This book is not a guide to drinking wine, but a guide to thinking it. It is a tribute to pleasure, by a devotee of happiness, and a defence of virtue by an escapee from vice. Its argument is addressed to theists and atheists, to Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims, to every thinking person in whom the joy of meditation has not extinguished the pleasures of embodiment. I have harsh words to say about the health fanatics, about the mad mullahs, and about anybody else who prefers taking offence to seeing another’s viewpoint. But my purpose is to defend the opinion once attributed to Plato, that ‘nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man’, and I am confident that all those who are offended by this innocent endeavour thereby give proof of their irrelevance.
Previous drafts were read by Chris Morrissey, Bob Grant, Barry Smith and Fiona Ellis, and I have benefited greatly from their criticisms. Previous draughts were drunk with Ewa Atanassow and Thomas Bartscherer, who also made valuable suggestions which I have done my best to recall. I am especially grateful to my wife Sophie, for putting up with the twelve years of research that went into the writing of this book. Some of this research was conducted on behalf of the New Statesman, whose editors have shown exemplary patience in tolerating, within the covers of London’s otherwise most respectable left-wing journal, a column devoted to tradition, family, hierarchy, hunting and God, with a few hints as to how those insufferable topics might be swallowed. The column has been a source of great enjoyment to me, and I have drawn freely on the observations that occurred to me while writing it.
I have also made use of other published material, notably a chapter on ‘The Philosophy of Wine’, contributed to Barry Smith’s collection on this topic, Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine. This chapter was an early version of what is Chapter 6 of the present book. I have also drawn on two memoirs written for other purposes, one of my tutor, Laurence Picken, written for a recent commemorative volume devoted to Jesus College, Cambridge, and one of David Watkin, written for a volume presented to him on his retirement. Some parts of Chapter 5 draw on material first published in MIT’s online Technology Review.
Sperryville, Virginia;
Malmesbury, Wiltshire;
Christmas 2008