The value of the ritual
I am spending a great deal of my weekend reading and writing. I’m working on a book chapter that is related to Web design, cultural differences, and communication. So I’ve been reading a whole bunch of stuff, from McLuhan and his interpreters to Holtzman and Negroponte, who both seem to want to love their computers a little too much sometimes.
As I was poring over all of this literature, I was finally able to formulate one of the biggest connections between some of the work I have done in the past and the aesthetic values of wine. Here we go….
One of the things I love about wine is the ritual associated with opening the bottle. Although the experience of tasting a wine is different every time, even if it’s the same wine, there is a specific ritual associated with opening the bottle itself. Depending on who you are and how much money you have to spend on wine, other rituals are possible: obtaining wine directly from a winery, for example, or strolling through your wine cellar and looking at each of the labels. But nothing beats the process of selecting the wine, pulling out the corkscrew, removing the foil capsule from around the top of the bottle, inserting the corkscrew in just the right spot, and so on and so forth until you end up with one or more glasses of wine. The anticipation that builds during this ritual heightens the enjoyment of the wine. At least, I think so.
Even when certain rituals are challenged, such as the switch from natural cork bottle closures to screwcaps, other rituals persist. The act of swirling, smelling, and sipping a wine is perhaps the most powerful ritual associated with wine, and is hopefully the ritual that is least likely to change over time.
I see an interesting tension between the dynamism of tasting a specific wine and the permanence of the tasting ritual. Every tasting is unique, and every person who tastes a wine has a different experience from every other person who tastes the “same” wine. Wine, as an agricultural product, is itself far less homogeneous than many other substances. Wine can be temperamental, unforgiving of poor storage, fragile, to say nothing of the thousands of variables that intercede between growing the grapes and bottling the fermented juice. These properties and variables only add to the allure of wine in my opinion. Without all these facets and opportunities for variability, wine would be Coca-Cola: a homogeneous consumer product. There is a quote attributed to Andy Warhol that summarizes this concept perfectly:
“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” (link to original citation)
People, particularly in the US, seem to love this notion of homogeneity out of a desire for safety. In a fast food culture, the value is on the “now,” not the “how.” This is why I love traveling to Europe, where the process of eating a meal can take 4 hours but you don’t notice how long you have been dining. This is also why I hate the Olive Garden. The food at the Olive Garden in San Jose, California tastes pretty much the same as the food at the Miami, Florida Olive Garden. There is no room for personal expression, no interest in differences of taste or process. The result is what matters, and the result at the Olive Garden is bland and flaccid. At least, I think so.
I feel sorry for people who are uninterested in the process and simply want results. These are the people who say, “I don’t care what I eat, it all ends up in the same place.” I never understood that concept. Yeah, it’s true, whatever I eat and drink will ultimately end up in the same place, but such a results-oriented mindset makes no sense to me. One of my art teachers once told me, “If you don’t enjoy the process of painting, you won’t enjoy being an artist.” I think that is very true: The process is the fun part, not the completion.
But to return to wine, in many ways it is the rituals associated with wine that ensure its enjoyment. I think this is true of many things, particularly those experiences that people seek out for primarily aesthetic reasons. The ritual of being seated at a fine restaurant, receiving the menu, reviewing the wine list, consulting with the wait staff and sommelier: All of these ritualistic aspects of dining out make it as enjoyable as eating the food. Better yet, the ritual of selecting a wine, having the wine brought to your table, watching the sommelier uncork the wine, accepting a small amount of wine in your glass, swirling, smelling, observing, tasting, and accepting…all of these aspects of ordering a fine wine heighten the experience of tasting that wine.
If there is a point to this entry, I think I have arrived at it. Wine is wonderful not just because of the many thousands of different expressions of wine from around the world, but also because it has such deeply-rooted and useful rituals associated with its consumption. The value of the ritual is significant. At least, I think so.