By Dwight Furrow
Ebook and paperback available at Amazon. (Outside the U.S., check your local Amazon site or favorite book retailer. The book is available world wide in both the ebook and paperback versions.)
Reviews
W. Blake Gray on Wine Searcher.
“‘Furrow is a professor with a wine critic itching to get out, and it’s notable how he describes the duty of a wine critic: “The primary purpose of wine criticism is to aid in the appreciation of a wine by revealing what is there to be appreciated.” It seems that writing the book is his attempt to fulfill this purpose for the entire world of wine.”
Terry Theise at A word to the wines…
“Wine? What’s the big deal?” It’s a question my own books have striven to answer, in my intuitive, barely-educated way, but in place of my lyric entreaties, Furrow has constructed a splendid cartography of thought that answers that question explicitly, thoroughly and at length.”
Book Summary:
Wine is more than a beverage. Like great works of art, great wines have originality, dynamism, emotional resonance, and personality. Discover how wine can be so expressive in this remarkable philosophical romp through the aesthetics of wine production and wine appreciation.
Beauty and the Yeast is a work of philosophy but is written to appeal to non-academics and people in the wine community who take a thoughtful approach to wine.
Previous work on the philosophy of wine has shown wine to be an important source of aesthetic experiences. “Beauty and the Yeast” takes this argument in surprising new directions. It analyzes wine as an expressive, living organism that challenges our assumptions about creativity, beauty, good taste, and objectivity and explains why the changing landscape of wine requires that we rethink the role of established wine traditions. The book offers unique philosophical insights into the nature of wine appreciation, wine language, and wine criticism, and explores a novel approach to wine tasting that reveals our emotional attachment to wine.
After reading, you will never taste wine the same way again.
Preface
Introduction
1. Wine’s Promise
The Epiphany
Love and Value
The Importance of Origins
Nature’s Murmur
Inspirations
2. Vinous Vitality: Wine as a Living Organism
Biological Accounts of Life
Wine and “Thing-Power”
Natural Wine
Inspirations
3. Winemaking and Creativity: The Slow Art of Wine
Artists, Winemakers, and Their Materials
Artistic Intentions
Creativity in Winemaking
Inspirations
4. Ambiente: It Takes a Village to Raise a Wine
The Importance of Traditions
Stasis and Change in the Wine World
Wine Criticism and Stylistic Innovation
The Threat of Homogeneity
The Difference Machine
Inspirations
5. Wines of Anger and Joy: Vitality and Expression
Representation vs. Expression
Expressing Vitality
Music, Wine, and Emotion
Wine and Vitality Forms
Inspirations
6. Wine Criticism and Appreciation
What Is Appreciation?
The Role of the Wine Critic
Inspirations
7. Wine and Aesthetic Experience
Burnham and Skilleås on Aesthetic Practice
Aesthetic Attention
Wine Tasting and the Sublime
Inspirations
8. Metaphor, Imagination, and the Language of Wine
Metaphor and Interpretive Challenges
Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Imagination and Metaphor
Inspirations
9. Beyond Objectivity and Subjectivity
Smith’s Realism
The Non-Realist Account of Objectivity
Cain Todd’s Limited Relativism
Burnham and Skilleås and the Authority of Traditions
Non-Realism and the Clash of Values in the Wine World
Dispositional Realism
The Failure of Representation
An Apprenticeship of Signs
The Skill of Wine Tasting
Creative Wine Tasting: Tasting the New
Objectivity Revisited
Inspirations
10. Beauty, Pathos, and Rhythm
Mystery, Ephemerality, and Pathos
Rival Communities and the Normativity of Beauty
The Sensual Dimension
Inspirations
Appendix: Tasting Vitality
Exploring the Philosophy of Food and Wine 