What is Wine?

Dwight Furrow

May 29

This might seem like an unnecessary question. Everybody knows that wine is a liquid made from fermented grapes that we drink for pleasure or consume with food.

But there is a hidden problem in thinking of wine in that way. It assumes the grapes and the wine made from them are inert substances just sitting there until we decide to do something with them. Indeed we tend to think of most objects in this way. They are inert and without value until we confer value on them. Value only comes into the picture when human beings will it into existence.

Is there another way to think about the value of wine?

Suppose we think of wine as a living organism with its own character and dispositions that resists our ability to control it. It surprises us and develops variations that we didn't intend and that continually escapes the categories we use to apprehend and understand it.

Now of course wine is a product of human culture and would not exist as a product if we didn't decide to make it. I am not suggesting it is entirely independent of our will or understanding. But our decision to make wine sets off multiple series of events that slip out of our control. (It should be obvious I'm not talking about industrial wine here.)

If wine is this recalcitrant "wild child" born of civilization but only partially tamed, then our subjective evaluations of wine that know wine only in its now familiar, past incarnations would be inadequate for understanding it. The conceptual boxes in which we place wine would always be in danger of collapsing.

This "living" dimension of wine gives us important clues about how wine should be appreciated. It is not a mere product of human intentions. The accidents and contingencies, the unpredictability and continuous variations are part of the real nature of wine. Our personal judgements are never the final word even with regard to our own tastes because there is always something about wine that will disrupt our assumptions and force us to think differently.

Wine is not just a beverage but a reminder that our illusions of control are just that.

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