Wine Culture & Philosophy

For Greek philosophers like Plato and Socrates, there was nothing at all wrong with wine in and of itself. Quite the contrary, in fact, because wine was regarded as an important product of civilization which brings significant benefits. At the same time, though, they recognized in wine something with great potential for harm if used improperly.

Thus like so many other things, wine must be enjoyed in moderation — I can almost see Plat, Socrates, or Aristotle doing public service ads saying "please drink responsibly." One corollary of this principle is that those who are better able to control themselves are given greater freedom to indulge while those who are unable to control themselves get less freedom.

Click for More: Socratic & Platonic Views on Wine & Moderation

Although it is possible to grow grapes for wine throughout the Mediterranean region, it took several centuries for vines to be introduced in most areas. We can, in fact, trace the introduction of grapes first by the Phoenicians, then by the Greeks and finally by the Romans as each civilization engaged in trade, established trade routes, and created colonies. Greek wine jars can be found on the Italian peninsula as early as the 8th century BCE; grape vines planted by Romans in Gaul and Spain were used for wine exported back to Rome by the 2nd century CE.

The spread of grape vines for making wine also meant the spread of wine culture — as well as the development of wine culture. Vines transported from one region to another often didn't make wines that tasted exactly the same as they did in their original homes. At the same time, the culture surrounding wine making and wine drinking also wasn't always the same abroad as it was at home. Just as we can trace the growth of wine making and the wine trade around the Mediterranean, we can also trace developments in how different cultures treated wine.

Click for More: Origins of Terroir & Vintages in Greek and Roman Wine Cultures

Dionysus, Bachus, and Liber are the names of the ancient Greek and Roman god of wine. This god embodied many of the qualities which Greeks and Romans saw in wine itself: life and death, nature and civilization, male and female. There were a lot of different gods in ancient Greek and Roman society, but people who enjoy wine today should take a second look at Dionysus, Bacchus, or Liber to ponder what this god meant to ancient civilizations and what he might still have to tell us about wine today.

Click for More: Gods of Wine in Greco-Roman Culture

It's difficult to underestimate the value and role of wine in both ancient Greek and ancient Roman cultures. Wine was integrated into philosophy, religion, art, poetry, music, and more. It would in fact be impossible to accurately explain ancient Greek and ancient Roman cultures without discussion about wine, wine's effects, and wine's history.

Given how much modern Western culture owes to ancient Greece and ancient Rome, we should inquire as to the lasting impacts of their ideas about wine on us today.

Click for More: Wine in Greco-Roman Culture

What can paintings and other visual arts tell us about the place and role of wine in ancient cultures? Knowledge of the role of wine in ancient cultures is somewhat limited because we can have so few sources of information. Greece and Rome left behind more sources of information for us than most because they had so many writers of history, philosophy, and politics.

Even here, though, matters are not always clear because wine is simply referenced in other contexts. No one sat down to write a single "all about wine" book, so there must be a great deal which we still don't know. This means we have to look for clues in unusual sources — for example, the visual arts. Such art expresses not mundane reality, necessarily, but religious, social, cultural, and political ideals. Thus we learn not so much how people behaved in their daily lives, but rather what they aspired to in their daily lives and the underlying significance they saw in their actions.

Click for More: Wine in Greco-Roman Visual Art

There's a lot of interest in the possible health benefits of wine, especially red wine. Some of this may just be wishful thinking because wine is so good and wine drinkers would rather it be healthy rather than just unhealthy.

There is good evidence that there are some genuine health benefits from drinking wine, but I'm not so sure that there are many health benefits from bathing in wine. The women of ancient Sparta though so, however.

Click for More: Bathing Spartan Babies in Wine

The idea of denying women a right to drink wine will sound bizarre to modern Westerners, even when talking about a society like ancient Rome. What reason could here be to limit wine to just men? First and foremost, we must remember that wine was more than just a beverage in ancient Rome. Wine might be simply another drink to choose from for us, but drinking wine carried all sorts of religious, philosophical, and social implications for the Romans and Greeks.

Click for More: Keeping Wine from Women

Wine is a potent drink and in modern society anything potent is likely to be feared for the harm it can do. Is wine truly so potent that it must be feared, though? What we should understand about potency is that the power to cause harm is generally balanced by the power to do good as well. Thus the harm which some people fear wine can cause is balanced by the potential good it can do when used correctly. The question is, how do we best develop wine's potency for good without risking harm?

This is ultimately a philosophical question about the nature and use of wine, so the first place to look for answers would be with those who first philosophized about wine and who used wine in their philosophical investigations: the ancient Greeks. The Greeks weren't the first to develop a wine culture, but we know more about theirs than that of any earlier civilization and we can also see how it developed.

One important aspect of Greek wine culture was incorporating wine and other pleasures in their philosophy. Among the philosophical questions explored by the Greeks in which wine played a role was that of moderation: how much of a thing was good for you and how much was bad for you? Wine, many decided, was very good in the right quantities and the right situations even if it had the power to cause problems as well.

Click for More: Wine's Potency for Good is a Potency for Evil

Where and when did wine originate? I doubt that we'll ever learn the precise origins of wine creation, but we can trace some of the earliest developments of wine culture — i.e. special traditions, practices, industry, trade, and art surrounding wine that are not associated with other food and drink. It is in fact very significant that cultural practices developed around wine but not around other drinks like milk, juice, or even to the same extent around other alcoholic drinks like beer.

Click for More: Origins of Wine Cultivation

America can be justifiably proud of the growth and improvement in its wine industry over the past decades, but few are aware of how large America's wine industry was before Prohibition. Although Prohibition ended in 1933 and lasted just 13 years, we are still today experiencing its negative and even devastating effects on wine production — overall volume dropped from 55 million gallons in 1919 to 3.5 million gallons in 1925. What might America's wine industry or wine culture actually be like today if Prohibition hadn't nearly destroyed it?

Click for More: American Wine Culture Still Feeling Effects of Prohibition

Does the contemporary American wine industry owe its existence to Italian immigrants and their wineries? Perhaps, at least to some extent. Americans owe a debt a gratitude to Italian immigrants for a lot of things, but one of the lesser known may be the efforts of immigrant families to preserve their vineyards and wineries during Prohibition.

When so many other wineries ripped out their vines and planted other profitable, predictable crops, a few Italian families saved their vineyards despite the political, legal, social, and economic pressures. Once Prohibition ended, these Italian wineries were ready to start providing wine to the nation. Is it any wonder that the biggest brand names in American wine have for so many years been Italian?

Click for More: How Italian Wineries Saved American Wines

Israel may not be famous for its wines, but Israeli wine makers export several different type of wine and are expanding their production facilities into the West Bank lands that once belonged to Palestinians. Several Israeli vineyards already exist in the West Bank, but they have big plans for increasing the amount of land planted with grapes as well as holiday housing for tourists. As a sign of the underlying problems, the vineyards may be watched over by guard towers and well-armed guards for protection.

Choosing wine is usually a question of taste, not politics, but it's impossible to be completely apolitical when drinking Israeli wine — especially now. Perhaps no wine choice is completely free of any political implications, but they are far more significant with Israeli wine because it is increasingly being created on disputed land in Palestinian areas and all are grown with water largely denied to Palestinians who are thus denied the ability to grow food for eating.

Click for More: Ethics & Politics of Drinking Israeli Wine from the West Bank

It's common to see references to "wine culture," the culture that surrounds wine and wine drinking, but it's not so common to talk about how fundamental wine might be to human culture itself — and indeed, maybe even to human civilization. Humans have cultivated grapes and made wine for millennia and it's been argued that humans have evolved to enjoy alcohol. Maybe the decision to cultivate grapes for making wine constituted a vital turning point in human cultural evolution.

Click for More: Wine's Role in Foundation of Human Civilization, Culture, Religion

Are there good reasons why wine isn't a work of art and drinking wine isn't an aesthetic experience, or is this just prejudice — a cultural inheritance that makes no rational sense? A painting like the Mona Lisa is a work of art and viewing it is an aesthetic experience. Music, like a symphony by Mozart, is a work of art and hearing it is an aesthetic experience. Novels and poetry are works of art; reading them is an aesthetic experience. How are wine and wine drinking different?

Art, it seems, is limited to the senses of sight and sound. A great piece of clothing is only a work of art based on how it looks and only viewing it is generally regarded as an aesthetic experience. How that clothing feels on our skin is irrelevant, so our sense of touch is not regarded as a vehicle for art or aesthetic experiences. Food is "art" only by how it looks; how it tastes and smells is irrelevant because our senses of taste and smell aren't vehicles for art or aesthetic experiences. Why?

Click for More: Aesthetics of Wine

In popular culture and imagination, at least, France is probably the land of wine — a land where wine culture and the wider culture are deeply intertwined. That may be changing, though, because wine consumption is in sharp decline in France. In 2008, French households drank nearly 10% less wine than they did in 2007. Some of that is because of the economy, but that's not the whole story.

 

The truth is that French culture and society have been changing for many years now. The old days when people would stop at a cafe and down a bottle of wine or more are long, long gone. Nearly 50 years ago, the average French adult drink over 4 times as much wine as the entire French household does today. Where will things be 10, 20, or 30 years from now?

Click for More: Changing Wine Culture in France

All the economic growth in India has produced a lot of social changes, just as it has in so many other countries around the world. Capitalism is closely associated with conservatism, but many fail to realize just how anti-conservative capitalism ultimately is. Capitalism thrives on novelty and relies on increased efficiencies which always overturn traditional methods of work. As a consequence, capitalism always undermines a community's traditional social mores, for better or for worse.

One of the dramatic changes occurring in India today is an increase in social freedom for women. Traditionally it was taboo for women to drink alcohol at all, much less in public, but today record numbers of women are starting to sip a glass of wine while dining out. Women themselves are becoming financially independent, thus able to make their own decisions about how they will behave and how they will live their lives.

Click for More: Women Drinking Wine in India