Alice's Well-Worn Cam

Before reading this article, a brief explanation is in order. This piece was part of a book I recently translated and submitted to the publisher, titled The Aesthetics of Food and Drink, which the esteemed publisher, for reasons best known to themselves, deemed unsuitable to remain in the collection of essays. In this article, the author attempts to provide structural models for taste in wine drinking. It should be noted that this discussion has no bearing whatsoever on the prohibition of wine drinking in Islamic law. For wine in this article is examined solely in terms of its flavor, not its intoxicating quality. One could easily apply a similar discussion to tea drinking, coffee drinking, or the consumption of herbal distillates, and perhaps one day a researcher will do just that, writing a critique of the subjective view of the taste of tea, coffee, and herbal distillates, and providing a terminology for describing the flavor and taste of such items. With thanks to my dear friend Dr. Babak Abbasi, who edited the text.

Alice's Well-Worn Cam[1]

Kevin W. Sweeney[2]

Alice, frustrated at being unable to follow the White Rabbit through the little door leading to the garden, picked up a small bottle labeled "DRINK ME." As Lewis Carroll put it, "she ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off."[3] Some might suppose that such a drink, with its strange and wondrous mixture of different flavors, is an imaginary beverage, though its strangeness is probably no less than the strangeness of other things in Wonderland. But Alice's report (I say this with a smile) resembles a fairly precise evaluative description of a type of white wine with a distinctive style, made from large-berried, high-juice Chardonnay[4] grapes. Probably a kind of premier cru white Burgundy[5], like a bottle of Corton-Charlemagne[6].

     Nevertheless, some might object that Alice's terms for describing what she drank seem more like bizarre associations than specific, precise descriptions. It is rare to find pineapple juice or toffee in wine. In other areas of criticism, unconventional and bizarre associations usually provide grounds for discrediting the objective basis of a critical evaluation. The claim that a certain portrait is a good painting because it reminds me of my grandfather is merely a subjective preference, which invalidates the aesthetic judgment. If wine drinking, as an aesthetic activity, relies on imaginative associations and consistently uses terms like those coined by Lewis Carroll to describe its taste, then it seems that wine drinking is also open to a similar charge, namely the charge of being subjective. Consequently, there is a philosophical point hidden in Carroll's description of Alice's "little bottle." Carroll's description of what Alice drank is accompanied by defamiliarization. In doing so, he draws the reader's attention to the seemingly bizarre character of the aesthetic view of the sense of taste. Through this, Carroll raises the philosophical issue of the grounds for issuing objective critical judgments about what we taste, and specifically about wine.

     The strange and outlandish vocabulary of wine drinking had, for centuries, aroused suspicion in both public and philosophical circles. Hume cites the famous example from the novel Don Quixote in which a group of people mock Sancho Panza's kinsmen, and the reason for this ridicule was not simply that they made different evaluations of the wine.[7] Rather, I believe, the reason they were laughed at was that the tasters of leather and iron were thought to be a bunch of mental associations invented by false experts.[8] Of course, "leather" and "metal" are not uncommon terms in the lexicon of wine drinking, but in the eyes of those who initially laughed at the judgments of Sancho's kinsmen, such terms were merely a bunch of personal associations.[9][10] However, when the key to the wine vat, along with its leather strap, was found, Sancho's kinsmen went to those who had mocked them and put them to shame, but in the case of Wonderland, the question remains as to what confirms a judgment that attributes a seemingly unconventional taste like "roast turkey" or "hot buttered toast" to wine. In this instance, there was no turkey sandwich soaked at the bottom of the wine vat!

     There was a time when philosophical reflection on our evaluative experience of food and wine played a central role in philosophical aesthetics, and that was in the eighteenth century, when many theorists believed that our critical perception and appreciation of the arts and nature was, metaphorically, based on the experience of taste (or the palate). The model of critical judgment (which they called "refined taste"[11]) became the fundamental characteristic of the act of ingestion, namely, the evaluative nature of the act of tasting. The hedonic assessment of eating and drinking (knowing through tasting, which is as much about enjoying various foods as it is a pleasurable response to the qualities of what we eat) became the metaphorical foundation for all critical appreciations.

     Joseph Addison, in The Spectator No. 409, draws our attention to "the very great Conformity between that Mental Taste . . . and that Sensitive Taste, which gives us a Relish of every different Flavour that affects the Palate."[12]  Voltaire, too, in his article entitled "On Taste," published in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1757), metaphorically linked gustatory pleasure to critical experience. He claimed that this metaphorical taste is,

a quick discernment, a sudden perception, which, like the sensation of the palate, precedes reflection; like the palate, it relishes what is good with an exquisite and voluptuous sensibility, and rejects the contrary with disgust and loathing; like the palate also, it is often uncertain, and seemingly bewildered, not knowing whether it ought to relish or reject certain things, and frequently requires the influence of habit to give it a fixed and uniform direction.[13][14]

     Voltaire claims that the taste of food is not merely the discrimination of evaluative qualities. The knowledge gained from the digestion of things among humans has an evaluative character and is a pleasure-seeking reaction that occurs immediately upon encountering a stimulus, before one reflects on the permissibility of various kinds of gustatory evaluations. Instead of evaluating something after eating it, we [first] taste it and, in doing so, exhibit a pleasure-seeking reaction, which is the evaluative component of the tasting experience.[15] The pleasure we take is the measure of our evaluation: the degree of pleasantness of a thing depends on the degree of pleasure-seeking stimulation it brings. Nevertheless, as Voltaire says, the human palate can also become hesitant or “confused.” While most of the time we react to what we eat with pleasure or without taking any pleasure at all, one must become somewhat accustomed to certain foods in order to acquire a “taste” for them. At first, coffee or spicy foods may seem unusual, and habituation or practice is necessary for them to give the palate a “fixed and uniform direction” or to become agreeable to it.

     Although eighteenth-century theories of critical taste propagated the view that critical appreciation is metaphorically based on tasting, these theories did not triumph over the skeptical view according to which critical taste is aesthetically peculiar and subjective. Two doctrines implicit in Voltaire’s description clearly fueled this subjective perspective. First, because our pleasure-seeking reaction is immediate and prior to reflection, it precedes any kind of cognitive scrutiny, except for the immediate and direct recognition of whether we liked what we ate or not. According to Voltaire’s description, taste is by nature non-cognitive. Second, if we become confused during tasting about the pleasure-seeking nature of what we have eaten, habituation or practice is required for one to change or cultivate one’s evaluative reaction. Taste was therefore considered resistant to the influence of reason or argument.[16] These same “non-cognitive” and “habit-derived” doctrines are also the hidden reason for some skeptical challenges to the objectivity of tasting the flavor of wine, so let me speak of them in greater detail.

1- The Non-Cognitive Pleasure of Taste: Although in Voltaire’s view the pleasure derived from taste naturally appears before reflection, our experiences of the sense of taste need not always follow this limited pattern. It is possible to engage in continuous cognitive exploration of what we eat. In their discussions of critical taste, both Kant and Allison separate simple sensory pleasures from more complex pleasures that involve cognitive and creative faculties: Kant considers the free, prolonged play of one’s imagination that occurs in aesthetic experience to be a cognitive pleasure, and Allison separates quality[17], with its complex chain of emotional associations, from pleasures arising from simple sensory stimulation.[18] One is tempted to adopt a very restrictive view that denies that at least some of our tasting experiences can be the subject of cognitive exploration. Sometimes we take a cognitive “quality”[19] from what we eat, such as when we taste various flavors and perceive the relationships between those flavors and the evolution or emergence of other flavors from the primary ones. At other times, which probably occur more often in our busy schedules, eating means putting food in the mouth and, while chewing and swallowing the food, quickly reacting to its taste. At such times, one shows little interest in the pleasure whose origin is one’s sense of taste. It is as if the hurried nature of such occasions is an obstacle to, or frustrates, evaluative exploration of what we digest. Yet we are not forced to react in such a limited way, especially when we consume foods and beverages that are made for critical contemplation and pleasure.

     Even assuming that we always react immediately to what we eat, this does not preclude further exploration of the subtle differences among the flavors that reveal themselves on our palates. In light of such explorations, we might even change our minds about what we initially tasted. For example, further reflection may persuade us that a wine that at first seemed unappealing is in fact a mellow and complex wine.[20] Or we might arrive at the point where a wine we initially liked for its appeal seems one-dimensional or offensive, lacking complexity or maturity.

2- The Non-Rational Nature of Taste

The belief that taste resists rational persuasion and does not respond to argument is initially plausible. When one tries to persuade five-year-old Billy[21] to enjoy eating his spinach, arguments that highlight the flavor of the plant or even rely on its nutritional value will almost certainly have little immediate effect in convincing Billy to set aside his feeling of disgust for spinach. Kant emphasized that one does not accept the goodness of foods merely by accepting a handful of rational proofs (CJ, p.148). No one accepts, based on the testimony of experts (whom one does not trust in the first place), that the fine Taylor’s 1948 wine, which novices tasting it find strange, strong, and viscous,[22] is a stunning wine from a magnificent fruit that possesses both complexity and persistence.[23] Nevertheless, we can change our likes and dislikes based on critical interpretations, revise and modify our judgments, and properly appreciate the value of what we eat. And we do so. If one follows a tasting program that draws one's attention to the various qualities of what one eats and encourages one to perceive such qualities within the context of larger wholes, the aesthetic cultivation of the sense of taste is feasible, especially with regard to wine tasting.

     In addition to these two points, other reasons for the popular view that our judgments about taste experiences are subjective or idiosyncratic stem from the special nature of our gustatory experience. Although we fill our glasses from a single bottle, we taste what we drink within the salivary environment of our own particular bodies. It is commonly believed that the internal and mediated nature of the sense of taste affects the range and evaluative character of the qualities experienced, and this creates special problems for objective critical appreciation. Hence, it is thought that what one tastes is a private object of the taster's experience, and consequently, what one tastes is considered a matter for personal evaluation rather than a common matter for intersubjective scrutiny.

     This view, that tasting requires the evaluation of a private object, makes plausible the common view that the taster is the final arbiter of their own taste experience, and that tasting is a subjective experience. If every morsel we eat is a private object, whether one reacts favorably or unfavorably to it, it is impossible for the taster to be mistaken in evaluating what they have eaten. In this situation, rational disagreement among tasters over the evaluation of what has been experienced gustatorily is impossible. Kant, for subjective disagreement, cited the example of differing opinions about the agreeableness of "Canary Islands wine." He claimed that "it is foolish to dispute about such disagreements with the intention of proving the other party's judgment, which differs from ours, to be incorrect, as if the two judgments stood in logical opposition" (CJ, p.55).

     They ascribe a mental (subjective) authority to the taster, and for this reason they suppose that the niceties of taste are considerably influenced by the private associations of the taster. A person’s past experiences, and even experiences that one merely imagines, are held to affect one’s present evaluations and preferences. These associations are often accompanied by a hedonic character and most of the time come to mind as if they possess a pleasant or unpleasant quality, and they are deemed to influence a person’s evaluation on account of that quality. One of the few checks or constraints implicit in what the taster endowed with subjective authority considers relevant to the evaluation of a taste experience is hedonic congruence: a very negative association is not usually accompanied by a positive valuation. Typically, evaluations merely recognize similar initial hedonic associations. Nevertheless, the basis for discerning agreeableness in both cases is the arbitrary decision of the taster. Consequently, from a subjectivist’s point of view, descriptions of taste experiences, such as those found in Alice’s report, reflect the strange and idiosyncratic associations that often affect our evaluation of what we eat.

Although I believe that aesthetic subjectivism about what we taste is false (just as false as subjectivism about the aesthetic objects of other sensory modalities), nonetheless, Lewis Carroll’s description of Alice’s tasting raises an important point. What is the nature of the unconventional qualities that Lewis Carroll mentions and that are typically used to describe wine? What role do these qualities play in critical experience? Are such qualities in fact merely the arbitrary associations of the taster, playing little role in revealing or critically evaluating what we eat? Or do they have a legitimate critical function in the description and evaluation of wine?

     Despite the fact that everyone tastes wine inside their own body, discerning the specific features of a wine’s taste as distinct, separate qualities is a relatively difficult task for most people. Instead, it is easier for tasters to identify these qualities by noting their resemblance to the prominent or dominant qualities of other taste experiences. The prominent or dominant taste one experiences when eating pineapple is used as a benchmark quality and helps us to discern a similar, specific fruity taste in a given wine.

     These same terms are also used to refer to several different taste characteristics of a wine and to gather those characteristics together as a specific taste. Such terms provide a guide for the taster or reflect a judgment about the wine’s taste structure and evolution. The labels that exist for taste qualities, like those Alice noticed, seem strange and idiosyncratic to some, because they do not understand these labels as referring to a coherent structure grounded in the experience of wine. Instead of pointing to a consistent set of qualities constituting the unfolding experience, such labels appear to be a heap of random associations. What the novice or skeptical taster needs in order to grasp the role of these terms is an aesthetic model of wine drinking as a taste experience. Such a model would challenge the view that people’s taste experience of wine is a jumble of haphazard events. Instead, this model should provide a contextual framework for discerning and organizing the qualities sensed in a wine, giving them a coherent and structured identity. Such a structure would prevent these sorts of qualities from being deemed strange and idiosyncratic, because it would show that these qualities fit together in a way that possesses stylistic unity.

     Some aestheticians did not accept that tastes could create orderly aesthetic structures. In this opposition, they implicitly doubt the existence of taste patterns that consider wine drinking a cognitively enhancing aesthetic experience. For example, D. W. Prall considers tastes to be fundamental aesthetic qualities that “are not, as it happens, susceptible of combination on account of established inner orders.”[24] Although Prall emphasizes that tastes and smells are aesthetic qualities, he insists that they do not combine into a larger complex whole. He claims that:

Cooks and perfumers are in their way cultivated and sensitive artists, as tea-tasters and wine-tasters are skilled critical judges. But such art and such criticism have no intelligible principles, structural or critical (or at least none have yet been discovered), simply because the elements they work with have no intelligible structure or order that is at all apparent in discoverable variations. (AeJ, p. 99).

     Monroe Beardsley also denies that smells and tastes can form a larger complex aesthetic whole. He claims that “we cannot (at least not yet) arrange them [smells and tastes][25] in orderly sequences, and consequently cannot achieve constructive principles to build larger works out of them . . . there seems to be insufficient order within these sensory fields to construct aesthetic objects possessing balance, climax[26], development,[27] or pattern[28].”[29] Resistance to the view that allows taste to be experienced in the form of larger, more orderly aesthetic wholes supports the belief that tasting wine is a subjective experience. Those like me who insist that tasting wine should be considered a cognitively enhancing aesthetic act must provide a structural model of the wine-drinking experience for those who doubt such a cognitive identity in wine tasting. Such a model would show how the taste of wine can construct an orderly and complex aesthetic object so that one can drink in “balance, climax, development, or pattern.”

     Regarding visual arts and music, there are stylistic models that establish conventions for how certain types of paintings or musical pieces should be experienced. These models need not prescribe a temporal structure for such an experience. They may take the form of an analyzed paradigm: a critic’s discussion of what rich and valuable elements exist in Picasso’s Ma Jolie[30] may serve as an instructive basis for looking at other analytical Cubist paintings.[31] Nevertheless, a structural model can show one how to temporally organize and order one’s aesthetic experience; familiarity with a formal musical structure like sonata-allegro form[32] may be a guide to how to listen to a Haydn symphony. Although such models also exist for tasting wine, skeptics usually deny their importance and likely suppose that such models are merely personal recommendations intending to prescribe a general form for a personal activity like drinking wine.

     For tasting wine, a structural model is genuinely useful, because it helps one learn where on the palate (that is, at what point or points, in the temporal process of swallowing and ingesting the wine) certain aesthetic qualities are likely to emerge. Merely telling someone that a given wine has such-and-such features, which are indeed interesting features, will be of little value unless that person has a "map" of taste showing where on their palate those features will appear. One might hear that a certain wine tastes of flint[33] or that another wine tastes of tar or of violets[34] (or even pineapple, roast turkey, and hot buttered toast), or hear that a certain wine's taste is long in the mouth or lingers on the palate for a long time after swallowing. But such a list of qualities or features will be of no value to someone who is suspicious of this sort of vocabulary, believes such terms are a bunch of personal associations, and does not know where on their palate to look for the referents of these terms. Familiarity with a structural model for tasting wine, by informing one where and how to look for such features, helps one gain access to these reported qualities. Of course, learning such a model takes time. Cultivating the palate requires practice, just as cultivating the eye to see painting or cultivating the ear to hear music does, and this is a sign that all three cases require certain cognitive skills of discernment and the order that comes from combination and synthesis.[35]

     To emphasize the importance of having such models for the aesthetic appreciation of wine, I want to briefly describe two common models: one is the temporal model[36] and the other is the modified model[37]. Wine drinking as an aesthetic encounter occurs within certain functional and physiological parameters. What provides the general form and structural organization of this aesthetic experience is precisely this sequence and these stages of sensing the wine: the process of looking at it appreciatively, smelling it, swallowing it, and ingesting it. All the sensed qualities of a wine (both its tastes and its visual, olfactory, and tactile qualities) are called the sense-organ-dependent[38] qualities in that wine. One senses these sense-organ-dependent qualities individually or in combination. One also senses them with one sensory modality or more than one sensory modality, and at various stages of the digestive process. For example, while one senses the basic tastes (such as sweetness and sourness) on the tongue, sensing many other gustatory qualities also depends on olfactory cognition.[39] We usually project these olfactory qualities onto what we think we are tasting.

This olfactory projection,[40] which casts smells onto tastes, is the hidden cause of some of the seemingly strange and exotic wine-drinking vocabulary. Terms that apparently yield subjective and bizarre associations often refer to these projected olfactory qualities. Qualities that are [merely] smelled but seem to be tasted. Part of the value of such qualities is that they encourage the taster to develop a fuller olfactory cognition of the wine. But being aware of the existence of such projected olfactory qualities increases the likelihood that the taster in question will expect or seek out such qualities. Qualities like "roast turkey" and "hot buttered toast"—that is, qualities that have such a projected olfactory character—must be tasted in such a way that one allows the volatile parts of the wine to vaporize so that one can smell that quality and allow it to be projected as flavor [= the blend of smell and taste]. It is because of these functional requirements of the tasting experience that tasting wine relies on temporal and structural models. These models prescribe a template through which one discerns such elements and grasps the aesthetic character of that wine.

در نتیجه، الگویی موقتی برای شراب‌نوشی از این قرار است: این الگو، که طرح کلّی آن را می‌توان در کتاب کلاسیک بِریا ساوارین[41] به نام فیزیولوژیِ ذائقه (1825) یافت، برای کسانی که از توصیف‌های صوری پروردۀ دیویی و بیردزلی از تجربۀ زیبایی‌شناختی شناخت دارند به نظر آشنا خواهد رسید.[42] پیشنهاد این الگو این است که شراب‌نوشی یک فعالیت زیبایی‌شناختی کنترل‌شده و ساخت‌مند باشد و تأکید دارد بر تشخیص دادن عناصر زیبایی‌شناختی و واحدهای بزرگ‌تر ساختاری از طریق جایگاه متوالی‌شان در دهان. این الگوی موقتی بر مراحلی تأکید می‌کند که طی آن مراحل آنچه می‌گواریم به محلِ گیرنده‌های چشایی و حس‌گر‌‌های بویایی گوناگونی می‌رسد که شالودۀ مادی کام‌ما را می‌سازند. دیدگاهی که طرح می‌شود این است که تجربۀ چشایی شراب‌نوشی به سه مرحله تقسیم شود: مرحلۀ اولیه یا مرحلۀ حمله، مرحلۀ میان‌کامی[43] و مرحلۀ پایانی یا مرحلۀ پس از چشیدن.

طبق این نظریه چهار مزۀ اصلی که با دهان مواجه می‌شوند (شیرین، ترش، شور، تلخ) همه در بخش‌های مختلف کام گیرنده‌های خاصِ خود را دارند.[44] از آنجا که شیرینی در مرحلۀ اولیۀ تجربۀ چشیدن، در قسمت جلوی زبان، حس می‌شود، مرحلۀ حمله بر محدودۀ کیفیت شیرین یا کیفیت میوه‌سان[45] شراب متمرکز است. در کنار حس‌گرهای شیرینی، گیرنده‌های ترشی نیز درگیر می‌شوند. پس از ثبت شدن میوه‌سانی اولیۀ شراب، آدمی مزه‌مزه می‌کند تا در همان حال که شیرینی را در مقام یک مزۀ زنده و در حال تحول حفظ می‌کند ببیند آیا ترشی تعادل‌بخشی ظاهر می‌شود یا نه. فقدان ترشی، شراب را بی‌رمق و وارفته[46] می‌کند و ترشی خیلی زیاد مزه‌های در حال پرورده شدن را تحت کنترل در می‌آورد و می‌پوشاند. شراب‌هایِ وارفته که ترشی جبران‌کننده را ندارند معیوب شمرده می‌شوند. یک‌سوم ابتدایی مراحلِ چشیدن، حس کردن تعادل میان شیرینی و ترشی است. این ساده‌ترین قسمت چنین تجربه‌کردنی است که معمولاً بین دو تا سه ثانیه باقی می‌ماند.[47]

The next stage in the tasting process is the mid-palate stage. At this stage, bitter qualities, which are usually sensed at the back of the tongue, come into play, opening up the possibility for flavors to broaden and the impression of the wine's complexity[48] to become more prominent. Examples include mineral qualities, such as flintiness, and vegetal qualities, such as olive-like character[49]. In the second stage, a wide range of the wine's olfactory elements are also involved. Smelling the wine even takes precedence over the first step. Tasting wine practically begins with smelling it and trying to assess the wine's fruity aromas or the scent resulting from its aging. Throughout the attack phase and into the mid-palate phase, our olfactory relationship with the wine creates expectations regarding its evolution in the next stage. As previously mentioned, a considerable amount of what we taste as flavor is an experience mixed from smell and taste, commonly called the experience of a flavor.[50] At this stage, one can let the wine evaporate and affect their olfactory receptors, thereby trying to gain a broader sense of the wine's flavor. This process also occurs when one swallows the wine and allows the volatile components of the wine to become trapped in the retronasal passages[51], making the evolving impression of the wine more developed. For example, in the case of tasting a young Cabernet Sauvignon[52] wine, the fruity flavor of blackcurrant likely leads to the astringent qualities of cedar[53] or even green olive. The greater development and increase of the overall complex impression [of the wine's flavor] is an indicator of quality. The lack of such aesthetic complexity in a wine is considered a flaw or defect. A wine whose taste does not last long on one's palate, or has no finish at all, is also among the faults of wine. According to Amerine[54] and Singleton[55] (California wine educators), "quality in wine is associated with complexity."[56]

Finally, after swallowing the wine, you enter the final third of this process, namely the finish or aftertaste stage. If the wine is good, its flavor evolution continues. The finish stage may last a few seconds or may persist for thirty seconds, a minute, or even longer.[57] During this stage, the various effects of the wine's quality appear and are renewed moment by moment. It is here that the taster has the opportunity to assess the unity of the wine's sensory trajectory. According to the Brillat-Savarin or temporal model, the sensory structure of the wine is most often evaluated in terms of a kind of organization with a hierarchy, reminiscent of Dewey's model of a unified experience. The finish stage should have a unifying effect on the entire experience. If a wine presents itself to the palate with a sort of strong, fruity initial acidity, and subsequently, in the mid-palate stage, its complexity increases, only to abruptly and unexpectedly stop in the finish stage, such a wine lacks structural unity. The presence of unwanted, unpleasant tastes[58] in the finish stage that curb or obliterate the development of the wine's emerging identity is also considered a flaw or defect.

This three-stage tasting model provides an introduction to evaluating wines according to a structure that gradually unfolds[59] and is formally linked to it. The criteria for the model's success are reminiscent of Beardsley's aesthetic principles, namely unity, complexity, and intensity[60]. Although this model is an established one for wine appreciation and has been used repeatedly, I nevertheless consider it a provisional model, as it has a single focus that creates a uniform process for tasting all wines. It is thought that a single set of evaluative criteria can be extracted from the functional indicators of this model. In doing so, this single model does not differentiate the alternative evaluative criteria that have historically developed in various cultures and different grape-growing regions. Models that show faults and merits must be identified according to these very cultural and stylistic backgrounds, and the specific type of wine being evaluated must be taken into account.

As Émile Peynaud says, "the smell of green olives and freshly cut alfalfa or tar" may be considered a fault in some winemaking styles and a merit in others. (p. 57) The scent of herbs and grass woven into a Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire region[61] in a Sancerre[62] would be considered a fault if found in a California Sauvignon Blanc whose style of production emphasizes ripe, fig-like grapes and melon-like qualities[63]. The massive, complex structure of the bitter finish that lingers after tasting in a twenty-year-old Italian Amarone[64] will undoubtedly differ from the simpler, fresh, fruit-like tartness and floral[65] aroma of a young wine from the Chiroble winery in the Beaujolais region[66]. Even the sharp smell of acetic acid[67], which creates a vinegary sourness in the wine's taste and whose noticeable presence in any kind of California Chardonnay causes the wine in question to be deemed faulty, plays a recognized role in the skillful, artisanal winemaking of Italian Barolo[68]. A wine whose extraordinarily complex mid-palate stage yields flavors of wood, tobacco, tar, and violets.

Brillat-Savarin's theory's emphasis on the specific location of receptors and a single pathway for the sensory impressions resulting from tasting has also recently been criticized. The provisional model confirms a single timeline of sensory impressions based on when those impressions are received in this process. Sweet or fruity qualities are sensed at the beginning because the receptors for sweetness are thought to be on the front of the tongue. Sourness is sensed next, as sour receptors are found on the sides and underneath the tongue. Bitter qualities are sensed even later because it is the back of the tongue that senses such qualities. Sensory impressions must follow the step-by-step entry of the wine to these different sensory receptors.

However, recent research on the physiological processing of taste stimuli indicates that this account, which emphasizes the specific location of taste receptors, is incorrect. Taste receptors, rather than being specific to a particular taste (such as sweetness), can react to a wide variety of taste stimuli. It seems that focusing on a specific stimulus is more effective in creating the system of sensed taste impressions. Therefore, the changing combinations of such material stimuli seem to create different systems and structures of sensory experience. Thus, this aspect of the provisional model, which has a single sensory pathway, must be replaced with a model that recognizes the possibility of different wine styles with sensory systems of different arrangements.[69]

Consequently, Brillat-Savarin's model must be revised to recognize the patterns of sensory difference that are characteristic of different wine styles. In this respect, wine is no different from other cultural artifacts that attract aesthetic concerns. A single aesthetic model for appreciating all paintings, as a guide to the various painting styles recorded in the history of world art, would be of very limited value. Pre-modern, modern, and postmodern paintings refuse to be uniformly contained within such a single model. But this revised model (Peynaud's model) allows that familiarity with the paradigmatic[70] and stylistic structures of different types of wine helps in identifying and appreciating the range of elements related to those structures. Nevertheless, while there are functional indicators for tasting, the organization and classification of types of qualities depend on backgrounds. Backgrounds that have various styles.

Consequently, my argument is against aesthetic subjectivism in relation to wine drinking, and specifically seeks to counter the skeptical argument that tastes in wine are subjective because the indicators of the elements of the wine-tasting experience are idiosyncratic associations, and that the experience of wine drinking is organized on a non-cognitive and whimsical basis.[71] Structural models for wine drinking oppose the subjectivist position by insisting that seemingly idiosyncratic associations, to the extent that they are objective qualities, have a functional origin in the tasting experience. The systematic set of qualities also depends on functional parameters and stylistic backgrounds.

With Peynaud's revised model for wine drinking in mind—that is, a model that validates a paradigm for fine white Burgundy[72] and the flavors related to that style—Lewis Carroll's initially astonishing description loses its fantastical character. Carroll first draws our attention to the wine's fruity and tart taste (by referencing cherry tart), thereby noting that this wine is not a flabby wine, a danger that threatens fine Chardonnay wines.[73] Carroll goes on to identify the complex flavors latent in a wine made from ripe, highly extracted Chardonnay grapes, possessing high glycerin and intense alcohol. A wine traditionally produced in the Burgundy region but more recently produced in California. Qualities such as custard cream, pineapple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast are all typically identifiable mid-palate characteristics of this particular style of wine. These characteristics, in addition to flavor, also refer to the wine's complex evolution and development. Consequently, while I am amazed that Alice has cultivated her palate to the point of recognizing these characteristics, I wish she had valued that bottle a little more effusively than merely saying, "I liked it very much." But this is probably just Alice's own particular habit of speaking concisely and succinctly.

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[1] Before reading this article, it is worth providing an explanation. This article was part of a book I recently translated and submitted to the publisher, titled The Aesthetics of Food and Eating, which the esteemed publisher, for reasons best known to them, deemed unsuitable to remain in the collection of essays. In this article, the author attempts to provide structural models for taste in wine drinking. It should be noted that this discussion has nothing to do with the prohibition of wine drinking in Islamic law. For wine in this article is examined solely in terms of its taste, not its intoxicating nature. A similar discussion could easily be applied to tea drinking, coffee drinking, or drinking herbal distillates, and perhaps one day a researcher will do so, writing a critique of the subjective view of the taste of tea, coffee, and herbal distillates, and providing a terminology for describing the taste and flavor of such items. With thanks to my dear friend, Dr. Babak Abbasi, who edited the text. M.

[2] Kevin W. Sweeney, “Alice's Discriminating Palate”, Philosophy and Literature 23 (1999), P. 17-31.

[3] Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865; rpt. New York: Random House, 1946), p.10.

[4] Chardonnay

[5] Burgundy

[6] Corton-Charlemagne

[7] David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste" (1757), Essays, Moral, Political, And Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987), pp. 226-49.

[8] The story goes that in the second volume of the novel Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, who was Don Quixote's squire and servant, relates on a certain occasion that he has a strong, innate acumen and discernment in distinguishing wine, and that it is enough to hold the wine before his nose to determine where its grapes came from, where it was aged, how many years it has been kept, what its taste is, and what properties and qualities it has. He then tells a story about two of his relatives who were wine experts. He recounts that once a sip of wine from a vat was brought to his relatives for them to taste and give their opinion on it. One of them touched the tip of his tongue to the wine, and the other merely smelled the wine. The first said the wine smelled of iron, and the second said it smelled of both iron and goat leather. The owner of the wine did not accept their opinion, but later, when the vat of wine was finished and they wanted to clean the bottom of the vat, they found a key at the bottom to which a leather strap was attached. See:

Don Quixote, Cervantes, translated by Mohammad Ghazi, Volume II, Chapter Thirteen, p. 711 and p. 712, Sixth Edition, 1382 [2003/2004]. M.

[9] private

[10] For an example of a taste like iron, consider the following description of a Swiss wine from the only novel by M. F. K. Fisher: "Jenny slowly ate her finicky, filling meal and drank a small bottle of the metallic red wine made in Valais, and felt good inside." (Not Now but Now [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995], p. 49)

As for an example of a leather taste, Robert M. Parker describes a type of Italian red wine as being "extraordinarily concentrated with the classic Barolo perfume of rose petals, tobacco extract, dried cherry fruit, and saddle leather." ( The Wine Advocate, February, 1990, P. 9.)

[11] fine taste

[12] Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator, ed. Angus Ross (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 364.

[13] determination

[14] Voltaire, "An Essay on Taste" in Alexander Gerard, An Essay On Taste, 2nd ed. (1764; rpt. New York: Garland, 1970), pp. 209-10. See Walter J. Hipple, Jr.'s "Introduction" to Gerard's An Essay On Taste, 3rd ed. (1780; rpt. Delmar, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1978), p. xxi.

[15] Voltaire claims that: “Having taste requires more than merely perceiving (and discerning, precisely, the beauty of every work or object). This beauty must, in addition to being perceived, be felt. It must affect the mind in a passionate and tangible way.” (P. 210).

[16] Voltaire makes such a claim for the taste of food, but he does not extend this claim to critical or “rational” taste. He says: “Rational taste is more the product of education and culture than sensory taste, for although sensory taste may, through habituation, come to take pleasure in what initially arouses hatred and disgust, it does not seem that nature intended the generality of mankind to acquire, through habit and experience, the sensations and perceptions necessary for their preservation. With rational taste, the matter is otherwise: the formation of rational taste requires time, instruction, and experience. It is not the case that a young person untrained in the arts of music and painting (even assuming his sensory faculty is very quick and fertile) will, at a magnificent concert, immediately discern the various components whose connection and linkage constitute the essence and appeal of that music. Nor will this person have a perception of the gradual change of light and shade, the harmony of colors, and the correctness of design in a picture—that is, the matters that characterize a finished work. But over time, and gradually, he will learn to see and hear in a more complete manner” (pp. 211 - 212).

[17] delight

[18] See:

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790), trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), pp. 57-64; hereafter abbreviated CJ. See also Archibald Alison, Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790; Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968), pp. 113-21.

[19] cognitive delight

[20] Europeans have elaborate terminology for the flavor and taste of wine, and a body of knowledge called oenology has essentially been created. A subtle wine is a palatable wine whose aroma and taste have complex layers. A complex wine is one whose various aspects of aroma and flavor are well balanced with one another, and its combination of acidity, bitterness, and alcohol is appropriate. —M.

See:

Dictionary of Wine, General editor: Simon Collin, Bloomsbury Publishing 2004, p. 88 and p. 310

[21] Billy

[22] syrup

[23] The length of a wine is the duration its taste lingers on the palate after you swallow it. See the previous source, p. 185. —M.

[24] D. W. Prall, Aesthetic Judgment (New York: Thomas Y. Crowall, 1967), p. 68;

Hereafter this work will be cited by the abbreviation AeJ.

[25] The brackets are the author’s. —M.

[26] climax

[27] development

[28] pattern

[29]  Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, 2^nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), p. 99;

Hereafter this work will be cited by the abbreviation APoC.

[30] Ma Jolie

[31] The early phase of the Cubist movement is called Analytic Cubism. —Trans.

[32] sonata allegro

[33] A term used to describe a wine that tastes and smells of mineral substances. —Trans.

[34] Terms used to describe the taste of wine in oenology. —Trans.

[35] One can acquire such skills in various ways. One can independently learn such a pattern and seek to apply this sort of supplementary aesthetic vocabulary to what one experiences while tasting wine. Various instructional books on wine drinking are available, several of which I reference in this article. Another way is to learn these matters in the company of an experienced taster, becoming familiar with the task through a "step-by-step" encounter and reporting where certain qualities appear on the palate, and through the evaluative description of the wine as its taste develops. This latter approach is a simpler and more preferable way to obtain such skills, as one can ask questions and measure one's own experience against that of the guide.

[36] provisional

[37] amended

[38] organoleptic

[39] We realize the importance of smell in tasting when we catch a cold, our nasal passages become blocked, and we find that we cannot properly perceive flavors. As instructors of wine appreciation courses like to point out, vanilla is a quality that seems to be tasted, whereas it is sensed exclusively through the olfactory sense.

[40] olfactory projection

[41]  Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

[42]  Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, trans. M. F. K. Fisher (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 40.

John Dewey's classic description of aesthetic experience appears in the third chapter of the following book:

Art As Experience (New York: Putnam, 1958), pp. 35-57

Beardsley's account of his view can be found in APoC, pp. 500-556 and in the following source:

The Aesthetic Point of View, eds. Michael J. Wreen and Donald M. Callen (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982).

Although Beardsley resists acknowledging that the experience of taste can engage with complex, structured aesthetic objects, his aesthetic theory nonetheless aligns with the aesthetic analysis of wine (or is at least consistent with the provisional model).

[43] The mid-palate stage (middle range or mid-palate) refers to the taste of the wine while it is still in the mouth. —Trans.

[44] I have set aside the discussion of salty tastes in wine due to their rarity. Nevertheless, John and Patricia Gottfried claim that salt can be found in some strong Spanish wines and Portuguese red wines that have been aged by the ocean. (A Wine Tasting Course [New York: David McKay, 1978], p. 30). Émile Peynaud notes that low levels of mineral salts accompanied by "distinctly salty tastes" are found in wines, and although other flavors mask them, these salty tastes undoubtedly accentuate the latent flavors in the wine and create a kind of sensation of freshness (The Taste of Wine, trans. Michael Schuster [San Francisco: Wine Appreciation Guild, 1987], pp. 69-70).

[45] A fruity wine is one in which a pleasant fruit aroma and taste is evident. —Tr.

[46] A dull wine is one that is drinkable but not interesting, and a flabby wine is one that has very little acidity and lacks a well-rounded taste. —Tr. See:

Dictionary of Wine, General editor: Simon Collin, Bloomsbury Publishing 2004, p. 114 and p. 130

[47] Peynaud, pp. 69-70.

[48] For the definition of the concept of complexity, see p. 5. —Tr.

[49] The taste or smell of a red wine made from the Cabernet Sauvignon grape. —Tr.

[50] See:

Marian W. Baldy, The University Wine Course, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Wine Appreciation Guild, 1997), p. 22.

[51] In the practice of tasting, in addition to the palate and nose, the back part of the nose (toward the throat) also plays an important role in detecting flavor; this part is called retro-nasal. —Tr.

[52] Cabernet Sauvignon

[53] Cedar is the aroma of a type of fine French wine made from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes or aged in oak barrels. —Tr.

[54] Amerine

[55] Singleton

[56] Maynard A. Amerine and Vernon L. Singleton, Wine: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 299.

[57] Peynaud, p. 70

[58] off-tastes

[59] unfolding structure

[60] intensity

[61] Loire Sauvignon Blanc

[62] Sancerre

[63] Fig aroma refers to the aroma of a type of wine made from the Sémillon grape, and melon-like taste refers to the taste of white wines made from Chardonnay grapes in the United States. —Tr.

[64] amarone

[65] Floral is said of wines that have the aroma of fresh flowers. —Trans.

[66] Beaujolais from Chiroubles

[67] Acetic acid is a chemical substance produced during the winemaking process; a high amount of it in wine creates a sour, vinegary taste. —Trans.

[68] Barolos

[69] For a summary discussion of the critique of the "tongue map" or the theory of specific loci, including a bibliography of physiological studies of the sensory process, see:

Baldy, pp. 24-25.

[70] paradigmatic

[71] For a broader and more comprehensive discussion of the limitations of aesthetic subjectivism, see:

Donald W. Crawford, "Causes, Reasons, and Aesthetic Objectivity," American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1971): 266-74.

John Bender drew my attention to the fact that I did not discuss the subjectivist position that takes a negative view of any type of wine, or of wine in general.

[72] Large-styled white Burgundy is a wine made from Chardonnay grapes that ages for many years in oak barrels, developing flavors of caramel, toffee, butter, vanilla, and so on. The author of this article claims that Alice's description of what she drank resembles the taste of a large-styled Burgundy. —Trans.

[73] I was initially somewhat hesitant as to whether cherry tart was a quality consistent with this style of white Burgundy. Detecting the fruity flavor of cherry in a red Burgundy from the Côte de Beaune region is not unusual. However, I recently noticed that several wine critics have considered the flavor of cherry to be among the qualities of white wine—a quality that signals a balance between fruity flavor and the wine's acidity. For example, reviewing the white Burgundy Fontaine-Gagnard, Robert M. Parker says: "The Chassagne-Montrachet-La Maltroie is a ... flamboyant wine that offers an intoxicating scent of cherry, orange, apple, and butter." (The Wine Advocate, June 26, 1993, p. 12).

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