İçiyorum Öyleyse Varım

by Roger Scruton, Akın Terzi (Translator)

Descartes'ın modern felsefenin temelini atmış şu meşhur sözünü duymamış olanımız yoktur herhalde: "Düşünüyorum öyleyse varım".

Felsefeci Roger Scruton ise bambaşka bir şey söylüyor: "İçiyorum öyleyse varım". Şarabını yudumlayarak son derece akıcı ve nükteli bir üslupla hemen her büyük medeniyetin baştacı ettiği bu görkemli içkiyi anlatıyor bize. Platon'dan Nietzsche'ye, İbn Sina'dan Sartre'a, Schopenhauer'den Kant'a pek çok filozofla muhabbete giriyor, herbiriyle farklı bir şarabın tadına bakıyor.

Elinden şarabı hiç düşürmeksizin antik çağlardan günümüze şarabın hikâyesini anlatıyor bizlere. Ama daha önce duyduklarımıza hiç benzemiyor bu hikâye: Hem Antik Yunan'dan İslam coğrafyasına kadar çeşitli medeniyetlerde şarabın oynadığı rolü ortaya koyuyor, hem de Ortadoğu'dan Fransa'ya, Güney Amerika'dan Avustralya'ya kadar, dünyanın dört bir yanından şarabın özgün tarihini anlatıyor, toprağın ve bağların kokusunu taşıyor bize.

Şimdi, Scruton gibi, biz de Hayyam'a bırakalım sözü: "Dünya dertleri zehir, şarap da panzehir".
(Tanıtım Bülteninden)

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Wine, Food, Essays, Alcohol, Audiobook

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Sir Roger Scruton was a writer and philosopher who has published more than forty books in philosophy, aesthetics and politics. He was a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He taught in both England and America and was a Visiting Professor at Department of Philosophy and Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C.

In 2015 he published two books, The Disappeared and later in the autumn, Fools Frauds and Firebrands. Fools Frauds and Firebrands is an update of Thinkers of the New Left published, to widespread outrage, in 1986. It includes new chapters covering Lacan, Deleuze and Badiou and some timely thoughts about the historians and social thinkers who led British intellectuals up the garden path during the last decades, including Eric Hobsbawm and Ralph Miliband.

In 2016 he again published two books, Confessions of A Heretic (a collection of essays) and The Ring of Truth, about Wagner’s Ring cycle, which was widely and favourably reviewed. In 2017 he published On Human Nature (Princeton University Press), which was again widely reviewed, and contains a distillation of his philosophy. He also published a response to Brexit, Where We Are (Bloomsbury).

Reviews

[Argos · Rating 4 out of 5]

İngiliz muhafazakar felsefeci Roger Scruton’dan oldukça farklı bir kitap, adı “İçiyorum Öyleyse Varım”. Tam bir felsefeciye uygun isim, tabii içilen burada “şarap”. Öncelikle şunu vurgulamalıyım ki Scruton politik olarak İngiliz İşçi Partisi karşıtı ve çok sert bir sol-sosyalist ideoloji düşmanı. Dili de çok sivri, buna rağmen nükteli üslubu ile şarapla pek ilgili olmasa da düşüncelerini aralara serpiştirmesi okumayı etkilemiyor.

Şarabın tarihini, hayran olduğu Fransa başta olmak üzere Avrupa, Avustralya ve Amerika’daki üzüm ve şaraplardan bahsediyor. İtalya ve İspanya’yı çok kısa yazmış ki anlam veremedim. Şarabın dinler tarafından nasıl görüldüğünü, dini referanslarla genişçe anlatıyor. Kitabın yarısını geçtikten sonra felsefeci olduğunu hatırlayıp şarap kültürünü felsefik açıdan irdeliyor. Son bölümde de filozofların hangi eserlerini ya da kendilerini hangi şarapla eşleştirdiğini yazıyor.

Daha zengin olabilirdi, üzüm ve şarap tanıtımında bölgesel olarak dengeyi koruyabilirdi, en önemlisi de siyasi düşünceleriyle sempati toplamayacağını hesap edebilirdi. Şarap konusunda yazılmış değişik bir kitap olarak ilgi çekici.

[Aldo Campos · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finish this book while drinking a beer and that will prove to be extremely ironic.

I knew Roger Scruton from his work on the aesthetics and shared many of his thoughts, so when I found I Drink Therefore I am, I immediately put it on my to read list (and stayed there for a long while). I finally decided to read it, mainly because my own struggle with alcohol: I came to the realization that I could not stop drinking, that I enjoyed too much of drinking a nice glass of wine or bottle of beer. ‘Am I wrong, am I an addict?’ were the questions that I tried to find an answer when started reading the book.

But alas, it was a disappointment. The initial thoughts in the introduction were very promising, to explain the virtues of wine and the problems with the excess of drinking, just what I was looking for. Sadly, it took another direction. The first chapter was an exposition of why the wines of France reign supreme over all others. Scruton defended the terroiristes over the garagistes. And I, in fact, agree. The flavor of a wine comes from the land, its culture and history, more than the grapes. But this flavor is absolutely subjective and the author gives a great quote for that:

“it is not the taste considered in itself, that we hold to our lips, and you can no more understand the virtues of a wine through a blind tasting than you could understand the virtues of a woman through a blindfold kiss.”

To properly enjoy a wine, you must know the wine. But a few pages later, Scruton tries to give an objective quality to the terrroir, arguing that wines from other places of the Earth have not the same gods, as he calls them, as french wines, dismissing almost all of them.

He then argues for the epistemological innocence of wine, putting it apart from all other ferments, spirits and substances. But by this point, the book is filled with confirmation bias and other fallacies that would put to shame any other philosopher. His arguments against cannabis are just nonse, for example. Also, Scruton uses any opportunity to stamp out his political thoughts; Ok, I do not blame him for this, as I use any opportunity to criticize religion, but his conclusions are biased by his Christian faith. He uses the argument of the contingent being by Avicenna (also used to criticize Dawkins and Hitchens): If you imagine yourself as “...a ‘floating man’, free from all sensations, and all contact with bodies...”, what remains is the self, and that self is the Being, the atman for the Upanishads that connect us with the oness. Scruton insists that this is different from the cartesian dualism, but falls in the same errors of thought that Dennett exposed in Consciousness Explained.

Wine, Scruton tells us, put you closer to the Brahman and helps to get rid of the veil of Maya. Wine puts you closer to yourself, to know thyself. I would argue the other way around: wine gets you rid of the tyranny of the ‘I’ and the illusion of the self.

The book has some good remarques, like the observations on the greek love, agape. Now I believe there is virtue in drink, but the worldviews of the author made him impossible to form a coherent theory of wine.

[Özlem Güzelharcan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Şarap iç, azlık çokluk silinsin kafandan
Kurtul yetmiş iki milletin kaygusundan

Şarabın tarihi, türleri, felsefesi üzerine, altı çizilecek cümlelerle dolu güzel bir kitap. Ömer Hayyam yaşasa ve Goodreads üyesi olsa bu kitabı kesin favoriler rafına alırdı.

[Pete · Rating 2 out of 5]

My thoughts so far:

The author is an unabashed Francophile and wine snob.

I agree with his position on ratings. (Robert Parker and Wilfred Wong should be forced to drink swill for eternity.) I also abhor some of the current industry practices, such as boosting the alcohol level up to 15.5% in many wines.

I agree that wine should be a communal experience, and that sometimes the best company is oneself.

The author rails against globalization, but argues that the only way to know wine is to drink French wines.

The author opines that only the storied parcels of land in France can produce the best wines and discounts the role of the grapes, the soil, the climate, and the winemakers in any other wine producing region of the world even though in many cases the vines are older and more storied than the post-phylloxera plantings of France.

I don't have the best palate or nose, but even I can recognize the differences in a pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, or other varietal from different regions let alone appellations within a region. A wine from Napa is distinct from one from Sonoma, the central coast, southern Oregon, etc.

While I don't have the author's academic credentials, I can say that many of his arguments would not stand academic scrutiny. (Romanticism and snobbery aren't arguments.)

To wit, not all American beer drinkers are consumers of Budweiser, and not all American consumers of whiskey (bourbon) drink to get drunk. (It also doesn't have to be hidden in a cocktail for a woman to drink and enjoy it either.) The numerous craft beers and artisan bourbons available provide ample evidence that there are connoisseurs of these beverages as well.

[Noah McMillen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having really enjoyed reading Scruton in the past and wanting to learn more about wine, I was really looking forward to this book and was thoroughly disappointed. If you’re looking for a book to dive deeply into the philosophy of wine — what makes a good wine, a justification for drinking wine/alcohol, the morality and “how to’s” of drinking, perhaps even a phenomenology of drinking wine — this ain’t it. If you’re looking for an introduction into different wine varietals, how to taste wine, how to get into wine in general, this also ain’t it. If you’re looking for boring anecdotes of Scruton drinking wine, a survey of what French wines Scruton enjoys (which are apparently still better even though blind taste testing proved the superiority of California wines), philosophically dubious meandering with only tangential relations to wine, and strong philosophical opinions peppered in (among other things, Scruton detests phenomenology, Marxism, and globalization), then this is the book for you. However, I have to admit that I did still enjoy some parts of this book, and it generally got better later on in the book. I could’ve probably skipped the first 100 pages and missed nothing, but the appendix on what wine to drink while reading different philosophers was a lot of fun and almost pushed this review to 3 stars.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

His politics are deplorable, but I couldn’t help liking this book. It is in parts superbly written and promotes the view that wine should be chosen and relished according to where the grapes are grown rather than the variety of grape. Also, that drinking should be in moderation in line with an Aristotelian golden mean to facilitate good conversation, companionship etc. The attempt to link drinking with the divine were less convincing for an atheist reader. The passages on buying and drinking in rounds (a very good thing) and drinking cola and Lucozade (a very bad thing) are fantastic, as is the guide for what to drink whilst reading a particular philosopher. But for the political and religious advocacy it would get five stars.

[Claudiu Florea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a deceptively deep book, an exciting read, and the best possible justification for the virtuous consumption of wine.
It is irreverent and funny, but at the same time, wise.
Like a good wine, the book is full of layers of complexity leaving a lasting impression on the reader long after you’ve put the book down.
I recommend this book only to a rare few—those with both an intense interest in wine and a healthy appetite for lengthy discussions of philosophy.

In vino veritas!

[Alessandro Massa · Rating 5 out of 5]

In more ways than I might expect, this is the best book I've ever read

[josh shefta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slightly hesitant to give anything written by Roger Scruton less than 5 stars, compounded by the fact that I could not find a printed copy of this book- leaving me with only the expedient option of an audiobook. Nonetheless it was an absolute treat- perhaps a gift from Dionysus himself- learning about Wine and the philosophical meaning that may be attached to its origins, communal significance, and effect upon one’s Soul/Ahtman/Being. Main detractor was the unignorable Anglo-Saxon bias that occasionally poisoned the Gods’ nectar of Scruton’s prose.

[Linda Vituma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pienāk tas brīdis, kad sajūti - demokrāts vai republikānis; konservatīvais vai leiborists; suņu vai kaķu cilvēks :D Nu, labi - pēdējo pāri ignorējiet. Tas rozā vīna iespaidā :D
Un tad ir tas brīdis, kad piedzīvo kādu, kura uzskati ir pretēji taviem. Kādu inteliģentu, erudītu, cieņpilnu. Ieklausos. Es noteikti neesmu konservatīva, bet Roger Scruton rada manī milzīgu cieņu. Uzskatu dažādība apvienojumā ar izkoptu intelektu, spēju un vēlmi sarunāties ir patiesi bagātinoša. Un baudāma ar glāzi vīna.

[Jshill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger Scruton is an intellectual who wove wine into the fabric of his life. Or – perhaps he wove life in to the fabric of his wine. I accompanied this book with a Cabernet from BV in Napa, a Pinot Grigio from Barone Fini in northern Italy. There is probably no other book that does wine pairings with philosophers. Although the humor of the author is apparent throughout, it also offers a serious cultural look at the importance of wine. This was a fun read that I highly recommend.

[Glenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much of this went over my head, but I laughed out loud at various parts and couldn't help myself to not read some lines aloud to my husband. I raise my glass (wine made by my husband) to you Roger Scruton.

[Tiago Barelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um livro para se degustar lendo uma taça de vinho

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not trite. Scruton is a first-rate contemporary philosopher who weaves substantive thought and history into this prose meditation on wine, from phenomenological analysis to its significance in the cultural history of the western world.

[Bruce Newsome · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosophy, booze, and wit come together surprisingly frequently. Monty Python (or, more accurately, Eric Idle) came up with “The Philosophers Song,” in which Heidegger was a boozy beggar and Wittgenstein a beery swine. That particular ditty contains no reference to wine, but wine tends to float the brains of real philosophers.

Sir Roger Scruton advocated for wine as an aid to good thought and good society. Scruton was an itinerant philosopher, funded by journalism, including as wine correspondent for the New Statesman (2001-2009). This wasn’t a plot to smuggle philosophy into the minds of winos, or conservativism into the minds of leftist highbrows. He was passionate about wine; the subject brought out his wit too. Writing from his farm, he often inserted a line about how Sam the horse enjoys rosé in his oats – a nod to the free rosé sent to him in hope of review.

Barry Smith was in on it. He is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Advanced Study. In 2007, he edited The Philosophy of Wine, with a chapter by Scruton. Scruton developed this chapter and his writings for the New Statesman into a book called I Drink Therefore I Am. (This is a line from “The Philosophers Song” – paraphrasing René Descartes, who “was a drunken fart.”)

At the end of the 2000s, Scruton joined the University of Buckingham, where he communed with Professor Anthony O’Hear, over philosophy, wine, and music, until Scruton’s death in January 2020.

In the last couple months of 2020, the Scruton Legacy Foundation organized Smith and O’Hear (separately) to revisit Roger’s work. O’Hear had more of a musical relationship with Scruton, which unintentionally provides evidence for Smith’s complaint: Scruton did not “include wine as an aesthetic object.”

Scruton wrote a book entitled The Aesthetics of Music. Later, he used music as exemplar of a secular aesthetic that could provide a willing consumer with transcendental experiences. Scruton used these experiences to explain how things become sacred. The overlap between secular and religious transcendentalism is clearest in a book called The Soul of the World (2014). This was his only book dedicated to what we might call religion and spirituality, although such terms do not quite capture it. Its title partly conveys Scruton’s intense view of the value of sensual pleasures to well-being. The book incorporates music, visual arts, architecture, and literary fiction, but not wine.

This brings us back to Smith’s complaint. Smith says that Scruton treated wine, unlike music, as “not expressive” of the maker’s emotions, even though they must reflect the maker’s skills. Smith blamed Scruton’s Kantian rationalism, in contrast to Smith’s own Humean sensuality.

If Smith is correct, then Scruton failed his own promise to write “a tribute to pleasure, by a devotee of happiness.” Later, Scruton writes that he “fell in love” with his first fine wine, pilfered from a stupefied companion, while living as a poor student on cheap plonk. “I was overwhelmed…”

Scruton was overwhelmed by classical music too. The difference is that while he played and composed music, he advises disinterest in the making of wine. He advises us to learn the trivia and whimsy of a wine’s origins, including its place, history, and culture, but to ignore techniques and ingredients. He sides with believers in terroir but treats it culturally rather than biochemically. I Drink Therefore I Am is lengthy in its description of Burgundy, his favourite wine region, down to the lighting of the valleys. But he never visited Burgundy.

As a winemaker myself, I am surprised that Scruton’s sensuality, his evocative descriptions of taste, his love of craft and home, did not encourage him to try winemaking. Knowing that a batch took lemon peel or chestnuts, you can go looking for the taste, but Scruton went looking for metaphors. He uses the names for grapes like the names of places.

Smith speculates that Scruton wanted to avoid the technical obsessiveness of a winemaker. Others in the discussion wondered if he wanted to avoid spoiling the romanticism of remote places.

Another explanation is darker. Like The Soul of the World, I Drink Therefore I Am is a complex mix of subjective experience and objective philosophy. The preface wittily thanks his wife for “putting up with the 12 years of research that went into the writing of this book.” The appendix advises on what to drink when reading each philosopher. Some of his references are obscure, but a taster is his advice to drink a “deep dark Rhône wine” with Descartes, to “give you rather more to talk about.”

[Read the rest of this review at https://thecritic.co.uk/what-wine-mea...

[Jim Varley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sadly, I only became aware of Roger Scruton upon learning of his death in January of 2020. Notices of his passing and homages to his work were in a number of the conservative and libertarian online magazines I read so I sampled his thinking by watching a number of his lectures and speeches on YouTube. He was an amazing man and an unapologetic defender of classical liberalism and western civilization.

Looking through the books he wrote I thought I would start with a book on drinking wine, something I already have some familiarity with. I enjoyed the book, although I am not familiar enough with French wine or classical philosophy to appreciate everything he wrote.

What I took away from the book is the importance Scruton puts on the origin of wine (and people for that matter). Scruton rejects categorizing wine by the variety of grape in favor of categorizing wine by its point of origin. He argues that a wine is inseparable from the land, people, and culture where it was produced. He also strongly associates particular wines, mostly French wines, with the time and place and friends with whom he first tasted them. Perhaps a luxury a person can have when they spend a great part of their young life as a genius bumming around France. Nice work if you can get it, but for the rest of us most of the wines he references are unknown to us and mostly unobtainable in the United States.

One of the concepts I enjoyed him illustrating was the idea of “virtuous drinking” versus “vicious drinking.” He argues that the moderate drinking of alcohol, particularly wine, is conducive to friendship, conversation, and a greater appreciate of the beauty of the world. Vicious drinking (i.e., drinking to get drunk) is a selfish endeavor that you do alone - even if they are doing it with others. Scruton also distinguishes moderate intoxication by wine, which he argues enhances our perception of the world we are in, with the mind-altering intoxication by marijuana and hallucinogens, which tricks our brain into perceiving an illusory version of the world. Being a philosophy and lover of capital “T” Truth, Scruton favors the honest of wine over the dishonesty of marijuana or hallucinogens. .

Another thing I enjoyed about this book was the Appendix. In it he gives an overview of the greatest philosophers of history and what you should drink when you are reading them. It is very cute and gives you an excellent insight into Roger Scruton’s personality and humor. I wish he were still among the living, but I look forward to appreciating what he left behind.

[Joseph Yue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roger clearly did his research, but that did not help him in writing something as incoherent as this which can, by whatever standard, barely be called a book. This random collection of thoughts of a devoted wino has two parts. In the first part, titled ‘I Drink’, he documented the journey through which he fell in love with the art of wine, and how this development rendered him probably the only non-religious right-wing proletarian ever studied at Cambridge. His 30-year diligent study of wine demonstrated in this section is certainly impressive, but to someone who has yet no plan to imitate his romantic destitution, all those French village names, vintage years, and enological jargons passed through my brain faster than a glass of Shetland Pinot Noir (if such a thing exists) goes down my throat – darn it, I just want some alcoholised grape juice that tastes nice to make reading the nonsense in modern philosophy slightly more tolerable!
Part two, titled ‘Therefore I am’, is perhaps more relevant for a lover of wisdom, as this section is imbibed with the philosophical reflection of a civilly intoxicated genius. But that is, meanwhile, exactly his downfall: listening to a slightly inebriated eloquent speaker may as well be inspiring, but when those words are transcribed – which, by the way, is probably the true origin of this part, the transcription of a recording of his drunk-talks – one starts seeing holes everywhere in the arguments. As wrong on many points as he may be, it is still a brilliant piece of literary work, with Scruton’s iconic English dead-pan type of flippancy. In any case, I regret having read it during Lent, for otherwise I would have opened a nice bottle myself to accompany its reading and that, perhaps, would have given me more insights into what a true virtuous drinker is supposed to be.

[Jim Laughren · Rating 4 out of 5]

My study of philosophy ended at approximately the time that my love for wine came fully into bloom. I appreciate both, though wine the more so, as it comforts and befriends whereas philosophy is concerned merely with proving the unprovable. It is, however, a great mental pleasure to indulge now and again in the kind of speculative thought and deep reasoning that characterizes the best of philosophical speculation. And what better companion to such literally heady work than a glass of something wonderful and thought-provoking.

Roger Scruton knows whereof he speaks, which is not to imply that he is always, or even usually, correct. But he does posit some compelling thoughts and relativities. For the non-philosopher, this book requires some chipping away at the high-browed facade to get to "the good stuff." But it's there. A true thinker is rare these days and takes a bit of getting used to. Yet, his huge streak of hedonism, his excellent wine knowledge, especially of lesser known and under-appreciated wines, his love of travel and music and human experience in general all give value to the reader. While this book will be a bit much, a bit dense to many, the mere attempt at digesting it will benefit either or both, the wino or the philosopher.

[Philipp Hartmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting ode to the grape. Though occasionally eclectic and convoluted, there is quite a number of intriguing insights by someone who, as a true polymath, grasped the essence of things. No wonder he would eventually venture into the domain of the divine drink.
I was definitely rather put off by the long-winded passages on philosophical questions, not having studied the subject above amateur level. The insights to the oenophile, however, offset these reservations. Whereas in the first part, the book offers a tour d'horizon about various regions and grapes - principally French - the latter part deals with deep philosophical questions and refers to famous personalities, as well as historical events.
A great book on wine - and I am sure a great book on philosophy as well, even though I'm not the one to judge.
I think the most interesting passages of this book are the occasionally interspersed - some might say controversial - insights into modernity. I could not bring myself to give it more than, say, 3,6 stars, as it is at times very prolix and somewhat eclectic.

[Claudiu Florea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharing his own experience, Scruton talks about the vices and virtues of alcohol, showing that, drunk properly, wine broadens the existential and social horizons of the individual. The life of a wine enthusiast unfolds before us, from his early days as a student to his travels in areas with a long winemaking tradition in France, Spain or Italy. From this journey full of picturesqueness and poetry, a number of philosophical questions emerge imperceptibly, which the author explores in depth in the second part of the book. The aporias of reason, consciousness and being, presented by resorting to great Western and Eastern philosophers, are also reflected in the way we understand and drink wine. Is the experience offered by wine a kind of daydreaming or similar to art? Scruton concludes with a humorous tour through the history of philosophy, telling us what kind of wines best accompany the reading of various philosophers.

A book that will not make us take the maxim "In vino veritas" seriously.

[Daria Zheglo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love wine and I love philosophy, so my expectations were already high, just because this subject is very personal for me. Anyway, the author jumps from one subject to another, insulting even the values of non-drinking cultures just to defend his right to drink and to be. The book is written boringly, the monologue looks like you are sitting in the restaurant next some University professor who is clever, but drunk.
His guide of how to match wine with main philosophy books was super primitive. Yep, let’s drink Hungarian wine with Hanvas, he is Hungarian, right?)
A few good quotes though, so giving it three stars.
Drink as much as you like, but put away the bottle before the gaiety gives way to gloom. Drinks which have depressive effect - water, for example, - should be taken in small doses, for medical reasons only. (c) Roger Scruton

[Matthew McCready · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roger Scruton was a Cambridge graduate, Oxford Scholar, and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, among other scholarly achievements.

I first learned of Mr. Scruton reading his "What is Music?" I had found the book stunning. It seems the philosophy of music was his specialty, so he claims.

I do have some background in philosophy, just barely enough to vaguely understand Mr. Scruton's musings.

He does have an impressive knowledge of wine. There are many amusing anecdotes to accompany them. Be prepared to wade through his erudite prose. I had to look up many words while reading this book. Using a dictionary kind of takes the edge off of a joke.

Toward the end he felt obligated, or merely unable to stop himself from describing a litany of philosophers and pairing their writings with the appropriate beverage. Why? Probably because he could.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

On both legs of a recent flight, the passenger next to me commented they had heard this was a good book. I was sorry to respond that it is a book written by the author to flex intellectually but doesn’t actually impart much wisdom. I did however appreciate his philosopher wine pairings and the following commentary which rings especially true as Americans are being vaccinated at a pace largely unmatched anywhere in the world: When diseases come from America, so do their cures. The lesson is not to avoid the disease but to find the cure. In the context of wine, the discovery of America brought phylloxera to Europe, but the grafting of [European] vines onto native American stocks saved them from extinction.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not always line up with Scruton philosophically (except when he leans heavily on Augustine, Aquinas, Aristotle, and a few others), but I did find myself constantly stimulated. Again, my knowledge of wine is very thin, but I greatly enjoyed being guided by one who knows the terrain.

The author's arguments for the enjoyment of good wine, and the intellectual benefits of 'gift of the gods', however, were very persuasive, and just might change some of my drinking habits (though my whiskey will still feature!) He was particularly insightful on the nature of addictions, and the true blessing of moderation, and enjoying wine as part of culture.

Loved it.

[Francesco Curto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un libro brillante, di cui si poteva tranquillamente fare a meno. Ma se la filosofia è l' arte del ben vivere, se la logica non comprende la vita e in fondo il simposio filosofico è l' anticamera del metodo socratico allora ci sta anche una lettura frivola e leggera. Purchè non la si paragoni a opere più profonde come l' elogio della follia e non si abbia quindi la pretesa di annoverarla tra gli scritti filosofici. Se si vuole prendere sul serio il detto popolare "in vino veritas" bisogna dare di più, soprattutto dopo il Nietzsche della nascita della tragedia

[Dan Glover · Rating 4 out of 5]

A work of philosophy, cultural history and critique, mixed with autobiography and theology, with the entire work sprinkled with wit and wisdom. At its heart this book argues that our true humanness is found in community and gratitude, ultimately toward God. But this book is not only for Christians. It will delight wine lovers of all stripes, so long as your purpose in drinking wine is not to binge and get drunk. My favourite section is the appendix, where Scruton suggests particular beverages to imbibe when reading different philosophers - often very funny.

[Siem Lowis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The idea of taking a book called ¨I drink therefore I am¨ seriously is hard. Luckily it is not something that the author asks us to do.

Reading this book has been worth it.

One quote that I liked a lot:
¨Virtue does not mean suppressing our passions, but rising above them till the point where reason can prevail. The courageous person is the one who overcomes fear, not the one who doesn´t feel it.¨

[Roberto Pasini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si divide in due parti ben distinte, seppur non dichiarate: uno spassosissimo flusso di coscienza accompagnato da vini e aneddoti, a cui avrei dato senza pensarci cinque stelline, e una discutibile analisi filosofico-religiosa sul vino che mette in risalto tutto il carattere conservatore dell'autore, a cui avrei dato zero stelline. Di media: tre.
Però potete leggere solo la prima parte: capite subito quando inizia la seconda dal cambio di registro, e vi fermate lì. Allora vi piacerà tantissimo.

[Justin Mulder · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book sort of goes all over the place. It started off well, and made points about connecting alcohol to rituals and how disconnecting it may contribute to worsening habits. Then it just abruptly takes about various places wine is sourced from and the authors views on it. Finally it moves into philosophy (which admittedly goes a bit over my head). It does stick the landing somewhat, but I can’t help to think that the author paints with a wide brush. Funny points on Puritanism tho.

[Jacques Defraigne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is just a fun-read. Don't read it if you want serious arguments for wine drinking. It's a philosophers reflexion on his youth, France, wine drinking and much other subjects. He is all over the place here (but in a good way). At the end of the book there is for each classical philosopher a suggested drink while reading. Very funny way to end the book.