Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
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Non-pro wine writing should be done how?
- Thread starter Peter Creasey
- Start date
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg: Since it doesn't really distinguish pleasure-giving wines from other kinds of pleasure-giving wines, it must be there to denote wines that are somehow devoted to giving pleasure as opposed to those wines that might evoke intellectual interest...
But that all makes sense, it's just that he limits the terms to certain kinds of wines whereas for me, Clos des Briords is full-on hedonistic pleasure where I don't stop to think about anything except how good it feels going down. Vin Jaune is most definitely a different kind of pleasure, for me. But of course pleasure is subjective and others will differ.
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
I imagine RP uses hedonist/hedonistic to mean opulent, bacchanalian, a specific kind of decadently luxurious pleasure.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by Rahsaan:
Yes, and that makes sense. But as I mentioned above, he and I disagree on the wines to which those concepts should be applied. Which is fine.
Are there wines you drink more than a sip of that don't give you pleasure? If not, what distinctive quality do you mean to point to by saying that a wine gives you pleasure other than that is a wine you like? And if you don't mean that the wine gives you pleasure by describing it as hedonistic, what do you mean to say about it?
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg: And if you don't mean that the wine gives you pleasure by describing it as hedonistic, what do you mean to say about it?
For me, hedonistic wines are opulent, bacchanalian, a specific kind of decadently luxurious pleasure. Do you not distinguish among different types of pleasure that you feel?
I think I understand your technical dictionary-based point. And I'm all for pointing out the ways in which people use confused concepts (e.g. socialist) in contemporary discourse. But even confused concepts operate as codes and for me, the decadent hedonistic vs. contemplative pleasure is a useful distinction. I guess not for you.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg: And if you don't mean that the wine gives you pleasure by describing it as hedonistic, what do you mean to say about it?
For me, hedonistic wines are opulent, bacchanalian, a specific kind of decadently luxurious pleasure. Do you not distinguish among different types of pleasure that you feel?
I think I understand your technical dictionary-based point. And I'm all for pointing out the ways in which people use confused concepts (e.g. socialist) in contemporary discourse. But even confused concepts operate as codes and for me, the decadent hedonistic vs. contemplative pleasure is a useful distinction. I guess not for you.
Opulent and luxurious are perfectly good and communicative words.
Real hedonists, by the way, don't distinguish between sensual and contemplative pleasures as values--though they of course know the difference between them. Their point--the one that makes the position interesting if not always persuasive--is that pleasure of whatever kind is the sole coherent end a human being can or should have. I've never encountered a wine that believed that. I've never thought that describing it that way had a value other than the ideological one I speculated about above.
I'd add that given the difference in the kinds of objects that cause your response to those that cause the same response in others, I still don't think you're telling me much by calling the wine "hedonistic" except with regard to your mental and emotional state even when I do do the translation required. I understand what you might mean if you called a Clos de Briords opulent when you give further information by telling me what flavors it opulently afforded, which, with a word like opulent, you would be likely to do. If people used "hedonist" that way, on the Humpty Dumpty principle that words mean what we want them to and the question is who is to be master (I do not mean this to be an insult; within limits, it's a coherent linguistic position), I expect it would have the particular use "opulent" does. For better or worse, that's not the use I see.
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg: I still don't think you're telling me much by calling the wine "hedonistic" except with regard to your mental and emotional state...
Well this is a nice way of bringing it around to the beginning of the thread because that is the main goal of TNs anyway.