Temper and Timber in Asti?

originally posted by Thor:
new oak on Barbera is not the same as new oak on Barolo and can work. OTOH, it sounds as though there may be more than just new oak at work here.
Click to expand...
I can't share the preference for oaked nebbiolo, which is rarely any good for my palate, but I would argue the opposite" that wines made from nebbiolo can handle more wood than those made from barbera.

I also don't agree that, in general, new oak and barbera go well together. One out of ten, maybe. Too much acid and too much oak are...well, yuck.
Click to expand...
Not for me to say. The percentage of Barbera that I try and like is about 3-5%, and that's based on self-selection.
 
Does anyone know how many of the Italian journalist defenders work for Berlusconi?
Click to expand...
Well, we didn't do a survey. There was the Gambero Rosso guy, and there was the "you don't have a PhD in philosophy thus you may not speak to me using the words 'natural' or 'philosophy'" guy, and there were others. But the papers and radio, at least, managed to present our argument unfiltered. Not sure the mainstream journalists got that courtesy.

Doesn't the dissent of the bloggers play into Berlusconi's attack on the internet, cf., the recent criminal conviction of three Google executives?
Click to expand...
Oh, I hope so. I'd love to be responsible for a crackdown on free speech. *sigh*
 
originally posted by Thor:
The 2007 Sor del Drago was extraordinarily good. The Valmaggione is a nebbiolo, but we didn't taste it anyway.
Click to expand...

We visited Brovia last May and tasted the 2007 Sor del Drago. Excellent stuff; we included a couple of bottles in the small stash of stuff we brought back.
 
Thanks Thor...your posts here are really informative. So....how long do we drum fingers waiting for the mainstream pronouncements? Will be interesting to see if or how the blogosphere notes influence more maintstream critic takes and tastes.

Interesting though, that, in this changing world, the leap was towards doing an Auzzie kind of brute (pummel the market) thing over say the other, lighter realm ie...more transparent, nuanced wines, which also have been steadily building their own cache.
 
originally posted by Thor:
there was the "you don't have a PhD in philosophy thus you may not speak to me using the words 'natural' or 'philosophy'" guy
Click to expand...

How totally ludicrous! "You don't have a PhD in chemistry thus you may not speak to me using the words 'sulfur' or 'TCA'..." Does this sort of thing happen often?

I do have a PhD in philosophy, so if you or Cory or whoever wants to comp me along to one of these things sometime, I'll be happy to back up your linguistic usage against this sort of nonsense in exchange for a few sips.
 
originally posted by Steven Spielmann:
originally posted by Thor:
there was the "you don't have a PhD in philosophy thus you may not speak to me using the words 'natural' or 'philosophy'" guy
Click to expand...

How totally ludicrous! "You don't have a PhD in chemistry thus you may not speak to me using the words 'sulfur' or 'THC'..." Does this sort of thing happen often?
Click to expand...

Only about 1-2 times per week here, less elsewhere I believe. [emoticon redacted]

Mark Lipton
 
How totally ludicrous! "You don't have a PhD in chemistry thus you may not speak to me using the words 'sulfur' or 'TCA'..." Does this sort of thing happen often?
Click to expand...
Aw, Mark stole my joke. Anyway, the latter sounds like Nigel Groundwater, who's away and can't defend himself for a few days, and is thus an easy target. (Yes, Nigel, it's a joke. More or less.)

I preferred the original version, though: 'sulfur' or 'THC'.

I do have a PhD in philosophy, so if you or Cory or whoever wants to comp me along to one of these things sometime, I'll be happy to back up your linguistic usage against this sort of nonsense in exchange for a few sips.
Click to expand...
Here's a serious question, for you or any of the other PhDs who want to join in. I know it's hard to tell how this differs from my usual sarcasm, but it really is a serious question:

If, during a conversation (a contentious one, if it affects your answer) about categories of wine practice, is there any case in which you would accept the use of the word "philosophy" to describe those practices? If you would reject it, would you bring the conversation to an abrupt halt so you could point out that, say, Bea's, or Cornelissen's, or Radikon's intentions when approaching grapes or his cellar cannot be called a "philosophy?"

I'm presuming no one here would then go on to the third part, in which you explain that because you teach philosophy and theology, everything you say from now on is more right than if someone else said it.

Obviously, a conversation in which I was engaged featured this little rest stop. Since we'd already come to verbal blows over the use of "natural" by the producer we were visiting (my contention was that wine people have a general idea what's meant when it's used that differs depending on who's using it, that the definition is not believed by anyone to be "the grapes fall from the vine and ferment in a nicely-labeled bottle that's sprouted from the ground, after which they trot on their own little legs over to a cork oak and seal themselves," and that there's allowance for a fairly wide range of understandings of the word; his was that the concept cannot exist at all and that anyone using it was a complete ignoramus; I was completely willing to cede the "some people use it badly" middle ground but he was having none of it), I didn't want to get distracted by "philosophy" as well. I could tell he really wanted to replace the word with "ideology," but I didn't let him start down that path.

The thing is, I didn't really care if he objected to "philosophy." It's not one, even in the context of wine talk? OK, fine, pick another term that makes everyone happy and let's move forward. But he was not going to let this go. Frankly, I think he just wanted to make sure we all knew about his PhD before we continued, because I'm unclear if he had any actual argument on the matter at hand. For example, he identified Germany as the wellspring of the natural wine movement. Um, really?
 
Damn, I wish I had a PhD so I could jump in, but I only have a masters. So I'll have someone with a Phd speak for me:

Tractatus Proposition 4.003.

"4.003 Most sentences and questions that have been written about philosophical things are not false but rather nonsensical. So we cannot answer questions of this kind at all, but only ascertain their nonsensicality. Most questions and propositions of philosophers are based on our not understanding the logic of our language.

(They are of the same kind as the question whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful.)

And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are really no problems at all."
 
Wittgenstein didn't have a PhD at the time that he wrote that. Obviously of no relevance, in other words.

Thor, my philosophy is, you just say what you mean as best you can, and if people have trouble with certain words, you try to find different ones that allow for honest communication without sacrificing clarity and comprehension.

If one was trying to be very, very precise I'm not sure 'philosophy' or 'ideology' are exactly right for describing a winemaker's approach, though the former is better than the latter. Talk of intentions, as well as aesthetic and chemical terms, are probably more to the point. On the other hand, if you want to sum up the general perspective underlying a person's practice, 'philosophy' is a perfectly good word for that in common parlance.
 
originally posted by Thor:

If, during a conversation (a contentious one, if it affects your answer) about categories of wine practice, is there any case in which you would accept the use of the word "philosophy" to describe those practices? If you would reject it, would you bring the conversation to an abrupt halt so you could point out that, say, Bea's, or Cornelissen's, or Radikon's intentions when approaching grapes or his cellar cannot be called a "philosophy?"
Click to expand...

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a winey swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates himself was permanently pissed

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
With half a glass of Merlot got particularly ill
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a case of Petrus every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart
"I drink therefore I am"

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed

Happy to raise the level of discourse, sir.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Steven Spielmann:

If one was trying to be very, very precise I'm not sure 'philosophy' or 'ideology' are exactly right for describing a winemaker's approach, though the former is better than the latter. Talk of intentions, as well as aesthetic and chemical terms, are probably more to the point. On the other hand, if you want to sum up the general perspective underlying a person's practice, 'philosophy' is a perfectly good word for that in common parlance.
Click to expand...
In French, one often uses the word "politique."
 
If one was trying to be very, very precise I'm not sure 'philosophy' or 'ideology' are exactly right for describing a winemaker's approach, though the former is better than the latter.
Click to expand...
To be honest, the preferred word among the Italian winemakers and journalists we met was "Talibano" (no, really), and I suppose it's semi-amusing that I inevitably think of Victor when anyone uses this word in any context these days. "Polemics/polemical" and its variants were also used when the Taliban couldn't be referenced. Lots of shades of meaning, all of them more or less insulting.
 
I've been referred to as 'talibano' when it comes to Brettanomyces. I took it as a compliment.
Click to expand...
Ah, yes. "It's impossible for anyone in the Piedmont to make wine without adding yeast." Translated, but a direct quote from someone I won't name.

And so, the next day at Brovia...
 
Thor, you've missed your calling. You should be running the Foreign Service. Fuck a bunch of self-important Italian PhDs, they don't deserve your diplomatic efforts, much less your genuine civility. (Yo, who thinks "civility" is this weird self-imposed constraint that has no place in contemporary human interaction?)

Sorry, I was suddenly possessed by the spirit of Marcelle Clements. So uncool.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top