Wine & Philosophy

Part of the same series, subtitled a symposium on thinking and drinking. The association between wine and philosophy goes right back to its Greek origins with Plato's Symposium. The six parts in this book address the art and culture of wine, tasting and talking about wine, wine and its critics, the beauty of wine, wine and metaphysics, and finally the politics and economic supply. In technical terms, this embraces philosophy of language, perception, aesthetics, metaphysics, ethics and political philosophy, similarly to the volume on Coffee. John Bender writes as a philosopher and wine taster, explaining in some detail the fascinating wine aroma wheel from A.C. Noble, with its astonishing range of fruity vegetative vocabulary used to characterise a range of tastes. The complexity and subtlety of the distinctions made by master tasters is quite astonishing, and is all the more interesting when comparing notes with others. After all, a key point made by all these books is that drinking is essentially a social process.