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The Thing About Wine
Wine has a prominent place in our tradition, serving at the heart of several rites and being an integral part of the Platonic dinner and philosophical discussion sessions.
From an epicuristic point of view however, wine is a tricky substance. If - as a pure epicurist - it is your objective to savour the essence of a glas of wine, to totally enjoy the complexity and harmony of it without drinking the entire bottle, you will find yourself on thin ice. Because wine is a tricky seductress...
The European style of wine making brings with it that a single sip of wine brings a complex palette that changes by the second. Try it for yourself and hold a sip of wine in your mouth for a while and study it. It will change in texture, first highlighting sugars, then acids and finally tannines (bitter), often accompanied by several different tectile sensations of the tongue and cheek lining. The flavours detected by your nose will change as well, first revealing fruity tones but slowly changing to deeper more earthy flavours like wood, compost, leather, coffee and smoke in red wines and chalk, felspar, limestone and flint in white wines.
As wine is poored into a glass, it starts to change because of exposure to oxigen and often a higher room temperature. These processes infuence the taste, flavour and texture of the wine.
Because of this variable nature, wine invites you to try it again, to relive the sensation and to study how it keeps changing and revealing new aspects. If you do so, the alcohol slowly starts to do its work. Two or three sips is enough to feel the first effects. The capillaries in your face will widen, you start to feel a bit warmer and often feel more free. Alcohol takes away some of you inhibitions while hightening your senses, especially the sense of smell.
Af a result, the second glas of wine actually tasts better than the first, or at least more intense. At this point, wine lures you in, offering more alcohol in exchange for more sensory experiences, while lowering your mental grip on reality. At this point - especially when you like the taste of the wine - you will start to get an emotional attachment to the liquid. "Wow, I really love this wine" is often heard at this stage. The tectile and olfactory sensations of the wine are now linked to emotional references such as joy, comfort, wellbeing and even love. At this point it is best to actually stop drinking. If you continue to take in alcohol, the senses will start to dull again, causing you to need more wine to keep experiencing the same sensations. To most people though, it is very hard to stop here. Just as you really start to like it, you need to leave it. For a true epicurist however, this is always the challenge.
Next time, when you raise a glass of wine to your lips, remember this article and fully enjoy your wine. Drink in deep... just not too deep!
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