I am used to different books. Even Parker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide seems more classic, embedded in the traditional way of communication. However, it sometimes verges into a catalogue of advised products. Readers of my blog know that I am a supporter of what had already gone. However, we never come back to certain things.
The world and the direction in which it goes do not suit me, and everything I write is born of rebellion against transience. Other times are coming, other people are coming, and all this means that I have to deal with other means of expression. In addition, significant phenomena occur where development has gone differently, maybe too far and are difficult to face because facing it resembles rather senseless monkeying, from a distance.
And it’s about the book “The Essence of Wine“. In a sense, it is a harbinger of new ways and somehow talks about the fact that the Author wanted to occur in a new type of society. It is tough for me to evaluate such books because I’m not too fond of this new kind of society.
Already the title sounds like a fanfare. It announces that the Author has learned the solution to the puzzle. As usual in such cases, the truth turns out to be a shadow because this is how it usually happens: the essence, or significance, can be poetically contained in two words, but in fact, it is very complicated. To describe nature in two words, you have to be an artist. Besides, the significance cannot be described, and it can be felt and transmitted as a phenomenon.
If you’re not an artist, you’re facing a task as powerful as Mount Everest. You’ll spawn an epochal work of phenomenology that no one will read because no one won’t understand and that will be mentioned somewhere in the libraries at Indiana University. Well, let’s say, there.
This book’s relevance comes down to five concepts (each one from a different parish) that make the wine seduce its lover. I’m not entirely sure if these concepts constitute a winey significance. Instead, it is about outlining a noticeable frame against a smooth background. With that frame, we will remember the intention to capture the essence. These concepts, named by the Author, are curiosity, hedonism, forgiveness, patience, camaraderie.
Then comes a beautiful list of fruits, as subjectively selected as tastes can be subjective. Then exemplary associations with terroir measured by earth, candle wax, wet stone (this is for lovers of mineral notes), greenwood, as well as the sea, and already this shows us how a wide field for describing taste sensations opens up to a reader stunned by the importance, who had to fall in love with wine.
And to this gorgeous beauty of photos. They determine the actual value of this work. Fanfare in the title, like a marketing call from the beginning and then a series of images emphasizing individual features and flavours, situates the book in the present and a specific place on the Earth. In a generation of people feeling images beyond linear thinking. Where intelligence is purely emotional.
All the time, I write about this era with sarcasm. It is a time of moving away from linear reasoning and surrendering to emotional intelligence, viewing the world through images. The Author perfectly understood his time and created something that fit that time. A beautiful guide for those who feel with their eyes. A book was designed, which is impossible to understand but is to be loved or not.
THE ESSENCE OF WINE, CELEBRATING THE DELIGHTS OF THE PALATE, ALDER YARROW / PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEIGH BEISCH
Copyright © 2014 by Alder Yarrow
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