Ah, summertime and the living is easy. Your thirsty wino has been soaking up – some sun and some words. A quenching summer read is Matt Kramer on Wine, written by Matt Kramer, of course. It is a thematic collection of columns from the author’s regular perch at the Wine Spectator, as well as several other publications.
Kramer is well-known as well for his book on Burgundy, and this collection reflects that - it is worth the effort if only for his defence of the concept of the quintessentially-Burgundian concept of terroir. Rare too is the wine book that can deploy Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigm, and the Platonic ideal of the form. We also like a lot his illustration of the subjectivity, or relativity, of taste in his insights into the good, the bad and the ugly of the retailer’s palate, the wine critic’s palate, the winemaker’s palate, the sommelier’s palate, and the consumer’s palate.
Challenging was his report on the robust scientific refutation of the functional efficacy of those devices which claim to pump the air out of a wine bottle, the better to preserve the wine inside. I use them, love, and think they work. But science says no. (Apparently so too do those Shopping Bag ladies on television.) I hate the idea of being in the same sort of camp as the climate warming deniers!
A worthy read.
Cheers,
The Professor