Paul Grieco had me at “Pascaline.” Pascaline Lepeltier had me at “Nietzsche.”
Those are not, admittedly, ten words I ever thought would be strung together in an article about wine. But instigating the unexpected is a significant part of the appeal of Paul Grieco, owner of Terroir wine bar in New York’s Tribeca. Is he entertaining? For sure. Is he irreverent? Undoubtedly. Most of all, the man can write a wine list unlike any other.
Grieco’s deep experience and influence within the industry (Summer of Riesling, anyone?) keeps his current activities solidly on my radar, which is how I came to register for a virtual wine class he hosted last week that featured Master Sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier speaking about philosophy, a subject she studied for seven years in her native France before turning her attention to wine.
This is when I ought to (cheekily) confess three things.
- If I’m going to discuss philosophy, I prefer to do so with a native French speaker who pronounces Plato as “plateau” and ultimum as “yule-tee-mum.” If that person happens to have been recognized as Best French Sommelier in 2018 and laureate of Un des Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, all the better.
- The impact that philosophy has had in my life would be disclosed to anyone who browsed my personal bookshelves and noticed dog-eared volumes by the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Immanuel Kant. I’m no closet philosopher. But I am a fan of careful, methodical inquiry that philosophers practice.
- In the context of that inquiry, Nietzsche wins IMO.
Nietzsche was one of Lepeltier’s four philosophers under discussion in last week’s webinar, along with Plato (“plateau”), Kant and Henri Bergson. I was curious to hear Lepeltier’s thoughts on Nietzsche and Existentialism (the doggiest-eared book about philosophy on my shelf is his Beyond Good and Evil) and her relating Nietzsche to Valdespino Manzanilla Sherry was in fact a lightbulb moment.
More on that below, but in the end, that wasn’t my biggest takeaway from the night.
That belongs to Lepeltier’s insights into Bergson, as she connected one of the most pivotal moments of her career in wine (a Château d’Yquem from 1937) to one of the most life-changing realizations from her study of philosophy.
Here are other topics that caught my attention, distilled into five essential questions about language, getting to the “why,” the strength of life, and élan vital.
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Why talk about wine and philosophy together?
Wine and philosophy are very interconnected, Lepeltier said, in the sense of discovery of what’s around you and how we understand the world. For her philosophy, like wine, involves a sense of being amazed by that discovery and by asking questions about the “why.” It’s extraordinarily empowering, she said, to not just accept what someone else is telling you and instead to interrogate for yourself. That “suddenly makes you freer than you’ve ever been.”
What can the language of philosophy show us about the language of wine?
Lepeltier studied ancient Greek at school in France. Philosophy (which she translated from Greek into French) became a question of language and examining the connotation of every single word we’re using. Plato followed the dialectic method — asking questions during conversation in order to arrive at an ultimate idea of the truth — which Lepeltier believes is the best method for improving your knowledge, about wine too.
What could Nietzsche possibly have to do with Sherry?
It’s about what Lepeltier called “the strength of life, that is stronger than everything” even though as humans we’re too weak to understand it. It’s why she picked Sherry. She wanted to show is how life is in perpetual transformation even though it’s supposed to die. Sherry repeats itself through the solera system. Even though it continues because of something we fear (that is, a population of bacteria) it’s nonetheless kept alive and still nourished. It’s something that’s ever-changing, yet still the same.
Henri Bergson coined the term “élan vital” in 1907. How did that change Lepeltier’s life? And how does it relate to natural wine?
One of the most pivotal wines of Lepeltier’s life was a Château d’Yquem from 1937. The taste, she said, lasted for thirty seconds in her mouth but the duration and the experience of it was almost everlasting.
That distinction — between the discrete passage of time and the intangible duration of an experience — is at the core of Bergson’s thinking and his concept of élan vital, or the stream of life. “We can feel that we belong to that stream of life when we have the experience of duration,” Lepeltier said, “beyond the tools that we have to survive.”
Lepeltier is in search of the duration, she said, and in search of something that makes her go behind the thing itself, and beyond survival. For her, it comes from wine that’s made in a natural way. With those wines, there are multiple moments of consistency, and a changing quality that we need to embrace. In rethinking the relationship to nature, she said, we can recreate an environment where joy and true respect are important.