Wine Reflection | Hawk Wakawaka Wine Reviews

Thinking About Drinking: The Role of Immanence; Or, Damn, this stuff tastes good. Can you feel it? (For Robin, and others)

My Philosophical Background

A number of people have written recently to ask about the role of philosophy in my life, oddly enough. The curiosity, from what I can tell, has arisen out of my calling myself “an existential virtue ethicist” (I mean, honestly, what the hell does THAT mean, anyway?); and also out of my having been a philosophy professor until just a few months ago, while now spending my time writing and drawing about wine.

Ultimately, answering such questions ends up explaining (at least partially) my fascination with wine, and with writing about it too. So, if you can bare with me, I’ll talk through some basic thoughts on my relationship with philosophy and use those to explain my relationship with wine.

what teaching philosophy sometimes looks like: a student took this picture of me on the first day of a 300-level Epistemology class

One of the questions undergraduate students like to ask philosophy professors is, what kind of philosopher are you? Actually, other people outside of academia that know at least a little about philosophy like this question too. Students are used to profs having a straightforward enough answer like, I’m an Ancient Philosopher, or I’m a Race Theorist, or I’m a Marxist. My answer took a little longer to get out but was accurate, in the way such titles can be, to my views. The answer still holds as true. Here it is: I’m a Spinozist-Marxist, Aristotelian Existentialist. It generally took students the rest of the semester to sort out a hint of what all that came together to mean.

I recognize by now that what those four positions share in common is an idea of immanence. Believe me, I recognize reading this is some kind of labor (DID YOU SEE THAT??!! DID YOU SEE THE MARX JOKE I JUST MADE THERE??!! ahem. sorry. put that in for my philo-geek friends) so don’t worry I won’t dwell too deeply in lingo. But, let me at least explain some of what I mean there.

Understanding Immanence

To be a little too quick about it we can imagine the history of so-called Western philosophy as a kind of arrival out of and response to Platonic ideas. Via the mouthpiece of Socrates, Plato presents a view of how the world works that rests on a notion that there is the substance within the world, on the one hand; that is, the things around us–trees, rocks, my bird on the couch next to me, our bodies, etc., anything with a material body; and there are, on the other, also forms that give substantial things their shape and purpose, so to speak. A form is a kind of idea of a thing. So, the idea “bird”, which is universal to any bird, rather than my actual bird herself, as an example.

The point is just that this view pictures the world in a particular way–that is, that we could imagine a world transcendent of our own–a world of pure ideas untouched by the lived reality of our human lives. That world would be unchanged, outside of time, and separate from our own, even while shining down the form of our things for us at the same time.

The four philosophies mentioned in my answer to the question “what kind of philosopher am I?” each disagree with this kind of view of a transcendent realm of ideas in a particular way. Each presents a view of human life that cannot truly allow for a separable world in which ideas hover, as if in heaven, pure and untouched, uninfluenced by humankind. Instead, for each (though in their differing ways) the point becomes seeing how rooted in the lived reality of our everyday lives ideas actually are. In each case, even if we can speak of a kind of abstraction away from our lives–that is, speak of an idea as if it stands alone, still it either exists within or arises from (depending on which view you’re taking up specifically) the material reality of our lived human lives.

To be rough and quick about it, such a view is one of immanence, rather than one of transcendence as found in Plato. But, again, what the hell am I talking about here?

Beginning with Aristotle

Aristotle, as a student of Plato, responds directly to the idea of form versus substance. In Aristotle’s account, Plato is mistaken. The mistake, however, is a sort of tricky subtlety, at least in description. The implications are profound.

According to Aristotle, it is true that we can talk about the idea of a thing, but there is no real sense in which such an idea exists as separable or separate from a thing itself. So, to return to our bird example, the idea of a bird only really takes shape through my actual bird, along with every other actual bird. There is a sense here in which we can identify a universal notion of bird, but only because it is shown to us through how it lives in actual birds. Further, the idea of a bird represents the potential (like in the case of a bird still in its egg, it hasn’t reached its potential yet), and shape for my actual bird (how my actual bird could look, and she exemplifies it quite beautifully, thank you), rather than a form hovering in another world separate from our own.

that’s my bird there hanging out on my shoulder while we check-out some movie my daughter put on

But to jump ahead quite a bit, here’s the point of all that. Let’s assume that we are going to go with Aristotle on this one–the ideas we have only exist here with us in our lived lives–the point then is that how we live our lives is of crucial importance. It is only through us that the ideas of virtue, or courage, or compassion, or the vices of cowardice, or selfishness have place to take shape and exist. That is, how we live our own lives is precisely how any of these ideas can exist in the world. We are the bodies through which they operate.

When I put any time into reflecting on that idea I become terribly excited. There is a massive power in that. We are the vessels. No. Not merely the vessels. We are the actors that bring courage to life. We are the agents through which the shape of any character is determined. It is only through us that the values we hold, the things we care about, the ideas we have, or the virtues and the vices that we’ve heard of have any life, influence, or bearing of any kind. What we do gives them their home in the world. But, even more deeply, how we do what we do gives values, virtues, vices, ideas, their traction and shape. Further, we show to others what values, virtues, vices, or ideas can even be simply by being alive living our lives as we do. It is here we discover the “virtue ethicist” part of my convictions.

Popping Briefly into Marx and Spinoza

This is what a bunch of Existential-Phenomenologist Marxists look like; from left to right–my daughter, Rachel, Shiloh, Don, me

I won’t dwell on this because it’s rather esoteric and many of you, if you’ve persisted in reading this far, are likely wondering why the hell any of this matters anyway–but I will admit I think of Marx and Spinoza as very much the same. I studied both of them quite thoroughly in graduate school, and both heavily influenced my views of social politics, but perhaps more importantly, my views of how to connect with and care about other people. Having said that, let’s skip over it and just talk about Spinoza. It would take an entire thesis to explain why I see them as so similar.

Looking at it historically, Spinoza arises in the 17th century as a kind of brilliant anomaly. (My friend Katherine will laugh at this, but as a quick side note for those of you that are aware of which I speak: I also believe that Spinoza is often largely misread, or misunderstood, in traditional contemporary American academic tradition.) His work was hugely influential while also under-acknowledged, and often seen as more limited than his ideas actually were (that is: he’s often been misunderstood through history as people have read less into what he is saying than he actually said). I’ll be plain and say that Spinoza is a little bit of a challenge to talk about because he’s intensely rigorous and specific in his language. That said, I’ll quickly present one idea from him and hope that any Spinozists that might be reading forgive me for the sake of these purposes.

Spinoza believes that everything, and that means literally every-thing–all of the world–is interconnected. All substantial things intermix, to put it one way, and have influence on each other. Further, ideas are the same as material things (again EVERYthing in the world is interconnected) but simply “seen” from a different perspective, to be a little sloppy about it. That is, ideas and matter really are the same we just perceive one from the “level” of ideas, and the other from the “level” of matter. This aspect of Spinoza is a little tricky to mention so quickly so don’t stick here too long except inasmuch as it gets us to this next point.

Here’s where Spinoza starts to matter in the midst of whatever all this is that I’m getting at: Once you start talking about Spinoza’s Ethics, and his Political Philosophy, his view that everything is interconnected takes up an interesting shape. For Spinoza, our own strength depends, at least partially, on our ability to interact with more varying types of things, and more varying sorts of people. To put it another way, the more we are able to get along, or find commonality with others the more we are refueled and rejuvenated by the world around us. The less we are able to, the more we are taxed by the world around us. So, inasmuch as we cultivate a kind of openness coupled with a willingness to see something in common with those we happen to meet, and the things we happen to encounter, the better equipped to do well and succeed in this life we will be.

For Spinoza, having an open heart (to use my own language) with other people then is self-serving in the sense that it helps us do better in our own lives, but it actually is also the ultimate ethical and political “thinking for others” act in that we are interconnected with everyone anyway. In being open and finding common ground with others we are cultivating the health of people in general, not just our own. To add to this point: in increasing our connections with others we are also more readily able to accomplish any of our own goals, while also seeing how those goals overlap with or are simply shared with others’.

I’ll avoid getting too far into Marx and just instead comment quickly that Marx adds a layer here in that he sees the way we choose to connect and interact with others as a reflection of the ways society has taught us to see ourselves and each other. What we end up seeing ultimately here, then, is that to enrich our capacity to connect with others we have to do the work of recognizing how society does influence us in such a way, as well as how we enact societal norms through our actions and are therefore responsible for what society is, and to ask how we might be able to take up those norms while at the same time imagining them anew.

Living Existentially

The profundity of my existentialist virtue ethicist views play out most intensely in having a daughter I raise on my own. It drives home the importance, for me, in seeing that I am both responsible for how I choose to raise her and am simultaneously surrendered to hers as a life other than my own–I cannot determine who she will be. I can only encourage the development of her best habits, and help her cultivate relationships with others that may also show good example of a life well lived–examples found primarily through the friendships we choose, like dear Don here, one of the Philosophers of the Grand Canyon.

For any of you that have honestly read this far, thank you. It’s possible a post like this could seem indulgent. Let me say, that it’s also a reflection of something pretty basic to who I am by now; and also that it is genuinely arising out of a response to some requests in conversation (both in email and otherwise) that have come to me recently to talk more directly about these things.

In my view, the roots of existentialism arise out of the understanding that we choose our own lives, and are responsible for those choices. There is a profound awareness that the power of our choices is limited at exactly the same time. That is, we can’t actually control our lives–what they will be or what choices we will have available to us–and yet we must choose nevertheless, and we are responsible for those choices even when we recognize their limits. There are tons of elements of our own lives that we have not chosen at all–who our parents are, where we grew up, what society we were born into, as examples– and yet, we still must make choices from what we have been given, and those choices give shape to our lives.

To describe it another way: Human life, as it appears to us, arises out of two things–we cannot control what the circumstances of our lives will be, and yet we must choose how we will live anyway. Over time, our previous choices become part of the shape of those circumstances we can no longer control. As an example, I chose to get our bird several years ago, and now I have a bird to take care of and deal with whenever I travel. There is no way for me to rid myself of that reality. I can choose to give my bird away, but I would have to deal with the consequences of that choice too. To add another layer to this: I can’t actually control the outcome of the choices I make either, and yet I still must make a choice and act as fully responsible for the choice I’ve made. To some extent if things go very badly, in a way completely out of my control, I might get some sympathy for the situation, but I’m still, even then, responsible for how I respond to the hardship too. We just factor the situation itself into how we interpret my praise or blame, to put it one way. But I am responsible for my choices whether anyone else ever recognizes what I’ve done or not.

This simple point–I cannot control the outcome of my actions, and yet I still must choose and am responsible for what I choose–is deeply and profoundly important in my mind, and ties back to my excitement too with Aristotle in the idea that we enliven the virtues or vices through our lived lives. Here’s an example of how I see these ideas coming together in real life.

Listening to a Student that In This Example, At Least, Acts as a Spinozist-Marxist Aristotelian Existentialist Too

As a university professor I would meet individually with each of my students at least three times each semester. it was actually written into my syllabi as a required portion of their final grade. They were also welcome to meet with me more often, but were required to meet with me at least three times. This took a lot of time and attention, obviously, but I also saw it as one of the most effective ways for students to feel motivated to succeed because of how they saw that I was engaged with them individually; and also as the best way for me to track and adjust to how the class overall was going; plus, I simply wanted to connect more directly to the individuals I spent so much time with in the classroom.

In my very first semester of university teaching, after completing the opening section on Aristotle, one of my students met with me. He was animated and happy in a way he hadn’t been when the semester started. I asked him how he was, how his semester generally was going, and eventually too how our class was going for him. He responded that this semester was the best he’d had in college and that what we were studying in our Ethics course was largely why. Excited to hear this I asked him more about it. He told me that what he learned from Aristotle was that we get to decide for ourselves how we are going to approach our own lives, and that, if we mean what we do, we can actually change who we are as people and how we behave over time. He had always been a procrastinator when it came to doing school work, and as a result he didn’t think of himself as a very good student. Somehow in studying Aristotle he came to realize that he could decide if that was how he wanted to continue to think about himself, and if he wanted to continue to practice his habit of procrastinating. He decided he didn’t, and shifted to doing his school work immediately after finishing class on any particular day. He said that in the first week it was hard to make himself do it because of how it went against the habits he had of putting things off till later. But he quickly realized that once he finished the school work he felt better, and better about himself because of it. Suddenly, that good feeling added to his motivation and by the time he was telling me about this whole process he said it was easy to do his work right away, that his grades in all his classes were better as a result, and he thought better of himself too.

Though the example dwells on the influence of Aristotle, I think too it exemplifies an existentialist moment–my student realized his life was only his for living. Whatever influences he had in his life it was up to him to decide what his life would be. Looking at the interconnectedness of things, it turned out too that our efforts together (the class as a whole) in the classroom gave him the room to begin to re-imagine his own life and choose how he wanted to be in it. His choices too were influencing him in other areas of his life, and so too influencing people far outside our classroom where the change apparently began.

How Any of This Connects to Wine

loved ones and wine, from left to right–Shiloh, me, Paul

For whatever reason people’s lives are very much what I fundamentally care about. This brief (for a philosopher though likely long for anyone else) account of my values as shown through philosophy–indeed I see philosophy as a way of life rather than merely a profession or discipline–is meant to enliven, that is, to show, the ways that I care about people’s lives.

The intersection of these four philosophies, for me, ends up showing how anything in our lives is enlivened in a sense. That is, my life itself is the place through which my values, my connections with others, my histories, the histories of so many others (including that student that still makes me bubble with gratefulness and some very small joy of pride that I was there to witness and be part of that experience of his) all coalesce here in me right this moment, with me as the acting power choosing how to carry all those things forward through the way I will choose to live my life. Similarly, any other person’s life is a reflection of how they are enacting that same choice in their own lives. So, in any moment that we encounter or interact with another person we are getting a flash of that focal point of intersection of all these things in their life. Similarly, in some weird way we are seeing a glimmer of this same phenomenon too in the things we interact with–as things have been produced by people they reflect the way people choose to live their lives. Wine, then, is one of these things reflective of the powerful conviction and choices of human life. As Marco Cecchini, a wine maker in Colli Orientali, put it in conversation with me recently–the wine in a bottle takes a long time to make; it is the result of a series of actions and choices made over years. It is a person, and, indeed, group of people that come together to enact those choices to produce what will become a bottle of wine. I find that simple fact profound for the reasons I’ve been trying to explain here.

To put it another way, wine operates as a kind of focal point, or lens through which we can look, if we choose, to see how so many elements come together and take a very particular shape in our one glass (or on some nights, our many glasses). I am compelled to draw and write about wine, and indeed to shift from philosophy as a profession, to philosophical living with wine because of how, for me, it gives me a means through which to challenge all these things–to see the way another has chosen to live their lives, to see how their previous choices have brought them to where they are now, to see how they may yet still change their path, to look into how wine might draw together any of their values, or interests, or passions, or worries for them. I am fascinated by wine (and forgive me for being grandiose but I really believe there is no other good way to put it) because of how, to me, it simply is so much living. I am enlivened by it myself because of how it reflects to me some profound example of, and story about the reality of human life.

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hee hee hee! For those of you that would rather have a visual representation of this blog post rather than having to labor through reading it (DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE??!! A LABOR JOKE AGAIN??!!)–Robin, for whom the post is dedicated, had a Wordle created. This makes me laugh to no end. Cheers!

Thanks to Kittee for getting me the image file of the Wordle!

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Reflecting on Heroes on this My Dad’s Birthday: Or, The Long Road to How I Discovered Pinot Noir

May 1, 12 3:10 PM

This morning welcomed a realization on my fascination with superheroes, and presenting admirable figures in the wine world as their own heroic incarnations. All this triggered by my sister’s blog write-up for my dad’s birthday.

image found: http://endangeredspaces.blogspot.com

I was lucky enough to grow up in a rather remarkable family. My mother originates on the Western coast of Alaska where the Aleutian Islands join the mainland via the Alaska Peninsula. Her family reaches back in that area from as far back as we can imagine ancestors. They are Aleut.

my mother’s family in Bristol Bay, Alaska. my grandmother is the young girl front left. my great grandmother is in the middle.

The luck of this family rests largely in their fierce persistence. There is a strength we gained from my mother’s roots that is one of the foundations of my family’s health and successes. On this side of the family, the horrible joke is that we’ve all almost died at least once. The doctor’s just forgot to tell us we were supposed to.

The remainder of this luck arises from the incredible riches of Bristol Bay, where they originate. I was lucky enough to grow up commercial fishing for salmon alongside four, ultimately five, generations of family. My great grandfather retired from the industry at the age of 84 just so that I could begin fishing in his stead at the age of 9. He proudly smiled as he handed the torch to me, and my sisters, telling me I already was his fishing partner since my mother fished with me the summer she was pregnant. The salmon season runs from early June to early August. I was born August 25.

image found: http://www.alaskool.org

My father grew a little further up the coast at the mainland side of Norton Sound, where the Seward Peninsula (the nose of Alaska) nestles onto the body of the state. His family originates from this general coastal area having migrated up and down this mainland section below the Peninsula from their beginnings. They are Inupiat.

my grandmother in Northern Alaska

In college my parents met during my mother’s first year at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. As the story goes he’d seen her on campus and though he never bothered with school dances, he knew she did. So, at a school dance that Fall he went to the college activity center and stayed downstairs playing pool until what he thought was the last dance. Then he ran upstairs and asked her for the final song. It turned out there was one more slow dance left after their spin about the floor and for the end of the event another man stepped in. (My mom was a beautiful sought after but hard to get woman.) Miffed by the bad timing, my dad watched as the other man first danced with my mom then began to walk her home. A block or so into the stroll my father came up from behind and stepped in between. The other man gave up and my parents have been together ever since.

Within the year my parents were married, and within a year following they’d begun their family together with my oldest sister Paula being born. They also began their family business of commercial salmon fishing, with my father first fishing alongside my great grandfather, and then purchasing his own salmon drift fishing boat. He’s now been salmon fishing for just shy of 50 years.

my parents

My childhood is filled with stories of my dad’s heroics. In college to earn extra money my father participated in a research study observing how well men did exercising in cold climates. The study was carefully planned with a small number of men each from different racial backgrounds. As my dad tells it, they were required to ride a stationary bicycle in a cold (approaching freezing) room wearing only their underwear with monitors and probes about their bodies. The study was supposed to go on for as long as the men could sustain all day riding in the cold temperatures, with the expectation it would last about a week. But, the men were also paid for as long as they lasted. Determined to bring home as much as he could for his young family, and also fiercely certain he could do well by his Inupiat people my dad set out to continue bicycling as long as he could. He lasted two weeks longer than any of the other participants. In the end the researcher simply shut the study down and was unable to publish the results. As the story goes, my father’s efforts had skewed the data so severely the results were unusable.

People also regularly responded to my dad as a kind of warm but enigmatic presence. As I’ve told him before, one of my strongest memories of my father reaches back to elementary school. His mother had helped start the Alaska Native Heritage preservation movement in the state. As a result she’d been recognized publicly by President Nixon, and the Governor of Alaska, received various honorariums, and published multiple books. After her death numerous buildings around the state were also named for her. Outside of Fairbanks an elementary school carries her name and my father was asked to speak at the dedication ceremony directly after a well-known state politician that had been close to my grandmother. My parents and I flew to Fairbanks for the occasion.

Driving up to the event that evening I’d asked my dad what he would talk about. He responded that he didn’t know yet, but he felt comfortable deciding when he got on stage. At the time his answer confounded me.

my family about 5 years ago. there is another grand baby now.

The elementary had arranged for school children to usher in guests for the ceremony. When we were greeted at the front door by one of the elementary students my mother whispered to our guide that the man the girl was facing was Emily’s son (Emily being my grandmother and the namesake of the school). We had seen how the girl had been struggling with little boys only moments before as they kept pushing her away, and grabbing the biggest group of people to walk into the school for the dedication ceremony. But, for her patience the little girl had instead won the honor of bringing in not only one of the presenters for the dedication but also the son of the woman the school was named for.

That evening as I sat in the audience I listened first to the politician’s speech. He spoke of how admirable my grandmother’s work had been, and of how inspiring she was as a person. The truth was his own stage presence was flat, even if what he had to say was important. The audience regularly shifted in their seats. When the politician was done my father was introduced. It was the first time I’d seen him address a crowd. He began telling stories of my grandmother first from his childhood–about their life in remote Alaska, of her dedication to survival with her family (in the midst of winter she had to walk herself and her two sons tens of miles across the coastline to get from a cabin in Shaktoolik they’d become stuck in to her family in Unalakleet where they could find help)–and then stories of traveling with her as she worked to speak to the public about Native life, or to connect with elders whose lessons she would help record. The audience was transfixed, and moved. At the end of his talk the sound of clapping filled the gymnasium.

A simpler part of the story is that it is also my father that introduced our family to the world of red wine. Growing up as we did wine, or alcohol of any sort, was not part of the routine. We were even cautious about chocolates filled with liquor when we had them. After I graduated from high school, however, my father announced during one of my visits home that he was drinking red wine–a glass of Pinot Noir a day for his health. With that we discovered the wines of Carneros, and the Willamette Valley, and the wine world has continuously expanded ever since.

On this your birthday, dear Dad, I give thanks for the incredible gifts you and mom have given us. You are my original superhero. Every blessing in my life began with the two of you, and with our family reaching back as far as we can imagine ancestors.

All my love, Dad. Happy Birthday.

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My sister, Melanie, inspired my post on our dad by wishing him a Happy Birthday first at her blog. She considers there the legacy he has established for his family, and posts too a wonderful picture of he and his oldest grandchild, our sister Paula’s daughter, Melissa, who gets ready to graduate from high school in less than a week. Fishing photos are always cool to see. She also considers the perfect wine to celebrate our father, a real stand out from the Willamette Valley.

Check out her blog post here: http://fishwineski.com/2012/05/01/happy-birthday/

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Wine Writer Superheroes: The Parzen Family: A Knight of Malta, his Lady of Honor, and their little one

Apr 30, 12 11:13 PM

Those of you that have been reading my blog for a while know that I like drawing wine maker superheroes. Recently I realized there are wine writer superheroes too.

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A Knight of Malta, his Lady of Honor, and their little one

click on comic to enlarge

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta

The longest established chivalric order in the world, the Knights of Malta, is generally considered a sovereign body within International law, that is, the organization holds its own independent legal authority under agreement with the United Nations. The group reaches back to the middle ages having been established originally as the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, but became a fully independent military entity after the close of the crusades. Founded to provide medical aid to those in need, the group’s membership is dominated by medical providers of varying degrees and holds established charity projects on five continents, and more than 120 countries. In short, the Knights stands as a modern day superhero organization–people determined to do good wherever possible.

In Italy, the Knights of Malta own several wineries, including the Rocca Bernarda, which we were able to visit, as a means of funding their other projects. We were able to taste in the castle of the Rocca Bernarda with its sweeping views from atop the hill, and its terraced old vine vineyards. After tasting through their portfolio, our trusty guide, Jeremy Parzen excitedly asked if now that we’d had their wine, he could wear one of the helmets of the Knights of Malta.

Jeremy, Tracie, and Georgia Parzen

As is well shown already on this blog, I was lucky enough to travel in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, touring the appellation Colli Orientali del Friuli, recently with Jeremy Parzen as the trusted guide to our small group of plucky wine writers and bloggers. Before beginning the journey, Jeremy and I spoke over the phone. During the conversation, he and his wife, Tracie, drove south in Texas with their baby girl, Georgia, to visit Tracie’s parents for a weekend. It was clear in this first interaction not only that Jeremy was a man of understanding and generous heart, but also that he acts in glowing devotion to his two loves–his partner and daughter. During the phone call he took the time to explain to me who I’d be traveling with, how the trip would be handled, his experience that would serve as support in the experience. He also took pains to inquire as to my own needs and interests on the trip, and to investigate the degree of privacy I’d prefer both in being introduced and in posting on our adventures. (All intermingled with appropriately timed accolades for his wife and daughter.)

Upon arrival in Friuli, the same generosity of spirit showed itself in person. Jeremy did a wonderful job of balancing his own needs while tending to the well-being of our group. His ability to coordinate our travels, translate those we visited for us from their Italian to our English, and to both observe on his own and check-in on how well we were doing was a blessing. Further, he was willing to compliment any of us on what he appreciated along the way.

Tracie and Jeremy Parzen have both written on Italian wine for years via their individual blogs, offering their personal views and insights into the world, the politics, and the history of Italian wine to both other devotees and newer initiates. Their investment in such a project even brought them together.

One of the unexpected benefits of being able to travel with the #cof2012 group was Jeremy’s own appreciation for his family. As I explained to him one afternoon, I am someone that is grateful to witness and celebrate the joys of others, as they are willing to openly share. I’ve been lucky enough to raise my daughter on my own for over a decade now–she’s a real sweetheart and a total kick to help grow up. It’s a gift I wouldn’t miss, and also its own peculiar project, since from her toddler years it has been just the two of us. In being with Jeremy as he talked lovingly about Tracie and Georgia, I felt able to freely celebrate the pleasure he feels over having his family. It’s a real gift to see a man so in love with his wife and child. To put it another way, his joy deepened mine.

In thanks for inviting me to participate in #cof2012, and for his great work there, his dedication to celebrating the world of Italian wine, and his wide open loving heart for his family, I wanted to help Jeremy don that helmet, his family alongside. He is a superhero–one of the best kinds even–a real life grown man, well-grounded, and devoted. Thanks for everything, Jeremy!

Cheers to the wine writers’ Knight of Malta, and his Lady of Honor, plus their dear little one, Georgia!

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Getting Ready to Explore Friuli

Mar 30, 12 4:08 PM

The History of Friuli-Venezia Giulia

click on comic to enlarge

Friuli-Venezia Giulia now stands as the North-Eastern most region of Italy, resting at the border of Slovenia, and just south of Austria. The history of the region has undergone profound political change and influence, however, with its position at the top of Italy’s boot being largely settled after the Second World War, and then modified further as recently as 1975, after the Treaty of Osimo partitioned a portion of the Trieste region off for then Yugoslavia.

Friuli’s consistent changes in political affiliation link to its strong geographical position for Europe. At the North of the Adriatic sea, the area offers excellent water access, and additionally, its land location makes it the connecting point between Italy’s rich peninsula with Central and Eastern Europe. As a result, the location has been hotly desirable for world exchange and transport.

The importance of the location, and the influences of multiple empires through history has generated a unique Friulian culture with its own language, food, tradition, and more recently wine.

This week I am lucky enough to be one of six wine writers traveling to the region to explore the wine, food, and culture of Colli Orientali del Friuli. While there we’ll be eating at some of the best restaurants of the region, dining in the homes of some of the consortium’s top wine makers, visiting wineries, and tasting the area’s grapes.

I’ll be posting regular updates on the trip, and the six of us will also be keeping a conglomerate blog. I hope you’ll follow along here, and keep up with all our adventures on the group blog as well.

Here’s the link: http://cof2012.com/

See you in Cividale!

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Dr. Who and the Willamette Intervention: Jason Lett is Dr. Who: Part 1: A Good Man Goes to Wine; Part 2: Time for Dundee

Mar 9, 12 1:53 PM

Superhero Winemakers Part 2: Jason Lett is Doctor Who

“It’s a straw fedora. I wear a fedora now. Fedoras are cool.”

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Considering Sci-Fi

The thing about good sci-fi is there are no mere coincidences. Life changing moments occur because it was crucial to the fabric of space-time that your life be changed, and some space-time fabric mastermind is working to ensure you have the encounter necessary to generate your all-compelling epiphany that is going to instigate you changing that life of yours. In this way, sci-fi fascinates by treating what we often take as mundane as instead purposefully intended. Else wise, we walk a different path through history.

And So, Doctor Who

Enter Doctor Who. BBC’s Time Lord stands as the ultimate geek-out intellectual superhero saving the universe again and again as the last man of mystery able to do so. He regularly puts his life on the line for the sake of the greater good, while repeatedly figuring out how to save his bacon in the midst of that universe saving conundrum. His superhero antics do not include a cape, but instead pose him as an otherwise everyman complete with massive encyclopedic knowledge, and a supersonic fix-all screwdriver (See Lett’s breast pocket above).

In Doctor Who’s world there are moments in history that are fixed. That is, they cannot occur otherwise lest the universe itself collapse in on itself. These fixed points in space-time are few, but in their essence define fundamental aspects of what it is to be of this universe, whether we as humans recognize those moments’ importance or not.

Why Eyrie

Behold Eyrie Vineyards. Thanks to its place in beginning a worldwide regarded wine region, and thus also helping to transform not only how we understand U.S. wine making potential, but also what cultural-economic possibilities underlie an entire region, Doctor Who understands Eyrie Vineyards, and thus also the Lett family, as one of these fixed (that is, crucially required) moments in human history. (Wow, that was a long sentence.)

The Eyrie Episodes: The Willamette Intervention: Part One: A Good Man Goes To Wine

In part one of The Eyrie Episodes we are stuck at a crucial moment in the fabric of space-time. Our beloved Doctor Who must ensure that young David Lett makes his way to first learn about the powers of wine making, second convince his parents it is the right choice, and third discover the beauty and grape growing rightness of the Willamette Valley.

As our episode begins, Jason Lett, as Doctor Who, exits the Tardis in pre-wine era Dundee Hills, Oregon. The hills are rolling green. The climate is cool, lightly moist from morning fog, and the sun is rising through the mist casting rays of golden light across the tall hawk dotted trees. He takes a deep breath and smiles. In moments a man is going to come walking over the crest of the nearby green with a small soil scoop in hand. Doctor Who will talk with him, encourage him to look up into the trees and see the hawks, and in doing so the man will be struck by the landscape and decide to dig into the earth right there.

In this moment we glimpse a crucial element of Doctor Who–he carries more connection to the person being importantly directed than that person realizes. The Doctor’s encounter (with his own father in this multi-layered sci-fi moment) is known as valuable in advance by the Doctor, while only recognized later by the person being helped.

Flash Forward (though backwards from our own human perspective in time):

A couple is waiting for their son to return home from a road trip to California. He’s told them he has a new idea to discuss. Little do they know, their boy wants to take up wine making, having met wine maker Lee Stewart, himself doing interesting things in wine.

Enter Doctor Who. Casually starting conversation with the couple discussions of the potential of wine making in the New World is mentioned. UC Davis has a good program. etc. A seed is planted. The Lett parents, without realizing it, consider wine in a new way. Though not thrilled, when young David tells them of his plans they are now more open to the suggestion.

The Eyrie Episodes: The Willamette Intervention Part Two: Time For Dundee

The phantom enemy that must be fought in part two of The Eyrie Episodes includes both dreaded vine diseases that can ruin a vineyard, and the dregs of economic crisis. With his cunning wit and smart humor, Jason Lett as Doctor Who recognizes the power of a diverse and dynamic vineyard to keep pests at bay, and costs down. The fight is won (though not till episode end after much tension, humor, and British style brilliance)!

As the episode begins, we return to the place on the hill beneath the hawk nests. Jason Lett as Doctor Who is standing in the morning sun appreciating the view. This time the hills are planted with established vines that were not present before. The second generation of Eyrie winemakers tend the fruit, bringing into tradition a young next generation as well. Here Black Cap wines are also grown, Jason Lett’s own label. Thus, takes hold not only an Eyrie dynasty, but also a leader in establishing a celebration of wine making in the United States arising from the wealth of the land, climate, and fruit itself.

***

Why Jason Lett as Doctor Who? The truth is originally my thought was that Jason Lett is who Spiderman becomes when he finally grows comfortable with his suit. Spiderman carries a strong commitment to family and tradition, while switching up how he will live his own life at the same time. He’s everyman likeable, with handsome smart guy charm, while also totally devoted to the woman (and by Jason Lett years children too) he loves. He appreciates his privacy, and will follow through on what he knows is right. Spiderman faces his challenges with steadiness and conviction.

At the same time, I couldn’t help but follow an intuition that’s harder to describe–Jason Lett somehow feels like Matt Smith as Doctor Who to me. Similarly, Matt Smith’s Doctor Who is everyman likeable, with handsome smart (and tall) guy charm, also devoted to the health of his companion, Amy, and the love of his River Song. He wants the committed family life, but as a Time Lord struggles to have it. He ensures that moments in space-time be done right, and is committed to the tradition of his people while finding ways to follow through in his own good sense. Further, both Matt Smith’s Doctor Who, and Jason Lett are known for their dry humor.

(Incidentally, Doctor Who rarely wears a hat but during the Matt Smith years has a penchant for trying them out. Jason Lett, from what I can tell through pictures online, often wears a hat.)

The thing that clinched the Doctor Who portrait was Jason Lett tweeting in response to my Spiderman suggestion, saying to me instead that his wife took him to be Doctor Who (while he took himself to be Doctor Terrible–oh the joking!), and his kids were looking forward to whatever comic I came up with. I couldn’t believe I was lucky enough that this one bit of my intuition agreed with Jason’s good wife, but was happy to discover it so. As such, this comic is dedicated to to all the Letts. I hope you enjoy!

***

Next week we’ll look at some other good wines of the Willamette Valley.

To read more on Eyrie Vineyards see my previous post on their wines and story:

http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2012/03/02/how-plum-wine-got-me-there-or-more-appropriately-discovering-eyrie-vineyards-2009-pinot-gris-2007-chardonnay-2009-pinot-noir-reserve/

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Understanding Orange Wines: A Quick and Dirty Look at How They’re Made and What Their Tannins Do To Our Saliva

Feb 18, 12 4:02 AM

Kim wrote and asked if I would do a feature on Orange Wine. She’d read about the phenomenon online and hoped I’d take some time both to explain what the heck orange wine is, and also to review some orange wines. Thanks so much for asking, Kim, and I’m so happy to do a feature on the subject for you!

So, today we’ll cover both the general process through which orange wines are made, and the basic qualities of grapes that get presented differently in the orange wine making process, and thus make tasting orange wines interesting.

Next week we’ll look at a whole series of orange wines from various parts of the world, reviewing the tasting notes of each, and the more specific story of how each are made.

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Knowing these points about the basic parts of the grape–the skin, seeds, and pulp–will help explain what is importantly different between a typical white wine, and an orange wine of the second sort. (Though I would eventually like to taste a Vino Naranja and admit I haven’t gotten to do so yet. For those wine geeks that are interested in such things–vino naranja is aged in a solera method and as a result shows qualities like sherry. The rest of this post ignores vino naranja and assumes that the designation “orange wine” refers to the second version of this designation.)

So, first, let’s look at the quick and dirty basics of how a white wine is typically made these days.

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In white wine production the skin is quickly separated from the bulk of the juice. Though the skins are then pressed again to gain more juice from the grape, the liquid from the first press, and that from the second are kept separate during fermentation. In this way, the wine maker can then carefully select the right proportion for mixing to create the final bottled wine. By keeping the first and second press juice separate the wine maker is also able to reduce the color, and tannin influence in the wine. In both, the skins are kept away from the fermentation process, and the seeds are filtered out of the liquid before fermentation as well.

The reasons for keeping the skins and seeds separate from the liquid rest primarily in the flavor and textural effect they impart to the wine. Understanding how the tannins present in the skin, seeds, and stems impacts the quality of the wine will better show the difference between a wine made with their influence and a wine made without their influence.

An orange wine is made with a white grape variety, but in a process more like how red wine is typically made.

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Though orange wines are made with white grape varieties, because orange wines are produced in a manner more like how red wines are made, orange wines have textural and structural qualities closer to a red than to a white wine. While the free run and the press juice are kept separate in white wine production, in orange wines there is only the initial pressing done firmly and then skins are fermented within the juice. In this way the skins impart both color and tannin to the wine. The richer color quality of the wine caused by the skin is where the designation “orange wine” originates.

The basic commonality of orange wine production is the extended contact of the skin with the juice. However, different orange wine producers vary other aspects of the production process, most notably how long the skin contact continues. For some wine makers, the skin contact is as little as several days, while for others it continues for several months. Besides the choice of extended skin contact, orange wine producers also differ in the type of fermentation vessel used. This aspect of orange wine production will be considered further next week when we review specific orange wines.

Because of the extended skin contact, orange wines not only have a richer color quality, they also have higher tannin content than typical white wines, while still showing many of the sort of fruit and floral tasting characteristics of a white. As a result, many consider orange wines a difficult food pairing challenge. Tannins create a textural quality in wine that feels both drying and bitter in the mouth, and changes how we experience the flavors of whatever we are tasting, be it wine or food.

Since white wines are produced to keep them sediment free and tannin low, we experience not only their particular grape profile but also a different textural quality than wines made in a red wine fashion. Orange wines, retain their particular white grape profile but gain the structure of a red wine. But also, with the higher tannin levels of the orange wine, the grape’s flavor profile does shift some what along with the texture. Interestingly, in fully blind tastings (where the wines literally could not be seen in the glass) orange wines have actually been mistaken as reds.

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Biodynamics & Wine: Or, What Poop, Crystals, and the Moon Have in Common

Feb 13, 12 6:43 PM

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A number of wine makers around the world follow biodynamic practices. Certification currently is offered by two different institutions. In the United States, Demeter is the most common certifying institution. Demeter has branches in other areas of the world as well. However, Demeter’s focus is on agriculture in general, not simply on wine making. In Europe, Biodyvin offers certification only for wine makers. Chapoutier helped begin this Biodyvin believing both that Demeter’s process was not stringent enough, and also that the unique processes of wine making (no crop rotation, for example) meant that vineyards needed their own observation institution.

To read more on Biodynamics and wine, check out Wine Anorak’s series on the process: http://www.wineanorak.com/ , as well as Wine Anorak’s list of Biodynamic wine makers here: http://www.wineanorak.com/biodynamic3.htm . Also, check out a quick summary of Biodynamics and Wine from Crush Pad at http://www.crushpadwine.com/blog/2012/01/biodynamic-winemaking-demystified/ . For more consideration of Rudolph Steiner and some of the esoteric aspects of biodynamics read Down Garden Service’s summary of the practice: http://www.dgsgardening.btinternet.co.uk/biodynamics.htm

Wednesday we’ll review a few biodynamically made wines, including one from Chapoutier. Later this week we’ll look at the intersection of biodynamics with orange wines.

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Pictures from a Wine Tasting

Feb 3, 12 1:22 AM

As mentioned on Wednesday’s post, I co-hosted an obscure-wine tasting this week along with the owner of Pizzicletta, Caleb Schiff. It was a total foodie-wine geek-artisan-political-philosophers event that included the Baker for Criollo, both a bartender and the wine buyer for The Wine Loft, the head chef for Cuvee 928, the manager of The Flagstaff Coffee Company, a jewelry maker at Will McNabb, a dentist on the Navajo Reservation, and a political philosopher activist working on immigration issues in Arizona. Commonality? We all love wine and food, and get along pretty damned well.

Here are some pictures. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be integrating in articles and reviews focusing on the collection of very unique wines.

Thanks so much to everyone that was able to participate, and to Caleb for hosting us at Pizzicletta. The food you provided was great too! Thank you!

The wines we selected were six unusual types. We opened with a still-white varietal from Piedmont, then moved into a series of five orange wines-three from Italian heavy hitters, and two from California. What a fantastic time!

Thanks to Kim for writing and asking me to do an orange wine focus. I’ll be writing up these five soon, and have four more we’ll taste later.

Cheers!

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Considering Natural Wines

Feb 1, 12 12:27 AM

Picture by Caleb Schiff, @Pizzicletta

Recently the apparent question of “natural wine” has turned into a wide spread debate moving through the major newspapers and the blog-o-sphere. The discussion has hit the presses under Eric Asimov’s well-respected coinage in the NEW YORK TIMES, and been considered by a host of Masters’ of Wine, and wine bloggers alike via twitter, wordpress, and elsewhere.

The basic idea in question here is simply the notion of making wine with very low intervention–that is, natural wines are generally produced without the introduction of outside forces beyond those simply necessary for turning grape juice into an alcoholic loveliness. As such, many wine producers now call themselves biodynamic, focusing on a complete balance of the overall farming environment with not only the land itself but even the cycles of the moon and planets. Or, some are opting for the almost as strict (but without the overt moon-cycle obligations) organic designation.

Fulfillment of either category is most readily seen in Old World wineries, but in relation to these one of my favorite insightful comments has been: various long-standing European wineries are tending vineyards with organic processes, “which at the time was known simply as traditional (i.e. without herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, cultured yeasts, etc.).” The point being made by such a claim, of course, is that there is a big hubbub right now about natural wines when in reality many wine makers have been following such practices for centuries. That is, many family owned, low production wineries have maintained traditional methods for generations, even as others have been swayed by the introduction of chemicals and mechanical interventions. With that in mind, it isn’t always clear what the balleehoo is actually about.

It would seem that the question of natural wine making has come to a head recently at least partially because of the way it is marketed. We could certainly discuss the influence of various wine writers on the publics’ awareness of the matter. (Quick side note inserted primarily for my philosopher friends reading along: yes, I did use publics in the plural there purposefully.) Alice Feiring is an example of a wonderful wine writer that has lured people to the cause of low intervention, i.e., natural wines. But the concern about the matter has shown itself recently because of the way in which natural wines seem to be pitched against other apparently less natural wines.

One of the funniest, pointed responses to the apparent marketing tendencies of the natural wine movement has been the (almost but honestly pretty accurate) tongue in cheek blog post title “Drink Natural Wine–or Get a Bad Rash” appearing on FERMENTATION. There Tom Wark addresses the vitriol he sees sent from the position of natural wines against those that apparently don’t fit the demands of the category. His criticism is quite simply on that very point–that we’d be hard pressed to find any other niche in the wine world that overtly calls out every other aspect of the wine world as poison, a health and environmental hazard, or even perhaps a moral evil. His critique is even complete with an explicit picture of a bad rash all over some poor woman’s bum that looks an awful lot like a double-sided dose of the shingles I got while suffering my way through graduate school. Thank god shingles only ever appears on one side of the body, and not both. But, if natural wine really will turn our bums into an early sketch-study of a failed Seurat painting as the photo implies well, Lord, SAVE US ALL.

** (I could actually quite easily fall into an examination of what it would take for something like wine to honestly be a genuine evil–in fact it would simply reduce to two moves: (1) showing that it really is doing true biological and environmental harm, and (2) showing how that harm is extended in such a way as to limit our capacity for a sustainable life. Many of those in the natural wine movement actually have already claimed (though not necessarily proven) both (1) and (2)–and the truth is all of my previous training is pulling on me here to go ahead and launch into the philosophical argumentation either for OR against this set-up but oh… oh… god. I will refrain, and you will likely be grateful.) **

The Eric Asimov article mentioned above responds to Wark’s complaint with the plain statement that natural wine is well-worth the drinking, but not the vitriol in either direction. Thor Iverson even responds with the simple point that this is not really a new conversation, we just now find ourselves in a rather boring phase (my wording of his claim) of the dialectic. One of the lovelier responses, largely because of its simplicity, comes from natural wine lover herself, Alice Feiring. Her statement quite directly states it thus, “my advice, keep out of the sandbox.” As in, don’t like the game? Don’t play. The beauty, and where I think she really captures a genuine response to the issue of natural wine comes after. She follows her advice with an apology for being absent, telling us readers that she’s been “visiting the wonders of the world” and that “they need a savior to help Jose’ save them from abuse.” (Click on the link to her post there to catch a glimpse of a couple mind-boggling photos representing a couple of those wonders she mentions.)

This week I’m co-hosting a private wine tasting event where we happen to be tasting three wines arising directly out of the center of the natural wine movement. The funny thing is I didn’t select any of those three wines for that reason. Instead, I was pulled to try them for the passionate story of commitment and experimentation behind each. The very thing that pulls me to wine in general is precisely that–the story, the experience, the living of each bottle. Even the worst wine I’ve ever tasted sure as hell gave me that much.

I flew to Seattle from Alaska for a one-day trip to attend a friend’s wedding. At the reception I didn’t eat enough food, and then drank two glasses of Yellow Tail. TWO. The next day I woke up with the most excruciating head ache and hang over that when I called my sister to tell her about it she said I sounded much like a man in the desert that had just fallen on a cactus–dry mouthed and full of prickers in all the wrong spots. I left her a voice mail message before speaking with her directly. She replayed the message for me every few days for the next two years and every single time she’d laugh her ass off, even crying tears of joy over it. Perhaps you see my point–wine offers the fascination of a story, and its experience.

Having typed all this I guess I have to admit that I don’t think I’ve much contributed to the debate on natural wines. Truth is, I don’t care to say much more about it except this one more thing, and, admittedly, I’ll say it a touch too explicitly too. But, with accuracy for the feeling it presents: Considering the quality, challenge, and rarity of the wines we’re going to taste this week, I sure as fuck am excited about them.

I’m excited too to post articles on them over the next couple of weeks, and share my enthusiasm for them (be they awful or fantastic I’ll admit to both and the in-betweens between too) here as well.

Interested in reading more about wines to see which ones, “natural” or otherwise, get you excited? Check out this handful of fantastic wine writers, three blogs, and two wine shop blogs. And, if you enjoy, keep coming back to read here too.

Thanks for reading!

Wine Blogs

Alice Feiring

Wine Terroirs

Mad About Wine

Well Written Wine Shop Blogs

Crush Blog

Italian Wine Merchants Blog

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Thinking about Drinking: Using Philosophy to Respond to the Demands of Two Ranting Wine Writers that Feel the Need to Challenge Other Wine Writers to Do Better

Jan 4, 12 2:00 AM

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Post edit:

4 January 1960 Camus died in a car accident with his publisher and dear friend, Michel Gallimard. Camus was only 46.

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My Underlying Views About Giving Wine Its Due

My commitment, both in terms of wine, and, to be honest, generally, even with people, is to strike a balance resting on open minded with standards. When it comes to wine, in striving for this balance I push myself to imagine my way into a glass–to ask what conditions would it be desired under, and who would want this wine when? even when I am not thoroughly compelled by the particular wine myself. My purposes in taking this approach are to push myself to understand wine better by pushing beyond my own immediate matters of taste. But these purposes come to a close when it is time to consider points like the production quality of the wine–how well the flavors balance, if the structure holds together, if additives or interventions have done damage to the flavors, or if maybe the original cuvee was simply never up to par. That is, I am open minded, and I want to learn what wines from different regions or grape types have to offer even if I haven’t tended to like particular regions or grape types, but I also recognize this is not a world of wild relativism. Some wine really is better than others, and damn it we all know that to be true, even if some of us might try to blindly on occasion pretend otherwise.

I imagine the world of wine as an expression of someone’s life–both in terms of a wine maker having spent time to make it, but also in terms of some wine drinkers wanting to take time to taste it. But the truth is, the with-standards part of the situation means there is a limit to any imagining; we can’t pretend there is better quality to a wine than is there. Let me be clear though–I believe there is a difference between quality standards as in, the production and growing conditions that imprint themselves into a wine, versus standards of taste that arise out of my own training, life, and experience. The first I am going to demand myself to recognize and hold regard for, the second I might only partially be able to help. I can push to learn my way into a new wine or wine style–and any of us have done this at least a little bit if we’ve gotten far enough to know the name of more than a handful of wines (the matter of taste)–and I can also learn how to better recognize when a wine is poor quality, and whether it’s because the grapes didn’t ripen well, or the wine maker interfered too much during production (the matter of quality).

A Very Small Fervor in Wine Blogs: A Rants About the Quality of Wine Writing in the Wine Blogging World

As 2011 drew to a close a very-small fervor occurred on wine blogs. Let me say again, very small. However, it’s a fervor worth considering. At least two wine bloggers took their end of year, or first of year moment to rant about the poor quality of wine writing to be found in wine blogs. In a certain sense I take it this is no profound claim really. The idea that there is a glut of work done in this area (wine) is in no way unique; the idea that this work being done on wine itself is often not very creative or sophisticated, is also not peculiar to this one field alone. The internet drowns us all in mediocre production. So, in as much as either of these wine bloggers simply wanted to complain, well, way to contribute to the drowning. I’m willing to assume, however, both wine bloggers (who will be named shortly) hoped to do more than just that. In other words, there is good reason, it seems, to consider some of their points raised.

On January 2, The Passionate Foodie posted what he called a rant and a “call you [wine bloggers] out once again” demanding that “There is not a single wine blog out there that cannot be improved” (italics original to The Passionate Foodie’s own statement, not my emphasis). As @dfredman so aptly responded via twitter, “Is there _anything_ that can’t be improved?” I take it the implication of @dfredman’s response is that there is nothing profound in claiming that any wine blog could be improved. That, if that is the only assertion being made, it is too obvious. It is simply true of anything. There are times, however, when the obvious must be pointed out, of course; or, when something only becomes obvious after it is said. The truth is, there is a glut of wine writing on the internet these days, and I take it The Passionate Foodie (PF) was placing a sort of call to attention to anyone doing such work–challenge yourself to always improve or, get the hell out. That is, be better, or why bother? In as much as this was his point, I agree. I want to point out too that PF makes a point of stating he expects this challenge of himself as well. With that being the case his point becomes less of a rant, and more especially worth considering.

The second blogger, who I’ll mention and name more specifically later, raises a different kind of concern, however. In his post, some of the ire expressed is about what even makes it worth reading wine blogs at all, and his challenge pushes more on a demand for wine writers to explain to him why they even bother to write what they do. As will be explained a little further on, he gives specific issues in which he thinks many wine bloggers fail. In response to any such rant certain standards, I think, must be met by the person doing the ranting for them to escape the trenches of their own criticism. As just said, in as much as someone offers mere complaining, it seems they are only contributing to the glut without actually doing much to transform it–they are encouraging the drowning in mediocrity while tricking themselves into thinking they’re speaking against it. In other words, without offering either insightful standards for the apparently poor blog producers to reach towards, or information to encourage the possibility of insight and education, then no real work has been done. Criticism is not necessarily productive critique, to put it another way. To be clear, I offer this claim more for the sake of the general point, and less for the sake of calling any specific person out. I take it readers can decide for themselves, if they wish, whether material they read online fits such a description.

In considering the conjunction between PF’s challenge, and the name of his own blog–passionate–I can’t help but consider that the answer to escaping mediocrity, and improving our own blogging standards rests precisely there. In our own passion.

Considering the Question Why Bother?

What, then, does it mean to live the passionate life in relation to wine? Camus delivers an answer, I believe, through his interpretation of the Ancient Greek tragedy of Sisyphus.

(a) The Story of Sisyphus

As the story goes, Sisyphus was a tricky, spoiled little bastard used to getting his way. As first, the son of a king, and then king himself, he’d come to rely on his own powers of persuasion to get desire fulfilled imminently and consistently. Sisyphus got what he wanted when he wanted it. With such charisma, Sisyphus successfully went on to trick even a series of gods and goddesses out of his own mortality, and just desserts, all towards the purposes of his own pleasure. In this way, Sisyphus over extended his powers of persuasion to gain advantage over his own natural place below the gods, the natural rulers of the cosmos, as well. (Details of exactly how Sisyphus did so can be found through a simple wikipedia search if you’re so unfortunate as to not know the story already–really, Ancient Greek tragedy is one of the most insightful, and interesting sources of human drama and ethical instruction, though admittedly interpretive work must be done to gain the later).

Finally, as a result of Sisyphus’s arrogance the god’s enact an ultimate punishment. He is forced to roll a boulder almost too great for his own strength up to the top of a hill for all eternity. Each time the boulder reaches the crest of the hill it will pause only briefly and then roll to the bottom again. Sisyphus then must turn and follow walking full aware of the fate that awaits him–to roll the boulder up to the top again and again for all eternity. As written, this situation will continue without hope or recourse for change. There is no way out. (In case it wasn’t obvious already, right this minute as you read and I type this Sisyphus is down there rolling, then following the boulder even now.) Futility, then, would seem to be his punishment: the burden of a rock almost too great to push (with no hope of increased strength since this man is, after all, dead). Here Camus steps in and tells us that the lesson of such a story is twofold. First of all, Sisyphus’s situation is our own–we each push our own boulder in futility to the top of the mount again and again only to watch it pause briefly and collapse back then to the bottom, with no choice but to follow and push it up again. Secondly, we must assume Sisyphus to be happy. Yes, happy. We’ll get to that point in a minute.

(b) Ways We Resist the Truth: Complaining About the Negative; Refusing to Do the Work to Understand

The last four years I taught Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus to University students (my own boulder to push) and consistently what I found was that the first most obvious response to Camus’s ideas was a great tripitaka of resistance, dislike, and disagreement. When pushed as to why people either disagreed with or disliked Camus’s ideas about the futility of our life situation, they consistently responded that they didn’t like Camus because he was negative, and they disagreed with him because they didn’t think our lives could only be as negative as they took Camus to be.

I recognize that all of this must read as some weirdly evasive response to The Passionate Foodies challenge, or, perhaps as so evasive as to be no response at all. But, I will say to you that it is not. I really am getting somewhere with all of this, but considering these sorts of ideas takes time, and I am a god damn philosopher, after all. I will give away the punch lines, however, and tell you this–where I really am getting is to two points. One, if we’re going to understand what it means to rise to an occasion and challenge ourselves to be better, then we need to bother to understand what passionate living is really about and Camus is one clear path to understanding that. Two, it is possible to genuinely disagree with or dislike something only after you have actually done the work to understand it, and so to see how Camus will help us in our very small fervor we have to do the work of understanding Camus. Short of that, if claiming to disagree with something you haven’t actually grasped, then you are running on the fumes of arrogance, and as anyone that has driven a car long enough understands–fumes run out and the engine quits.

So, we’re going to have to get back to striving towards an understanding of Camus before we can decide if we disagree with or dislike him, but we’re also going to have to consider why the fuck he’s even relevant here. Obviously. Let me point out though that some of the reason I bring up Camus is actually because of the second blog post contributing to this so-called very small fervor on wine writing–Evil, of Evil Bottle: The Dark Side of Wine, posted “The Wine Blogger Dilemma” in which he calls out wine bloggers for their mediocre efforts at taking a stand, expressing their more genuine interests, and choosing to commit to a style of wine they do or don’t like so that they can recommend with some consistency. He also calls wine bloggers out for trying too hard to cave to big brother wine magazine by doing things like award points, and establish or use rating systems that just repeat what the magazines are already doing. The implication is: why blog if you’re just trying to be a magazine?

I take it part of the point of either Evil, or PF’s rants is to say–why should we read your crap? I want to read something interesting. If you’re mediocre and just repeating what everyone else is doing, then you’re certainly not giving me interesting. Here is where we come back around to Camus.

An Elongated Lead-In to Answering the Question Why Bother?: Camus and the Passionate Life

(a) We Feel Our Lives are Meaningless

Again, Camus emphasizes that each of us are living a life of pushing a boulder just to see it roll down again to the bottom. That is, in the grand scheme of things our lives are essentially meaningless–we’re going to die and be forgotten no matter what we do here. Any of us, even those of us that hold on to a story of afterlife or god(s) caring for what we do, have felt that reality. There are too many lyrics, or stories, or poems, or movies emphasizing that feeling for you to deny it. Even those that demand they are living in faith have to admit that your faith only gains relevance in the face of comprehending that fear and feeling of meaninglessness–in fact, it is precisely because we feel our lives are meaningless that living in faith gains any significance at all. If you had actual without doubt proven certainty of something like an afterlife or god(s) your claims of faith would be irrelevant. Faith is, by definition, conviction in the face of doubt. (Let me be clear: I am not in any way arguing against spiritual convictions here. I am instead pointing out the structural context in which they operate. In a sense you could take it i am actually giving greater credence to spiritual conviction by pointing out how very real the challenges of holding them are.)

It is in this point about the apparent grand-scheme meaninglessness of our lives that people get caught in an interpretation of Camus as negative. But when a reader does that they are failing to grasp Camus at all, and stopping before they’ve even started doing the work. It is precisely because we feel our lives as meaningless that Camus says our lives can begin to have genuine meaning. To understand this point, however, we must first consider another feeling we cannot help but have.

(b) We Feel Our Lives Are Meaningful

We cannot help but feel our lives are meaningful at exactly the same moment that we are convicted they are not. Camus points out that many people respond to only one of these feelings and cave to nihilism–a view that nothing they do matters–or to zealotry–the view that everything they do matters for a very particular reason external to themselves. Camus brings this point up to demand that both approaches are disingenuous. They are a kind of lie against the reality of human experience. Instead, the only truth we can hold with actual certainty is that we experience both feelings mentioned as true–we really do feel that our lives do not matter in the big scheme of things, we really will be forgotten no matter what we might happen to accomplish in our lives; and we can’t help but care how any little thing we decide to do happens to go too.

If you don’t believe me on the first point about meaninglessness, see the statements I’ve already made about faith all over again and spend some more time thinking on them.

If you don’t believe me on the last point that you can’t help but care about how things you participate in go, then consider almost any straightforward, everyday moment where you get frustrated that you’re running late, that traffic is backed up, that you might not find that dinner ingredient you are looking for, etc. Then consider how often we respond to larger moments too. We’re irritated about the current people available to vote for, for political office; we are upset our sports team lost the game (even if just a little bit); we worry if we’ve made the right decision about taking a job, leaving a job, asking for a raise, etc. We can’t help but invest in activities we care about, and we do it all the time.

(c) Our Lives Feel Both Meaningful and Meaningless

Here is the important part though–Camus demands, again, that the only thing that we can hold onto as true is that both feelings are part of human experience (we feel both as humans), and the two feelings are simply irreconcilable. There is no honest way to reduce one of the feelings to the other, or to negate either. As long as we are living a human life we will experience both as true, and live in the tension of them pulling against each other. To live a human life is to live a life defined by a conflict of meaning. We experience affects like despair, or even neuroses over whether we’ve done a good job, precisely at the crux of where our feelings of meaninglessness and meaningfulness intersect. That is, it is because of the conflict of these that we struggle for how we will judge our own actions. It is the tension of the two that informs so much of how we experience our own lives.

More detail on that point will have to wait for another occasion. This is supposed to be a post about wine, after all. Dear Jesus, let’s get on with it.

Camus shows us that the paradox I just described is actually an incredible blessing, and that if you truly understand the import of the Camusian paradox then upon reflection of the burden of the boulder you have to recognize that Sisyphus is happy. Here’s how.

(d) Sisyphus is Happy

The burden of the boulder belongs to Sisyphus alone. And, in fact, without them realizing it, Sisyphus tricked the gods again. They gave him a gift they didn’t know he was getting. In the moments that Sisyphus is pushing the boulder the situation demands almost the entirety of his strength. The rock is so heavy (I like to call it the mo-fo boulder it is so big) that all of what Sisyphus is must go into pushing it–that is, it is almost beyond the limits of his strength to move that rock. Any of us that have pursued activities that hard know when you are doing something almost beyond your limits you don’t have time to reflect thoroughly on what you are doing, you just have to do it. So, it really is the case that almost all of what Sisyphus is must be directed at pushing that rock–it takes almost the entirety of his strength, and certainly all of his concentration. When he is pushing the rock, he knows nothing. He is not reflecting on his situation at all. That is, he has no time to be self-conscious about what he is doing because he is too busy doing it. All he is is pushing the rock. So, strangely enough (and here is the first half of the gods’ gift) in the very moment that looks to us as Sisyphus’s burden–pushing the mo-fo rock–he is actually receiving a break from his (after) life circumstance. He is too completely involved in what he is doing to be perturbed by it.

Here’s the second half of the gift–when the rock pauses and rolls back down again, Sisyphus cannot push anymore. The rock is, in a sense, no longer his. He has given it away to its fate of cascading to the base of the climb. It is in this portion of the challenge that Sisyphus receives his other rest. He no longer has a burden. Here he can choose not what he has to do (he will walk down the incline after all), but how he wants to be. It is only here that he is fully conscious, and it is in that moment of having completed his task, and so then given it away to follow its own fate, that Sisyphus is fully awake in his own existence. He faces his fate with certainty–he will push the boulder again–while dwelling in the full aftermath of his own accomplishment. He did successfully push the boulder almost too great for his strength. And now he gets to choose how he wants to experience his fate, and thus choose what it means to him. According to Camus, because we know Sisyphus is fully invested in and aware with clarity of his task of life with the boulder, both up and back down the hill, we must assume him to be happy. It is that combination of full investment and awareness that offers the possibility for a happy life. And it is this combination that is the ground of the passionate life as well.

The Answer to The Question Why Bother?: What It Means to Live the Passionate Life, aka., The Same Answer as What It Means to Challenge Ourselves to Do Better in Wine Blogging

Camus illustrates how a passionate life is one we recognize as fully our own. It is only ourselves that pushes the rock, and only ourselves that releases it to the world to roll where it will after we have brought it to its fruition at the top. If we’re looking too heavily to standards outside ourselves to imitate (like wine magazines), and then blaming anyone but ourselves for the results of mediocrity-by-imitation instead of innovation, we’re failing to recognize our own responsibility for our work. Or, if we’re writing complaining rants against writing that bores us without seeing that our boredom is our own problem–let’s look to what keeps us interested–on the one hand; or, on the other, without offering any footholds or handholds that help garner greater knowledge for others, or possible standards to strive for, then we’re failing to help produce the world we claim we want to live in. We’re just contributing to the drowning. This responsibility for our own lives, and creating the lives we want to live, is true whether our rock is getting the kids up every day for school, or, teaching Camus again for a new round of college students (I gave this college students rock away, though apparently without giving the Camus rock away), or, if it is in choosing to continuously strive to write better wine blog posts. It is only us that pushes the responsibility of that choice, and once the task has reached its fruition we must give it away to find its own fate. Short of that we are failing to recognize both the way in which we generate the profound meaning of our own individual lives, and the limited control we have on the effect of that generative activity.

It turns out when PF and Evil released their very small fervor at the top of the hill they didn’t get to determine where it would afterwards roll. One place it rolled was here–a very long post dedicated absolutely to thinking about what it means to challenge ourselves to write better about wine, but that I am sure for some looks to be mostly about some damned French philosopher.

For the Passionate Foodie, and The Evil Bottle, A Return Challenge

To PF and Evil, this is my challenge back–I absolutely want to read better wine writing, and I want to read it too from both of you. If you’re to take passionate living vis-a-vis Camus seriously here is what that would mean–writing that is almost more than the strength of your ability to produce–be it in expressing wine knowledge, or stylistic expression, or, in regards to pushing yourself harder to understand wines your tastes might not recognize and relish at first smell-and-sip; or, even better, taking up all three. A post in which you try to do something as challenging as you have ever done, every time you sit down to write. Writing almost more than your capacity to produce, but, importantly, not actually more. Just writing so challenging that every time you release it to the world you have to walk back towards the next post happy.

***

The Acknowledgement

Something I appreciate about The Passionate Foodie and The Evil Bottle is this–both put interesting challenges to themselves in their blog writing and their approach to wine recently.

The Passionate Foodie wrote his post mentioned above as a recap or book-end to the post he wrote a year ago as an original rant+challenge at the start of 2011 for wine writers to “change and improve” their wine blog writing. In his recent post he states that he believes he met his own challenge in the past year by taking more risks, covering more unusual wines, and focusing more on features than on individual reviews. PF’s blog is well established, and his writing done for other publications as well. It’s certainly respectable (p.s. he also writes about cheeeeeessseee. who doesn’t want to read about good cheese so that they can then eat cheeeeeesssseee?). Especially because at the same time he sends out a call to attention for wine bloggers, he also intends to put the challenge to himself to improve further again with this new year of 2012.

Evil Bottle is taking up a more specific challenge this year. On his first post with the new calendar, Evil states he is choosing to expand and deepen his knowledge of American wine. His interests and experience have in the past revolved more thoroughly around European wine, specifically French, and as he said, he intends this year to prove his views of American wine wrong. As he puts it, he is trying to face his own critique of boring wine blogs by generating more engaging material.

The thing about any resolution is that they have to be followed through on before they mean anything. I look forward to the developments from both PF and Evil (as well as many others) in this new year, and to reading along to see how they strive to meet their own challenges.

Cheers!

***

Friday into next week the posts here will be a series of features investigating varietals and their range as shown through differing climate and growing region. You’ve seen me do this work before, but it’ll happen this time in groupings rather than individual reviews, as you’ve seen happening recently. As usual, these considerations of grape variety will culminate in a (color) characteristics card.

I hope you enjoy the rest of your week of om-nom-nom!

(p.s. I promise, in the midst of the reviews these next few weeks, Camus won’t make a peep.)

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