Follow

• 

  Introduction

  Charles S. Taylor

  These stories are from of an odyssey that began over 50 years ago. In my final year of college I planned to attend law school. A passage in Plato (Republic III 405a) was the catalyst of an unanticipated realization that I would pursue my goals more authentically teaching philosophy at the college level. Two years earlier (1968) I had made an abrupt change abandoning a chemistry major, and to study in Vienna, Austria for a year, searching to find my own path. My interest in wine did not arise in that year but the seeds that soon grew into a passion were planted in a Viennese Weinkeller. I cannot say which – philosophy or university teaching or wine – was least expected at that moment to be guiding my travels ever since.

• 

  I. Expect the Unexpected: Heraclitus, Kant and the Æsthetics of Fine Wine

  Charles S. Taylor

  Actually, you do not even have to taste this wine,” said the owner of a high-end fruit market who, due to his own passion, sold wine as well. “Just smell it!” He was right. I opened that 1947 Giacomo Borgogno Barolo Riserva a year later to celebrate my wife’s 35th birthday, when the wine was also 35 years old. I expected that the wine would be good, a library release only one year earlier from what was considered the best Barolo vintage of the 20th century by a well-regarded producer. The wine was wonderful to smell and, indeed, to taste. More significantly, it was so different from other Barolos I had tried that its unique character was stunning.

• 

  II. Contemplation and Fine Wine: Tasting with Saintsbury, Schopenhauer, and Pater

  Charles S. Taylor

  One never knows when it will happen. I went to my cellar to choose an accompaniment for a chestnut soufflé and a 1995 Domaine Huet Vouvray Clos du Bourg Demi-Sec returned with me . Before opening that wine, I had a set of informed questions...

• 

  III. Tasting Dwelling Thinking: Tasking Wine Thinking about Being with Heidegger

  Charles S. Taylor

  It started simply enough. Wanting something not yet tasted I brought from the cellar a barely 6-year old 2009 Fattoria di Felsina Berardenga Chianti Classico. Had it turned the corner into its optimal drinking window? Six years is usually a bare minimum for these wines to get through their early awkwardness while reports said the 2009’s were early-maturing. A pleasant surprise, it was delightful. Chianti aroma and taste as well as the harmonious, full-spectrum profile one expects even from an entry-level Felsina Chianti were all in place. Based on that experience I opened on the next opportunity a 2009 Badia a Coltibuono. Historically slow to evolve, it was, as well, in its early maturity — presenting its own classic form of Chianti Classico. Its angularity and deeper tone disclosed Gaiole origins in contrast to its cousin from close-by Castelnuovo Berardenga. Both were quite simply spot on, as good as Chianti Classico can be. If only things were that simple!

• 

  IV. Gifts of Taste: Discussing Wine With Heraclitus and Friedrich Hölderlin

  Charles S. Taylor

  It happened on a weekday evening. Dinner was Pasta e Fagioli and I would have chosen a wine from Tuscany. But, in my cellar a thought arose to explore, and a 19-year-old 1999 Paitin di Pasquero-Elia Barbaresco Sorì Paitin ended up on the table. A new pairing 1 plus a wine from a new-to-me producer I had waited 15 years for it to mature provided opportunities. Pasta e Fagioli should be a fine accompanist to the wonderful softening taste of a maturing Barbaresco from the good 1999 vintage. The pairing worked well enough to repeat. That was merely the prelude.

• 

  V. Agrarian Opera: Wines of Beauty at the Kitchen Table Rilke's Duino Elegies

  Charles S. Taylor

  Did you hear me? (Rilke) when I cried out … tasting that 1985 Cordero di Montezemolo Barolo Enrico VI?

  Rilke’s Overture then wonders if an Angel might hear his cry. Beauty, he insists, is nothing other than the beginning of Terror. This Terror can be endured, though barely, and yet is revered — because it serenely disdains from destroying us. Rilke’s first line connected, so unexpectedly, to my taste of that 34-year-old Barolo. I uttered an unspoken gentle, “Oh my!” – and remember both that taste and the murmur. My question echoes the question Rilke asked himself. Terror was not part of my complete immersion in that Taste. Pulled into the poem, I wondered why each of us cried out as a primal response to Beauty.

• 

  VI. Barolo Landscape Studies: Barolo MGA 360º Vermeer Rilke

  Charles S. Taylor

  Oh tall tree in the ear / O hoher Baum im Ohr! astonished me years ago, reading Rilke with students. WHAT did it mean? He knew. Jubilant praise sings in my ear. An ascending tree crossed paths with astounding wine unexpectedly. Breaking in new hiking shoes in vineyard dust in Serralunga d’Alba began a 40-year-long anticipated visit to Barolo and Barbaresco. Walking also through vineyards in La Morra, Barolo and Neive, tastings at Azienda Agricola Vigna Rionda S.S. di Massolino Fiili (Serralunga d’Alba) and Castello di Neive Azienda Agricola (Barbaresco), invited private tastings at La Morra’s Poderi Marcarini and at Società Agricola Ratti complemented the hiking. And there were remarkable meals including one with tartufo bianco topping each course at Ristorante Bovio. My exploration of the taste of these wines ascended as Rilke’s tree elevated his poetry.

• 

  Overture - Calvino's Mr. Palomar

  Charles S. Taylor

  This is not a culinary essay. The bread of interest is Scottish, discussed by a philosopher, Hume, whose craft is often ridiculed precisely because it bakes no bread. The archaicallynamed cheese is Parisian; the Italian watercress constitutes part of a salad of Italo Calvino's last protagonist, Mr. Palomar. Still, contrary to appearances, my concern is no picnic. If we think of the pleasure that one can derive from bread, cheese and salad we begin to turn in the right direction. Kant tells us that beauty is determined by the feeling of pleasure in the subject who has become disinterested. Kant would, of course, deny beauty to such ordinary culinary things yet for Calvino these prosaic things (or better, the observation of them) bring about the same meditation upon the nature of the self that is provided by Kant's lofty analysis of the aesthetic judgment of taste. In Mr. Palomar Calvino does much more than tell entertaining stories about Mr. Palomar the observer. Calvino's meditations give us, in fact, a framework for our own meditation. It is easy to say that the problem needing scrutiny in modern thought is how we think about the self; yet in anything so well-known as the problem of the self much that is worthy of thought is still lurking. The observation sought by Palomar is described in separate segments of the book on his life in the city, on his vacations and on his silences. His observation shows us how we think about the self, and invites us to do so, too.

• 

  VII. Learning toTaste: Praising the Transcendent Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus Heidegger Hölderlin Heraclitus

  Charles S. Taylor

  Oh 2005 R. Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondonia Bianco Reserva!

  It was to accompany pan-seared sea scallops in a vinagreta of grape seed oil, vinagre de Jerez, chervil, chives and parsley from our garden. The previous bottle had been the best pairing to date. But, the taste of the wine became everything. This fifth and last 2005 from my cellar was unique, similar to neither any of its siblings nor to any other wine. It was expected to be close to one a year earlier. R. Lopez de Heredia wines are not released until ready for drinking; this one had 6 years in barrel (made at the bodega from Appalachian Mountain oak), then 10 years in bottle. Although the wine and food match worked the experience sublimated into the taste of the wine alone. The meal plan arose in having fresh chervil. Scallops in this sauce is a wonderful way to enjoy fresh chervil.. The memory of the sauce more than the memory of previous bottles was the real origin. Nothing happened as expected.

• 

  VIII. Hieronymus’ Bench: Conversations Dürer Heaney, Auerbach Panofsky, Heidegger Heraclitus, Hölderlin Rilke

  Charles S. Taylor

  The names in this essay’s sub-title sketch its outline. An image by Albrecht Dürer and a poem by Seamus Heaney, essays by Eric Auerbach and Erwin Panofsky are new inclusions into a rambling immersion into Heraclitus Heidegger Rilke and Hölderlin. The resulting octet gives major solo roles to the new contributors while at the same time deepening the wonder at the questions arising. The first seven chapters and the late-added overture were each written as stand-alone works and had breaks of time separating them. This new essay began before Learning to Taste (Ch. 7) was completed. While completing Learning to Taste my thinking / remembering took me back to the essay on Italo Calvino, the late-added overture. The Calvino essay took me back to Albrecht Dürer and to my seeing Hieronymus’ bench again. Readers of this latest essay will discover that its immersion in all of the artists, poets, thinkers and scholars named assumes some familiarity with most if not all of the preceding chapters.

• 

  IX. Remembering Tasting Thinking: Unfinished Conversations Friedrich Hölderlin’s Andenken, Poetry Being, Anaximander Heraclitus, Rilke Heidegger

  Charles S. Taylor

  My conversations with Friedrich Hölderlin arose unexpectedly from a first reading of his poem Andenken / Remembrance. The poem begins with memories from a visit he made at age 31 to Bordeaux, France in 1801. His memories almost immediately took me to similar memories of a year-long visit I made to Europe as a study-abroad student when I was 20. Our conversations continue through looking at the connections between our memories. Early in my European travels, in Paris, were visits to the Musée du Louvre and the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume. They were my real introduction to fine arts museums. The paintings in the Jeu de Paume made the stronger impression on me and foreshadowed lasting memories. The art on display was from the temporarily closed Musée de l’Orangerie and included many late 19th century works by the most famous impressionist and post-impressionist painters. I remember seeing works by Monet, Cezanne and Van Gogh. I had no idea the paintings looked at that day planted seeds of an immersion on the arts that would be an essential part of the rest of my life. The first specific work of art that I remember so distinctly and differently was Michelangelo’s Atlas, one of a set of unfinished sculptures I saw later that year in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence. I understood intuitively that Michelangelo saw a figure inside each of those untouched pieces of marble and was working on letting them emerge from the stones. That unexpected, different experience was my first of the kind I discuss with Hölderlin in what follows. My memory of that experience is as clear to me today as was standing there in the presence of that sculpture 54 years ago.