Joe Breenon wine
I'm not suggesting that René Descartes's "I think, therefore I am" should be changed, but I Drink, Therefore I Am would have made a great alternative title for Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine. Edited by Barry Smith of London University's Institute of Philosophy, the book, which claims to the first in any language on the subject, features contributions by philosophers and wine critics on topics such as wine and the brain, the objectivity of tastes and tasting, and "the role of reputational and ranking systems in the world of wine".
It is not easy reading. Philosophers like to take a nice gentle notion, give it a few digs, put it on a rack and stretch it backwards and forwards before tossing it before us mere mortals as a philosophical concept. But, perhaps because of wine's humanising qualities, the philosophers are eager to bring readers inside the tent of their ideas.
Roger Scruton, for instance, gets down to basics quickly: "What exactly is intoxication? Is there a single phenomenon that is denoted by this word? Is the intoxication induced by wine an instance of the same general condition as the intoxication induced by whisky, say, or that induced by cannabis?"
There follows a rambling but fascinating journey that reaches a destination of sorts: "At some level, I venture to suggest, the experience of wine is a recuperation of that original cult whereby the land was settled and the city built. And what we taste in wine is not just the fruit and its ferment, but also the peculiar flavour of a landscape to which the gods have been invited and where they have found a home."
This connection to the earth is repeated often, such as in Andrew Jefford's penetrating interview with Paul Draper of California's acclaimed Ridge Vineyards: "The heart of the matter, what wine is all about, is place and natural process. I would claim that the majority of wine drinkers see wine consciously or unconsciously as a connection to the earth, a connection to the seasons. They don't see beer or sprits that way . . . And if that is lost we will be left with nothing but industrial wine. Of course the big guys exploit that connection. Gallo's advertising in the old days was brilliant: all that folksy little old wine-maker stuff."
The language of wine also comes in for serious deconstruction. In "Can wines be brawny?: Reflections on wine vocabulary" Adrienne Lehrer, a professor of linguistics, has fun (in a philosophical kind of way) with the lexicon of wine journalists. "Does a phrase like muscular wine trigger visual images in some people? Do wine experts agree on the intra-linguistic links and metaphorical meanings of new wine descriptors? Will playful new words remain as descriptors or will they, like slang, be quickly replaced by new terms? What other discourses are like wine? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I would love to find out." Wouldn't we all.
Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine, edited by Barry Smith, is published by Signal Books, £12.99 in UK