Try to imagine visiting every winery tasting room in Napa Valley over the period of a growing season, from bud break to harvest. The very thought of going from tasting room to tasting room, sipping, spitting, battling the crowds — it’s more than one person’s constitution can handle.

Yet two people did it recently. In what they defined as their quest, they visited 141 tasting rooms in the valley that allow visitors.

Rick Kushman, a television columnist for the Sacramento Bee, and Hank Beal, wine buyer for Nugget Market, a chain of a dozen supermarkets in the Sacramento area, chronicled their adventures in a book, “A Moveable Thirst.”

Kushman, who wrote the book, acknowledges that he’s a wine novice, but probably is much more wine savvy than he admits. He starts out by learning the fine art of spitting under the tutelage of Beal, and his descriptions of his progress are quite humorous. As the book progresses, he continues his wine education under Beal’s guidance, and by the time they have finished their Quest, he’s quite knowledgeable.

He offers numerous tips for wine tasting, such as “wear dark clothes,” especially while learning how to spit. He also provides, in a humorous way, some of the “rules of etiquette” for visiting a tasting room.

The book opens with Kushman  asking a tasting room attendant the first of what he calls his many dumb questions: Do you swirl wine counterclockwise, because that’s the way water goes down the drain in the Northern Hemisphere? Other “dumb questions” are scattered throughout the book

The tour is organized from south to north, starting in downtown Napa at some of the tasting rooms, then to Oak Knoll, back to Carneros, and then it follows somewhat geographically.

The first half of the book is devoted to details about their visits to wineries, contains conversations with the tasting room attendants and is sprinkled with anecdotes about their experiences. Kushman has a wonderful way of describing people and places, and a reader can easily draw a mental picture of who or what he’s writing about. An example was his first impression of Opus One — it looks like a water treatment plant, but as they drove closer, he changed his opinion;  it looks like a missile launch pad.

There’s a running joke through the book about Bistro Don Giovanni — everywhere they went someone was recommending the restaurant. The book also contains commentary about several other Napa eating establishments and their adventures during dinners, and they even visited a bocce ball tournament in St. Helena.

The descriptions of some of the conversations with tasting room personnel are hilarious, and Kushman’s deprecating sense of humor adds greatly to the enjoyment of reading the book.

He obviously kept copious notes during their visits to all 141 wineries, but not all 141 provided anecdotes for the text. He does list all the wineries in the second half of the book, with detailed information about each: General information, atmosphere, service, tasting tools (glasses, water, crackers, etc.), intangibles and extras, wine availability, picnic prospects, cost, directions and recommendation on who should visit. Also listed for each are the full address, telephone and hours, including whether appointments are necessary.

Oenophiles who have visited many of these tasting rooms will relate to many of the stories and anecdotes Kushman writes, and probably will even recognize the descriptions of some of the tasting room attendants he mentions.

For visitors, it’s a good guide of wineries to visit and what can be expected when going wine tasting.

It’s a fast read and is a good book to have handy for visitors to read before embarking on a journey along Highway 29 or Silverado Trail.