To me…
Science = the components of the wine
Art = the wine as a whole
Not following your thought process here but after 13 years of knowing you why would I even expect to start now.
OK that was funny. And BTW, it’s more than twice 13 years. Time flies.
The thought process was that the two are not in opposition to each other in any way. Knowledge doesn’t diminish appreciation.
The science behind what Ansel Adams was doing never changed. Maybe he became more interested in his technique than in what he was doing with it, but that has nothing at all to do with the science underpinning his art.
Painters have to choose whether to use oil, water color, acrylics, etc. If they have even a primitive interest in capturing light and color, they are going to have to learn to mix their paints. And, of course, if they make bad choices, you get Da Vinci’s Last Supper. And this is really the most basic of the stuff. You will know the stories of Michelangelo dissecting bodies to learn how human musculature worked so he could better reproduce it. And the numbers of artists who have seriously studied various forms of optics is quite large. Really, among arts, only literature doesn’t have a materialist basis that demands at least minimal study of theory and technique and even there one generally finds that good writers are widely read (even effective genre writers are widely read in their genre) because there are techniques one can learn. You don’t have to know how to get a character on and off the stage to appreciate a play, but you better believe a playwright has to know these things.
Jonathan, I see your direction but it’s not quite what I was saying. Color mixing is a different process than what actually binds acrylic to canvas. I think there is a line one must cross to become scientifically ensconced in anything, and to this point especially art. You average photographer knows the basic process and even some chemical mixology but dies he really understand what lies deep within that light-fast paper to know why his image reveals itself under that red light while within that developer? I would say no.
Different levels of knowledge to suit the needs of each user. To that point I believe if I learned the science, and I mean true science of that Agfa, Kodak or Fuji paper and why light interacts with it the way it does, I may have wandered from the plot which it to take pictures people want to look at for more than a brief moment in time.
Thanks for responding.
I like the science just for curiosity, but knowing the science doesn’t affect my taste buds or smell receptors. To me, this is the same as whether a wine is faithful to its terroir. I don’t really care if it is or isn’t. It’s just a matter of whether I like the sensory impressions I get from it.
In order to mix colors, you have to know how light breaks down into colors, pretty basic knowledge now, but once a matter of scientific dispute. In order to paint the body, at least some artists thought they needed more knowledge of anatomy then they could get just looking at model’s body. Sure, there’s a point at which you don’t need to go deeper down. And that point may differ from artist to artist and according to the art form. But I still think you are judging artists from your perspective as a spectator. With regard to wine, it’s hard to imagine any decent winemaker who hasn’t considerable knowledge of agriculture and fermentation, even if it was learned by trial and error and not in school. Have you ever talked to a winemaker (who grew and didn’t buy his or her grapes) who hadn’t put some considerable thought into how his or her vineyards worked and what they needed to do in the cellar even if their aim was to get the wine from the grape to the bottle with as little extra intervention as possible. I haven’t.
Just for my self, as a dyed in the wool formalist literary critic, who thinks that art should be confronted entirely on its own terms, I have always found background historical and contextual knowledge to be at the very least interesting, even when I think one should ignore it even after one knows it. And I find, with regard to wine, that the more one knows about how it got into the bottle, the more one is able to appreciate it. I do not believe that the end point of wine is to taste the vineyard from which it comes nor does anyone else really, or we would just eat the dirt. But I also don’t think one can enjoy a glass of wine very much in complete ignorance of what it is and where it’s from. About that YMMV, of course. About the production side of the equation, I really can’t imagine producing the stuff without knowing how the production process works.
The OP clearly states that his inquiry is from the “user’s” perspective. But clearly when the “user” is also winemaker, perceptions and priorities can take some interesting twists: "I'm Through With Them After Six Years" - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers
For what it’s worth, I do believe that many consumers are ‘affected’ by the ‘science’ of wine. Some are ‘taken in’ by specific alcohol levels (that’s science, right?) and others by flowery descriptors (aromatics are volatile and are definitely 'science-related). We can also talk about ‘terroir’ and characteristics of specific sites, etc . . .
Cheers
Disagree …
Agree with Jonathan - wine is (more or less) an artistic craft, but not art (I´m an artist, I know what I´m talking about).
Nowadays you have to know quite a bit about the science of wine to produce it (or better: to be on the safe side of production), but the craft itself is also not science per se …
Maybe some people do not know what “art” means …
What isn’t art in the eye of the beholder? And if so, good wine not be considered art?
Discuss amongst yourselves . . .
To me, winemaking is a craft. And some craftwork can rise in their highest expression to art.
POTM (post of the month)
It seems to me this is a bit of a straw man. Does anyone really devote the thrust of their posts to Brix or acidification? I don’t see a lot of those, though technical aspects certainly come up a lot.
I think your art analogy is a good one, but I see that in a different way. You can enjoy a Picasso or Rembrandt at face value, but it’s also legitimate to know about the context – the artist’s intent, the cultural symbols on which the artist drew, what other artists were doing at the time. (Most of us don’t care much about the pigments.) If you know those things, it adds layers of meaning and gives you an different type of understanding of the work.
To me, wine is like that. If you know a young wine is made with stems or a lot of new oak, it can affect the way you assess it. If you know it’s been through reverse osmosis (whether to concentrate it or reduce alcohol), that may affect your assessment, too. I have enough experience with Barolo, for example, to be wary of wines made with short macerations and a lot of new oak. The oak is usually easy to detect; the maceration time is not but might be a factor in the way the wine ages. Knowing the details informs my experience. Sometimes it reinforces my prejudices, sometimes it defies them (e.g., those 15+% ABV wines that wear it well).
Similarly, though this is less hard science, if you know something about the fruit source, it can illuminate the wine (e.g., is it Napa Valley or Sonoma cab; Graves versus Pauillac).
So, like art, it’s fine to appreciate a wine at first impression. But it’s also legit to want to understand the techniques behind it.
It seems to me that if you are interested in something,then you want to know more about it. For example, loving Rembrandt leads you to Caravaggio and the subject of chiaroscuro. Some days i can even spell it.
When i first got interested in wine, I felt that my associates had what might be called a Ptolemaic understanding of wine. The theories were wrong but eclipses could be predicted. The more you learn, the more you can enjoy it. We know so much more about wine than we did forty years ago.
Maybe for some people enjoyment of wine can be compared to enjoyment of cars. You don’t need to be an automotive engineer but learning a bit about your car helps you make it run smoother, longer, better etc. You learn that serving wine at the right temperature, in the right glassware, with the right food, makes everything more enjoyable.
Does this wisdom acquired over a lifetime allow you to determine with precision how long (or whether) to decant a wine, Mel?
This is no different than saying the same thing about food science. You don’t need to know food science, but I would argue it is the most significant culinary movement of the last 20+ years where it regards evolution, of which you are a benefactor. Much the same has resulted in your vast selection of good wine.
You don’t need to appreciate the science, but somebody does.
Kenny, as an ‘eater’, certainly no science needed. As a cook, quite helpful.
I just do not understand the need for some to want to put everything into a category or a box. I am a big loser when someone tries to “define” what I am all about. Left myself wide open there, but so be it.
Some of my customers, colleagues, friends and neighbors just want to enjoy wine. For wine. Others are so curious about the background business stuff. Some are all-out geeky about the vineyard or winemaking details. It is all ok with me - I can go in any of those directions.
John,
I now open all my wines at least a month in advance. They are usually decanted into a Mason jar and left near the stove.
Merrill,
When I am selling wine I just hope the customer knows how to use a corkscrew. Of course, I hope they have decent glassware and can serve it at the right temp.
As someone who did a lot of photography, and darkroom work, over 20+ year, I’ve always found something kind of sterile about Adams’s most famous works. I think it was elevating technique over feeling. I can see an analogy in some wines.