Description
Book SynopsisIn
Epistenology, Nicola Perullo argues that wine comes to life not in the abstract space of the professional tasting but in the real world of shared experiences. Interweaving philosophical arguments with personal reflections and literary examples, this book is a journey with wine that shows how it makes life more creative and free.
Trade ReviewThe act of reading [Perullo's] book is as physically pleasurable as drinking the wines it regularly lands on. -- Susan H. Gordon, PhD * Forbes *
This book is a distinctive, original work with a take on wine that you will not find elsewhere, and many wine lovers will be inspired by the sweeping vision of what wine appreciation can be. -- Dwight Furrow * 3 Quarks Daily *
Epistenology is an impassioned and provocative critique of objectivism in the world of wine. -- Robert Piercey * Philosophy in Review *
Whether for a food studies, philosophy, or popular culture course, Perullo’s discussion of wine as experience will open the eyes, mouths, and hearts of its readers to live vulnerably with wine as they never have before. -- Anthony Palmiscno, The Ohio State University * Gastronomica *
Perullo wants to know wine by participating in it, by forming relations with it, by giving subjectivity its place of honor, by acknowledging a debt to pleasure. He's produced a radical challenge to Anglophone sensibilities about wine and, indeed, about
knowing. -- Steven Shapin, author of
Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and AuthorityHow can we open our hearts and minds to earth and sky, to sunshine and clouds, to fresh leaves and the fruits of the vine? How can we think, and know, from within the fullness of our being? To drink the very world we inhabit, to enmesh our lives with its threads, feel its pulse: all this, says Nicola Perullo in this intoxicating book, is the task and the promise of wine. Bringing wine to life, Perullo concocts an exuberant and wonderfully liberating potion of philosophy uncorked. -- Tim Ingold, author of
The Life of LinesNicola Perullo's
Epistenology both challenges and invites us to join him on a journey of experiencing with wine. Passionate, bold, brave, and at times taking risks, he urges us to be fully present in our engagement with the world, including wine. By sharing the process of doing and undergoing in the Deweyan sense, he invites us to celebrate life by practicing 'wine as experience.' -- Yuriko Saito, author of
Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World-MakingPerullo contests the notion that varieties of wines (Merlot, Cabernet, etc.) are fixed ontological elements. Undazzled by flavor wheels that look 'like peacocks,' Perullo describes what really counts—just how we can experience wine freshly on each new occasion. His epistemological perspective guides us in attuning to the dynamic character of wine. Refusing to adhere to any predetermined 'terroir,' envisioned as an abstraction or an obligation, he keeps the reader connected closely with what is most present by liberating us from what is restricting about our own rationality. -- Kenneth Liberman, author of
Practical Buddhism: Living Everyday LifeTable of ContentsNote for the Reader
Acknowledgments
Part I. Wine and the Creativity of TouchPrologue
1. Meeting with Wine
2. Haptic Taste
3. The Creativity of Touch
4. The Languages of Wine, All of Them
Part II. Taste as a Task5. Reestablishing Bonds
6. Without a Theme
7. Without Method
8. Without Competency
9. Without Judgment
10. Taste Is Not a Sense but a Task
11. Stories Without Instructions
12. Terroir Is the World
13. Inebriation and Intoxication
Notes
Bibliographical Note
Essential Bibliography
Index
