Category Archives: Philosophy of Food and Wine

Wine, Good Food, and Grace

24 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by in Philosophy of Food and Wine, The Ethics of Eating

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enjoying food and wineA life in which the pleasures of food and drink are not central is missing a crucial dimension of a good life. Food and drink, are a constant presence in our lives, and thus can be a constant source of pleasure if we nurture our connection to them and don’t take them for granted.

Because food and drink are an easily accessible source of pleasure for most of us, barring poverty or disease, to care little for them is a kind of moral failure with consequences not only for the self but for others around us.

But to nurture that connection to everyday pleasure requires thought and restraint. Pleasure can be dangerous when pursued without reason and self-control. Addictive pleasures damage us and everyone around us. Addicts, in fact, cannot feel pleasure as readily as the non-addicted and require increasing levels of stimulation to find satisfaction. Addictions and compulsions are pathological and are no model for the genuine pursuit of pleasure. Thus, we need to make a distinction between pleasure that we get from thoughtless, compulsive consumption, and pleasure that is freely chosen. Pleasure freely chosen is actually a good guide to what is good for us and what should matter to us.

This emphasis on freely chosen pleasure is important not only for keeping us healthy but because certain kinds of pleasures are deeply connected to our sense of control and independence.

Some of the pleasures we experience come from the satisfaction of needs. When we are cold, warm air feels good. When we are hungry even very ordinary food will taste good. But such enjoyment tends to be unfocused and passive. We don’t have to bring our attention or knowledge to the table to enjoy substances that satisfy basic needs. We are hard-wired to care about them and our response is compelled.

However, many pleasures are not a response to need or deprivation.  We have to eat several times a day, but we don’t have to eat well several times a day. Pleasure freely chosen is essential to a good life because it expresses our independence from need.

I can be perfectly comfortable at the moment, yet be pleased by the warmth of the sun as it breaks the clouds and comes streaming through the bay window. A light snack does away with hunger pangs, yet I am still seduced by the smell of garlic gently sizzling in olive oil. These pleasures are the lagniappe of life because they transcend need. We experience them as pleasures even though we aren’t suffering from their deprivation.

Wine and good food are not necessities. We are not compelled to enjoy them and when pursued thoughtfully they are not the result of a compulsion. Pleasure rather than the satisfaction of needs is the point of our experience of them.

They are a surplus, beyond need and necessity, and thus a  form of grace.

Philosophy has Been Wrong About Wine for 2500 Years

20 Thursday Aug 2020

Posted by in Philosophy, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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the thinkerThroughout most of philosophy’s history, wine has been treated as an insignificant diversion, incapable of being beautiful and incapable of producing genuine aesthetic pleasure. The reason for this dismissive attitude is that we experience wine through taste and smell, and these were considered to be “lower senses” incapable of generating the complex cognitive content that the higher senses of hearing and vision enable. The assumption is that only objects that generate complex thoughts or stimulate the imagination can be beautiful. Even the best wine offers only sensuous pleasure.

Wine, it was argued, tells us nothing about the human condition as literature or painting does; neither does it allow us to explore our emotional responses like music does.

But these arguments won’t fly. Many great musical works tell no story and generate no train of thought. Some musical works generate emotion in listeners but many musical works, from Bach to cool jazz to modern ambient music can be enjoyed without much emotional response. Some architecture, textile art, and many abstract paintings and sculptures do not represent something or generate understanding. They may or may not stimulate the imagination or the emotions.  Surely nature can be beautiful without it representing or expressing anything.

Thus, the capacity to produce understanding or emotion cannot be a necessary condition for what counts as beauty since that would rule out many obviously beautiful works of art as well as natural objects. But if we are willing to grant that understanding and emotional response are not necessary for an object to be beautiful, then wine must qualify.

Of course, it is simply not true that wine is a purely sensuous medium without cognitive engagement. Memory is crucial to the appreciation of wine and so is knowledge of wine production and wine regions. And imagination is in part what enables us to see a wine as whole. We recognize properties such as “tension”, “elegant”, or brooding, only via the imagination. Wine engages the whole person including one’s mind.

Philosophy has been wrong about wine for 2500 years.

What is Elegance in Wine?

13 Thursday Aug 2020

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eleganceElegance is one of the most important aesthetic properties of a wine. It is almost always a marker of superior quality although it gets overused in describing very ordinary wines which are seldom elegant.

But what exactly is elegance? In ordinary language “elegant” is synonymous with “graceful” or “refined”. But that doesn’t help us define it unless we then define “graceful” and “refined”.

“Elegance” is one of Matt Kramer’s essential wine words. He writes:

I would submit that anything deserving of the description (and approbation) of “elegant” must display restraint. In a wine we must sense that there’s more to come, depths that are somehow being metered out to us, layer after layer. Tannins must be also restrained. (How often do we see the descriptor “silky” applied to such restrained tannins? Surely that word suggests elegance in a way that, say, “burlap” does not.)

A certain sense of precision and taste clarity is, I believe, inherent in wines of elegance.

Some of Kramer’s attempt at a definition doesn’t quite ring true. There are many wines that show restraint that are not elegant. But when he writes “depths that are somehow being metered out to us” he is on the right track. Elegant wines don’t reveal everything all at once. They evolve. But a wine might evolve on the palate showing many stages yet still be clumsy. Many powerful or rustic wines evolve in interesting ways without being elegant. Although it’s true that elegant wines can’t have grippy or green tannins, large, massively tannic wines can be elegant if the tannins are well-integrated and balanced with other components. “Precision” and “taste clarity” seem to be true of elegant wines, but it seems to me they don’t define elegance but come along for the ride. Quality wines often are elegant and precise but one doesn’t define the other.

Former wine critic for the Wine Enthusiast Steve Heimoff defined elegant wines as silky, balanced, and complex. But that describes almost any well-made Pinot Noir. I wouldn’t describe great Amarone  or classed Bordeaux as silky but some are elegant.

Here is my attempt to get clear on this concept. My definition is a bit pedantic. I still haven’t found a way to express this with style.

It goes without saying that elegant wines must be balanced. That is a necessary but not sufficient condition since many balanced wines are not elegant.

The rest of the criteria for elegance in wine are a function of the perceived movement on the palate. The movement of elegant wines has five characteristics:

1. Deliberate, not racy. The changes the wine goes through on the palate do not feel rushed. If the stages accelerate or decelerate, the change of pace is deliberate.

2.  Medium plus frequency of variation. Elegant wines are neither static nor kinetic but they have a degree of complexity in their evolution.

3. Subtle variation. Elegant wines are not linear but neither are they expansive or compressed. They are characterized by many small changes.

4. Transitions between stages are smooth and gradual rather than abrupt. This is probably the most important condition. Abrupt changes feel clumsy.

5. Tension is low to moderate. The various structural components of the wine do not offer resistance to each other. The structural components all evolve at a similar pace.

Elegance in my view is all about the pace of variation, the degree of variation, and the gradient of the transitions.

Why Are There Few Negative Wine Reviews?

10 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by in Philosophy of Food and Wine

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Noelle at Outwines blog launched an interesting discussion thread on Twitter.

outwines

 

This has puzzled me for a long time. The responses to her question were interesting. Here’s a quick summary which I’ve divided into categories.

The first category are responses that try to explain why wine reviews differ from film, book, or restaurant reviews:

1. Most reviewers rely on free samples and don’t want to bite the hand that feeds.

This is surely a plausible explanation, since it is true that many critics rely on samples which are necessary to defray the sometimes substantial cost of wine. (And review publications have their advertisers they don’t want to offend) This is not a factor for book, film, or album reviews given their minimal costs. Restaurant and live performance reviews sometimes rely on comped tickets but often the publication in which the review appears pays for the ticket leaving the critic free to make her uncoerced judgment. Is it cynical to believe this financial incentive influences wine reviews? It’s probably naïve to believe it doesn’t. But that doesn’t make it right.

2. Bottle variation makes negative reviews unreliable.

This is an important consideration. There is no doubt that bottle variation exists even when wineries are conscientious about trying to control it. It, therefore, seems unfair to base a negative review on a single bottle. Large wine publications try to avoid this by requesting two bottles be sent for review. But that is not routinely true for most bloggers writing reviews. Restaurant reviewers face a similar dilemma, which is why many will visit a restaurant more than once before passing judgment. Obviously this is not an issue for book, album, or film reviews. However,  variation is a fact of life for any kind of performance review. Yet that does not prevent theatre critics or live music critics from panning a bad performance. The difference is that a poor performance is the fault of the performers; a bad bottle may not be the fault of the winery

3. Many reviewers pre-select the wines they review which greatly reduces the chance of reviewing a wine one doesn’t like.

This is a factor in some cases but it doesn’t explain why wine reviews are almost universally positive. Although some wine critics review anything that is sent to them, many bloggers seek out wines they think will be interesting. Few would deliberately seek out wines they think will be inferior. However, the same would likely be true of book, film, music, or restaurant reviews. They also pre-select what they review, and the negative reviews come from disappointed expectations. Why is wine an exception?

So (1), (2) and (3) provide some explanation for why wine reviewers uniquely tend to write only positive reviews. But (1) is a corrupt reason. And (3) doesn’t adequately explain why wine reviews differ from other kinds of reviews. Only (2) provides both an explanation and a justification.

Other reasons provided by respondents are less persuasive because they suggest wine reviewers are uniquely….well, how should I put it? “Too nice” is probably too nice. How about “not cut out to be critics”.

4. Worries about being labeled a “wine snob”.

5.  Not wishing to offend people who like the wine.

6. Negative reviews sound “mean and petty”.

7. Not wishing to offend the winemaker who puts “effort and heart” into making the wine.

I understand these sentiments. But the practice of criticism of any kind depends on the idea that there are quality standards that some aesthetic objects meet and others do not, and it’s important to let people know what those standards are. If you’re not willing to do that you’re not engaged in criticism. Do music critics worry about being “music snobs”? Do book reviewers worry about not wanting to offend people who like the book? Are negative film reviews always “mean and petty”? Do theater directors and performers not put effort and heart into their performances? These reasons fail to explain why wine is unique while ignoring the whole point of criticism.

There was one response that gets to the heart of the nature of criticism and perhaps to something unique about wine.

8. There are too many good wines to write about. Why waste time on bad ones?

My immediate reaction to this was to ask why it’s not important to let people know about a wine that is an aesthetic failure. Doesn’t a critic save people money and disappointment by pointing out wines that are inferior?

However, there is another dimension to this. Good critics help their readers appreciate a wine. They point out features of a wine that are worth paying attention to, features that some drinkers might miss, features that indicate new trends or something unusual that makes a wine distinctive. Good criticism will often explain why a wine tastes as it does or provide historical context to help readers understand what they are drinking. In other words, there is a lot to say about wines that are an aesthetic success. By contrast, there seems to be less to say about wines that fail. Most wines fail because the grapes are inferior. That is not interesting to write about nor is it interesting to read about unless there is something distinctive about that failure.

Books, film, and music, by contrast, can fail for more interesting reasons. Wooden characters, convoluted plot lines, or clichéd melodies provide an opportunity for the critic to explore how characters, plots or melodies are supposed to work. We learn something from their failure.

Perhaps its a weakness of wine criticism that we don’t pay more attention to aesthetic failures. Perhaps we wine critics don’t know enough about winemaking to point out the reasons behind aesthetic failures in a way that would enable our readers to learn something.

Why We Like Old Wines

05 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by in Philosophy of Food and Wine

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old wines 2What exactly is the appeal of old wines?

I enjoy aged wines, just as they are developing their peak tertiary aromas and soft elegant textures but with plenty of vibrant fruit still available. Quality examples of age worthy varietals can last 20 years or more at that peak of goodness. But eventually they will start to fade ,and when they do I’m not sure I see the attraction. When I hear of people lovingly opening 40 or 50 year old wines I wonder what they get from them.

The oldest wine I have consumed was about 40 years old. My wife and I were dining in a restaurant enjoying a bottle of wine, and a couple at a nearby table got up to leave. On the way out they stopped by our table and said “you look like you really enjoy wine. You can finish what’s left in this bottle.” It was a 1957 Bordeaux (I don’t remember the Chateau but it wasn’t a Premier Crus.) We were grateful for the rare opportunity to taste such an old wine. It was interesting to taste what time and oxygen had done to the wine but I remember saying to myself, I must be missing something. The occasion was memorable but not the wine.

To be honest, I think I’ve had only 1 or 2 wines over 25 years old that provided a remarkable tasting experience unless it was virtually indestructible like a Vintage Port or Madeira.

But perhaps taste and flavor are beside the point. What we get from old wines is not flavor but pathos. We sense the wines mortality and take up its cause. We respect its tenacity, sympathize with its struggles, one codger to another, in solidarity with everything that has seen better days.

The predations of time have their own aesthetic appeal—that’s why the Japanese invented Wabi Sabi—but it’s much more an emotional connection than a matter of taste.

The Book is Written

03 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by in Philosophy of Food and Wine

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jumping for joyFour years ago, I decided to start working on a book on the philosophy of wine. This weekend, I finished the draft. (Celebrated with a nice Vouvray on a very hot Sunday afternoon). Notice I didn’t say the book is finished. It won’t be finished until I hit the publish button. There are still tweaks and editing to do, but all the heavy lifting is accomplished.

Entitled “Beauty and the Yeast: A Philosophical Exploration of Wine, Life, and Love”, the book explains why some wines have the appeal of great works of art or life long friends. The thought that wine is expressive in the way that complex living beings are expressive is the foundation for a new aesthetics of wine, which I work out in the book.

Of course writing the book is only half the battle; it must also be published if people are to read it. I have made the decision to forgo the conventional route to publication. I will publish the book myself.

Conventional academic publishing moves at a glacial pace even in the best of times; and these are not the best of times. Using a conventional publisher, it would likely take 1 1/2- 2 years for the book to appear and it might sell for well north of $40 per copy depending on the publishers marketing strategy.

That is too long and too much. It will take me about 3 months to self-publish the book and I can set a reasonable price that will encourage more readers.

That means I will have to hire my own book designers and editors with many upfront costs, but after careful consideration, at this late stage in my career, I think the benefits of self publishing outweigh the costs. I’ve set a tentative publication date for November 10.

Here is the table of contents.

Introduction

Chapter 1 Wine’s Promise

Chapter 2 Vinous Vitality

Chapter 3 Winemaking and Creativity: The Slow Art of Wine

Chapter 4  Ambiente: It Takes a Village to Raise a Wine

Chapter 5  Wines of Anger and Joy: Vitality and Expression

Chapter 6  Wine Criticism and Appreciation

Chapter 7  Wine and Aesthetic Experience

Chapter 8   Metaphor, Imagination, and the Language of Wine

Chapter 9  Beyond Objectivity and Subjectivity

Chapter 10 Beauty, Pathos, and Rhythm

Appendix: Tasting Vitality

Wine is a Vital Force

27 Monday Jul 2020

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motion artTo me, what matters most about a wine is whether it moves the mind and the heart. Does a wine send thoughts on a quest for new territory, seeking something not quite present, exploring multiple meanings, inspiring speculations, and promising more provocations to come? Wine commands our attention because it generates a unique sensation, something out of the ordinary, and we become open to what more it might have to say. The alcohol is a necessary part of this. It modifies our mood and allows us to engage the world sympathetically. Once achieved, that sympathetic engagement makes us fully available for what the wine can express.

That remarkable sensation sympathetically engaged uncovers a  wines spirit, it’s vitality. A delicate Pinot Noir not only tastes and smells differently from an Australian Syrah—it feels different to taste it. The wine reveals an energy that seems to track human feeling states and we begin to construct a concept of the wine’s personality.

The essence of wine are these garrulous tides, the nerve and pulse, that give wine its rhythm.

Does a Novice and an Expert have the Same Sensory Experience?

22 Wednesday Jul 2020

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wine glassSome philosophers hold the position that wine tasting (or any kind of tasting for that matter) is a purely sensory experience. No input from the mind—thoughts, knowledge, or use of language—has any impact on what we taste.

Thus, a novice with little experience tasting wine and a highly educated wine expert, when they taste the same wine, are having the same sensory experience, assuming they have similar biological capacities. The expert can use her knowledge to compare the wine to other wines and evaluate it according to criteria which the novice cannot do. And the expert will get intellectual pleasure from her knowledge of how the wine was made or where the grapes were grown. Knowledge may contribute non-sensory pleasure to the experience.

But with regard to the sensory experience itself, no cognitive input is necessary.

This strikes me as implausible. In the transition from tasting novice to expert, I imagine we all have experienced our tastes changing as we gain more knowledge of regions, varietals, winemaking styles, etc. The increasing expertise seems to be having some impact on what we are able to taste.

It has also been firmly established in countless studies that our beliefs about, for instance, the price of a wine influence not only our judgment about the wine but the properties the wine is perceived as possessing.

Furthermore, I think it is rather common to be puzzled about what aromas a wine exhibits until someone says “that’s baked apple” at which point the baked apple becomes crystal clear. It seems to me the suggestion doesn’t merely give me a label to assign to the aroma. It makes the aroma more salient thus changing the experience.

On my view, beliefs, knowledge, and linguistic signs regulated what is salient—what stands out from the background—and thus directly influences the sensory experience.

The novice and the expert are not having the same experience at all.

Food Rules and Authenticity

08 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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mostlyreal_thumbCooking is an art mired in tradition. Each nation has its food rules encrusted with the patina of age, and each region within each nation has its way of doing things that seem natural and “right”. Violations of “food rules” are met with moral indignation and contempt.

In Italy, the food rules say grated cheese is never added to seafood, oil and vinegar is the only proper salad dressing,  and coffee is never consumed during a meal. In France, salad is always eaten after the main dish, never before, ketchup is not a condiment for pommes frites.  Even in the “anything goes” United States, beans are part of a chili recipe only in certain regions of the country; and do not eat Carolina barbeque in Texas. [The rules are of course routinely violated—the food police carry no weapons.]

But of what value is authenticity when defined in terms of these rigid norms? Does it matter if these rules are followed or broken?

“Food rules” ignore the fact that all food traditions have been influenced by outsiders. All food traditions are a hybrid hash of influences thrown together by the movement of populations and the imperatives of trade. For instance, neither tomatoes nor polenta are native to Italy. Tomatoes and corn were brought to Europe from the Americas.

Whatever “authenticity” means it cannot mean pure or unadulterated.

Authenticity is not about origins but about the commitments people make and what those commitments reveal about their sensibility. There is a reason why tomato sauces marry nicely with pasta and why a tomato served with olive oil and basil is heavenly. Tomatoes may not be originally Italian, but Italians have done wonderful things with tomatoes. They committed themselves to tomatoes, discovered how they resonate with their local ingredients, and now there is a certain way with tomatoes that is uniquely Italian.

So should we just throw out the food rules?

I think not. It’s good that food rules exist because they set the table for innovation—they define the standards that innovation must meet. Food rules say: “If you want to violate this tradition it better be good.” Without tradition, innovation is just novelty.

However, anyone who is just a slave to tradition and rigidly conforms without entertaining new ideas is violating the very identity of living traditions—their ability to be affected. What makes traditions great—and this is certainly true of Italian food traditions—is their capacity to seamlessly absorb new influences.

Tradition and authenticity are not opposed to innovation–they depend on it. No tradition can remain alive if it does not innovate by accepting and transforming influences from abroad.

So if you’re dying to try miso polenta or achar-spiced pancakes. Go for it. You may be creating the food rules of the future.

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A Fundamental Mistake about Subjectivity in Wine tasting

06 Monday Jul 2020

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wine flavor wheelI keep seeing this inference in discussions about subjectivity in wine tasting by people who should know better.  Gordon Shepherd makes it in his book Neuroenology: How the Brain Creates the Taste of Wine, and Jamie Goode makes it in his  otherwise fine book I Taste Red. Both insist that the flavor of wine is not in the wine but in the brain.

The mistake is this. From the fact that the brain integrates a variety of multisensory signals in order to create flavor perceptions, it does not follow that the brain creates the flavors that we perceive. Flavor is one thing. Flavor perception something else just as a color is one thing and our perception of that color something else. We can sometimes make mistakes when perceiving color and we can sometimes make mistakes when tasting wine. The act of perceiving is distinct from the thing perceived.

No doubt flavor perception requires input from our sensory system and the brain. But it requires something else as well—the flavors perceived. The mistake is to think that if perceptions occur in the brain that the thing perceived must also be in the brain. No doubt we can know only what we perceive but to think the thing perceived must then exist in the mind is to conflate what I can know with what exists.

The brain by itself does not create the taste of wine. And we don’t live in separate taste worlds as Jamie Goode sometimes suggests. We may disagree about what what we taste in a particular wine but we’re tasting the same wine.

Perception is an interaction between the brain and our environment—you need both to create a perception and the object is not an empty cipher. It has real causal properties without which perception cannot occur.