drive his interest in wine. In fact, his definition of someone who is “into wine” is simply someone who thinks about it. “They pay attention to a wine,” he says. “They’re trying to understand a wine on a deeper level. What are the flavors? What are the textures? What are the aromas?”

To that end, he doesn’t recommend his book for convincing an uninterested person to learn about wine. “I don’t push it on people; I don’t tell people to go pick it up. This book is designed for someone who has acknowledged to themselves that they’re curious about wine.” There are lots of people who have a curiosity about wine, but they don’t know where to start, they don’t want to spend a lot of time and effort, and they don’t want to come off as snobby. So Amon designed his book to be easy, quick, and effective. “It totally works,” he says. He gets emails from fans who tell him that after perusing his book for a few months, they know more than the sommelier at the restaurant.

Amon feels strongly about disabusing the notion that getting interested in wine is for jerks and snobs. “There’s a narrative that wine people are pompous,” he says, “and that narrative is well deserved, particularly in the United States. But what I’ve found is that the people who work in the wine industry as their vocation are the most generous, greatest people to hang out with.” Maybe the person who spends $1,000 on a bottle of wine is stuck up, but the person who made that $1,000 bottle of wine is “humble, generous, kind, and funny,” says Amon. 

Human beings have been making wine for thousands of years, all around the world. You could say that appreciating wine is simply part of the human experience. So why shouldn’t the learning experience be fun, easy, and intuitive?

Kirkus praises the book’s structure, citing efficient writing that blends history, food pairings, and explanations of things like tannins. “Overall, this light, fast-paced guide gives readers an enjoyable way to absorb wine facts.”

Amon also loves to hear about the many casual wine-appreciation communities that spring up around fans of Drinking and Knowing Things. People get together with their friends to go over one of the chapters and drink the wine, once a week or once a month. “I know of at least fifteen [such groups] around the country,” he says. “I think that’s a really fun idea. Wine can be a community thing, and then it becomes a lot more fun.”

For readers who devour Drinking and Knowing Things and are interested in drinking and knowing even more things, Drinking and Knowing Things: Volume II is out now. Volume III, which is a travel-focused wine book centered on New Zealand, will be out soon as well. 

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn.