Wine history dates back to very ancient times of human civilisation- recent studies proof that the first vinifcations of humanity took place about 6000 years ago in the Caucausus area. Since the very begging, wine has never been considered just a beverage– it was an element of conviviality (think about the Simposium in Ancient Greece for example) together with the other forms of art as music, dance, poetry.
This vision of the wine has to do only with the sense of pleasure and euphoria it can provide or there are also other reasons to consider it as an artistic expression?
Wine is art?
If we consider an “artwork” something which is a product of human creativity, carries a certain message and gives pleasure to the body and the mind, then there are no doubts that wine can be considered an art- it expresses the territory it comes from ( its history, character and interpretation) and gives feeling of fiscal and psychical pleasure ( of course when consumed in moderation).
As any other form of art, wine interpretates the reality and needs to be interpretated itself, in order to understand the full range of nuances , meanings and shades it has.
A possible method
Nowadays normally wine is described by a sommelier who explains in his specific language its characteristics- colour, perfume, taste. Anyway also other forms of art can be “translated” in a similar way as for example music, dance, painting or poetry. A very good method is the one of parallelism: certain aspects of the wine can be recalled through parallels with other forms of artistic expression as a movement, a gesture, a sign or a sound.
Furthermore the terminology used to describe wine is itself suitable to create similar parallelisms: we speak for example of transparency, vivacity, intensity, equilibrium, harmony of the wine, all terms suitable for an artistic context.
We are going to speak further on this argument in the following articles in this blog when we will try to examine the single forms of art and their relation to wine.
In the meantime, could you suggest us which is according to you the ” best match” between wine and art? Let’s open the dances ( and the bottles)!