Back from Greece

By mthomas

Got back last night from great writing and sailing trip to Greece. There were five of us on our boat (two other psychologists, skipper Pete and my very good friend Paul, Mike the Barrister and Roy who created and writes ‘New Tricks’ for the BBC) and seven on the other boat (skippered by Pete’s brother John) who we affectionately referred to as ‘The Hobbits’ due to their diminutive size compared to us 6 footers. We had a new Bavaria 45 (pictured to the left) which handled beautifully and has plenty of space. The trip was superb and along the way we also took in some great Greek culture including plenty of wines.

We left Athens and did a roundabout trip taking in most of the Saronic islands and some of the mainland towns such as Epidavros. A highlight was mooring in the notoriously difficult Hydra (pictured right) after the rescue of a French family. They had snagged their anchor on an electrical cable and Pete dived down over 5 metres to release it. He is an absolute legend and with Mike, Paul and Roy, was fantastic company.

In between the sailing I managed to read, and make notes on, William Younger’s opus; Gods, Men and Wine. It was a work of love he completed following a stint working for the intelligence services during the war. The introduction sets the tone to this learned and fascinating history of wine;

“Wine suffers a heaving birth. It has a rough, groping childhood. It develops into adolescence. Then if it does not sicken, it matures: and in this it is almost human since it does not mature according to a fixed rule but according to the law of its particular and individual personality. The act which gives it personality is the act of fermentation. In this metamorphosis it is changed from fruit into animal: sometimes even an animal of splendor.”

It was great to read about wines in antiquity whilst visiting some of the places mentioned. The section on wine and the Romans is incredibly insightful and informative, and some of the illustrative plates fascinating in terms of aesthetics and content. If you can get hold of a copy it is one of the great wine books.

As for the wine we drank… I am a lover of Greek wines but found the majority of the bottled wines available on the islands were overpriced and poor. However, we ate out most evenings and the house rosé in most tavernas was consistently enjoyable and very cheap. No-one ever seemed to know the grapes but it was fresh, light and perfect for the food and climate. Usually, but not always, quite dark for rosé, it was good to support local producers who, like many Greeks, are having a tough time. We often left carrying a couple of litres (mineral water bottles refilled) which we  subsequently drank at lunch the next day, after a sail and swim, over one of Roy’s miraculous lunches whilst moored off a secluded cove. Bliss.

At times I found myself reflecting on how life must have been for the Greeks on these islands thousands of years ago. Wine had important functions in terms of religion, economics and culture but was also ‘medication’, nourishment and entertainment. I like to think the wine I drank was pretty close to some of those they had enjoyed and, in many ways, beneath the veneer of modernity and sophistication little has changed.

Younger, W. (1966) Gods, Men and Wine  The Wine and Food Society

The Dark Vineyard

By mthomas

Martin Walker is probably best known as a Guardian journalist. He was Bureau Chief in Moscow and European Editor in the United States. He has also written a range of non-fiction texts including The Cold War and presented BBC programmes on Russia and ‘Clintonomics‘. He spends summers in his house in the Dordogne and writes detective novels set in the fictional town of St Denis.

The hero of this series of books, which includes the wine focussed The The Dark Vineyard, is Bruno Courreges a parochial gendarme. He is a paragon of French culture who teaches rugby and tennis to local children. He also finds time to tread grapes with neighbours, bed various women and catch villains.

An arson attack on a research centre with GM crops triggers an investigation involving a Californian wine corporation, young French would be winemakers and a hippy commune. There is also room for a selection of slightly stereotypical St Denis characters including the odd newbie Brit settler. It is all very easy on the intellect and has some nice touches for Francophiles. The wine content is pretty undemanding and in many ways peripheral but there are a few interesting passages including one linking the treading of grapes to a spike in birth rates 9 months later.

There is a Bruno website which even has pictures of Gigi, Bruno’s truffle sniffing Basset Hound. My dad had one when I was very young and I always assumed they were English so it was interesting to read that they are thought to have been bred by St Hubert (the patron saint of hunting) for boar hunting and their ears funnel up scents to their nose. I must look out for human versions at future tastings.

I spend a lot of time reading quite demanding texts so crime novels are a bit of a guilty pleasure. I often gravitate towards French and Italian detective novels, particularly those written by Fred Vargas but she can’t write them fast enough for me. In the interim I might dip into more of this series.

The Psychology of Wine - ‘Truth and beauty by the glass’

By mthomas

I had decided not to buy this book because it is expensive and I had read a highly critical review by the usually reliable  W. Blake Grey at ‘Vinography’. However, a well-meaning pal bought me a copy and so I spent a few hours wading through it. If only I could have that time back again. I think they should have called it ‘Pretentious about wine: clumsy literary references are easier than careful evaluation and communication about  psychological research and knowledge relating to wine’ . I found it is the most annoying book (tone and content) about wine that I have read in some time.

A few points before I start the review proper:

• I usually only review books, articles or papers containing information I think people will find useful and/or are well-written (this is evidenced by previous reviews - click on link to left to read them)
• Any views expressed are mine alone and not representative of my employers, publishers, family or any one else I haven’t thought of
• I am writing a book on psychology and wine and thus my perspective is a particular one
• There are some great writers out there who are working hard to demystify wine, and to increase participation and enjoyment
• I alluded to Blake Grey’s negative review of the book in a blog a few months back and one of the authors sent me an email that included the following passage  ” ignorance of the implications of experimental design and methodology in the behavioural sciences is something you seem happy to share with your colleague. (Add to this an ignorance of two millennia’s philosophy of aesthetics, as your fatuous musings unwittingly show.)” Other passages were less flattering, even more pompous, inaccurate and, to be frank, very amusing - for the record I supervise Doctoral level research (including experimental methodology) in psychology and Blake Grey is not a colleague (we have never even met)
• Mr Mitchell did not respond to my offer to publish the email he sent, review the book or pass the book to another reviewer
• I withdrew the blog out of courtesy but stated an intention to review the book in future

So, what is this book like?

In my opinion it is self-indulgent, pretentious and ’so bad it’s funny’. The worst indictment however is the paucity of  psychology. I tend to subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary definition;  The science of the nature, function and phenomena of human mind. I know that there are different ‘psychologies’ and enjoy the diversity of these. If this book had outlined the relative value of nomothetic and idiographic approaches before launching in to a series of anecdotes I would have been unconcerned as there can be value in an anecdotal approach when executed with reflexivity, wit and insight. What this book appears to be is something it is, in my opinion, not i.e. a book to inform readers of psychological research and findings related to wine (which I guess is what most people might expect from the title).

The authors repeatedly fail to operationalise key areas under examination and show little awareness of the wealth of studies into sensory and neuropsychological aspects of our interaction with wine. References are literary and subjective, strung together with hyperbole and simplistic analysis “Wine is a multi-multi-billion dollar industry…”. The authors continually use three words, where one (perhaps none) would have sufficed, and indulge in rambling and interminable asides.  Perhaps they should read Orwell on writing because I guess he, and their literary heroes such as Beckett, might have viewed their posturing style as anathema with carefully composed words being interpreted in such a self-serving and arbitrary manner.

The tone is set with a badly judged vignette where the authors imagine the ‘discovery’ of wine by a ‘Neanderthal’ called ‘Ugg’ who is later transformed into ‘Daisy’ in an apparent attempt to make a simplistic point about gender. In fact this trivialising of an evolutionary perspective, and complete failure to capture the incredible psychological implications of such an event only appears in ‘Chapter’ 3 following a tiresome eulogy to a glass of wine on Santorini (the one page first ‘Chapter’) and confusing passage on Caravaggio in ‘Chapter’ 2 where the authors find time (fill space?) by commenting “This film was marked by the appearance of the translucent Tilda Swinton, who subsequently graduated from indie film muse to Narnia white witch and oscar winner” (page 7).  Now that’s what I want from a book about psychology and wine…

Vague allusions to ‘anthropological theories’ are made but never fully materialize. There are small sections on memory and language that are vaguely coherent but these are found in a plethora of cheaper, better written and widely available books, and serve only to highlight the absence of any central thesis regarding psychology and wine. The authors appear too busy producing flatulent comments on ‘fave films’ to include key information on the way we think and talk about wine.

The section on ratings berates us with the idea that scores are ‘all about authority’ but the authors demonstrate a complete lack of insight into the limitations of  their own ‘authoritative’ stance as well as the irony of such a statement. Most psychologists recognise the role of statistics but the Mitchells seem content (complacent) in simply pontificating about ratings rather than pursuing any meaningful analysis in terms of the properties of scales or the limitations of such heuristics.

Chapter 8 consists of a list of grape varieties with the author’s ‘idiosyncratic’ take on each.  Examples include ”Albarino - Wants to love you with seafood, in its Spanish manner.” (page 49) and Tempranillo - Ole’!!!”  (page 51) This is so impoverished it beggars belief. The exclamation marks simply emphasise the vacuous nature of what is being stated (shouted) and are a perfect example of a ’stain on the silence‘ (That’s Beckett by the way).

There are presumably unintentionally comic interpretations of quotations from Robertson Davis, Ian McEwan et al, ad infinitum to add weight to flimsy ideas. There are also a few more passages I found quite sinister, strange at best. One particularly disconcerting example (p38-39) flits from a meeting with an ‘old flame’ to Giacometti’s ‘Woman with her throat cut’ and then focuses on Jeremy Irons and gynaecological instruments from Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. Descriptions of women in this book could keep a Freudian analyst busy for a few lifetimes (the authors often use Freudian concepts, thus illustrating their engagement with cutting-edge psychology). An update of bad commercial Chardonnay - ‘Dolly Parton’ wines is offered as  ”Pamela Anderson wines” because, obviously, Pammy is ‘up to date’ in the eyes of the authors but is also described as not a “real woman”. Make no mistake, when the humour falls flat and the underpinning constructs emerge, this is I think quite ugly stuff.

This is a book that has Hannibal Lecter in the Index but omits any mention of Adrienne Lehrer, the most informative and relevant writer on the language of wine. There are a hundred more similar indictments that could be made but, as with reading this book, life is too short. There is, in my opinion, still no book that collects together key theories and experimental results from psychology for wine lovers but there are some that explore fascinating and complex philosophical issues in the world of wine. Those interested in these should read either of two excellent collections - Fritz Allhoff’s ‘Wine and Philosophy; A Symposium on Thinking and Drinking’ or Barry C. Smith’s ‘Questions of Taste; The Philosophy of Wine’.  They actually have a lot of psychology in them too.

Allhoff, F. (Ed.) (2008) Wine and Philosophy Wiley-Blackwell (Review Here)

Smith, B. C. (2007) Questions of Taste; The Philosophy of Wine Signal Books

Is This Bottle Corked? The Secret Life of Wine

By mthomas

This book is a bit of a curate’s egg (or according to the authors, a cabinet of bibelots ) but perhaps none the  worse for it. They write well about topics that they are knowledgeable and passionate  about, and there is much to enjoy between the covers.  From wine and the legend of Gilgamesh to  salinity  technology as a saviour for the Australian wine  industry, they are divergent and expansive  in terms of focus and content. This makes for a slightly atomised, if entertaining, read for anyone interested in wine. Its unique selling point (USP) is still a mystery to me but I hope the title will draw in readers who are intrigued.

Burk is a Professor of History at UCL and Bywater a writer and broadcaster by trade. This book feels like a discussion or exchange of anecdotes between the two which has been recorded, transcribed and collated into one tome. But, it is never really clear whose voice we are listening to and this is perhaps the biggest flaw of the book. Because of this absence of a consistent narrative device, or voice, it functions best as something to ‘dip’ into. I have really enjoyed dipping in to it and sections, such as the one on ‘comet wines’, have as much to say about the present as the past. We may scoff at this type of superstition but many similar attributions are still apparent in the modern wine world.

There is material relevant to psychological dimensions such as issues of status e.g. the ‘potlatch’ ceremonies of the Northwest Pacific. There is also much about the limitations of language and one of the best comments I have read on the 1855 Bordeaux Classification;  ”The whole situation supports the theory that the human quest for certainty is stronger than the desire for a more truthful ambiguity”. (page 84)

A book containing so much information by such learned and informed people deserves a decent referencing system. There are no footnotes so following up on citations and quotations is difficult. Any future edition would be greatly improved by this. The illustrations are also poor when compared to the written content and the book deserved higher production values. However, neither fault detracts to the extent that the many pearls contained in this book become dull. Many of them shine out and are precious.

Burk, K. and Bywater, M. (2008) Is This Bottle Corked? The Secret Life of Wine  Faber

ISBN 978-0-571-2417-3

New References and old books

By mthomas

I have been sorting through the references on the Wine Research pages and am tweaking/updating with some new ones. I am also adding papers I have looked at recently and some books that I finally got around to reading during the xmas break. Santa brought some really good reads as well as a few rarities including a first edition of Waugh on Wine. This is ridiculously hard to get hold of and I have been searching second hand bookshops for years to no avail. I guess it has not been republished because of Auberon Waugh’s views rather than the quality of his writing, Willy Rushton’s cartoons or the demand for it. You have to read it to make up your own mind but the words hysterical (laugh out loud), reactionary and curmudgeon are tags I might come up with…

Waugh, A., (1986) Waugh on Wine Fourth Estate: London

ISBN 0-947795-21-9

Other 80’s gems that brightened xmas include Richard Olney’s wonderful Ten Vineyard Lunches which is not only mouthwatering to read because of his knowledge and love of French regional cookery but also an informed and learned treatise on the wine enjoyment. Olney, perhaps most famous as the ‘biographer of château d’ Yquem’, writes eloquently and elegantly about France. Try to find a copy of this if you love combining wine and food.

Olney, R., (1988) Ten Vineyard Lunches Ebury Press: London

ISBN 0-85223-606-9

Jancis Robinson, like Olney (who was prised out of his bolt-hole in Provence) was present at the Harvey Rodenstock Yquem tasting in September 1986.  Her account of this extravagant event in Chapter 10 of Jancis Robinson’s Food and Wine Adventures is fascinating especially in the light of Billionaire’s Vinegar. Also like Olney, she catches the marvellous symbiosis between different foods and wines with rich accounts of the contexts in which she experienced them. Another not very well known but rewarding read (especially for foodies) from a much maligned but increasingly influential decade. Also, from a ‘big’ character whom, like Waugh and Olney, I find psychologically fascinating.

Robinson, J. (1987) Jancis Robinson’s Food and Wine Adventures

ISBN 0-7472-0030-0

It almost makes me want to dig out the first Smiths album or accept an invitation to see Depeche Mode at the O2!

All in the mind

By mthomas

A quick trip to Broadcasting House on Tuesday to participate in All in the Mind (a well known and regarded programme on psychology) on Radio 4  (Website here). It is a great prog and I enjoyed the recent Martin Seligman episode where he invited Claudia Hammond to ask him a hard question and she did! It was scheduled to be the last of this series and had a really interesting debate on psychiatry as well as a section on Hans Asperger and Gilles de Tourette and the syndromes they gave their name to. As the last in the series, close to the festive period, psychology and wine was also on the menu.

The other guest was Malcolm Gluck, famous for ‘Superplonk’ and now infamous for his new book ‘The Great Wine Swindle’, who was clearly galvanised to plug the latter. I had read the book and so expected bombastic polemic. I am not an experienced broadcaster and tended to defer to Malcolm who was more than happy to express his views. Being a psychologist, I tend not to interrupt people when they are speaking so my contribution tended to be a quick question or brief refutation of his position based on research. I also had a bad throat and sounded a bit like a sealion. It was a useful reminder that our subjective experience of ourselves;  image, sound etc. is very different from a media representation which, in a strange way, can be more accurate and objective. I once watched an old friend (an award winning broadsheet journalist) ‘die’ during a tv programme when he found himself unable to string two words together (he also had a good face for radio and looked very grumpy).

I hope the programme wasn’t ‘train crash’ radio and the Producer Fiona Hill gave me some lovely feedback. Friends and family have also been generous and I am aware I have a tendency to be self-critical. However, I would like to develop my ability to communicate research in a more accessible but meaningful way. I love lecturing and am unfazed by large live audiences but something about the BBC studio was deeply intimidating for me. The relatively short interview did not really allow me to warm-up and I would have loved to have been able to make a few more cogent points about the topic. Claudia Hammond was a consumate professional and I hope I picked up a few good tips from her performance though.

Malcolm makes many valid points in his book but the tabloid style and vitriol towards people in the wine trade, who seem to be pretty amiable and ethical individuals, undermines his arguments. He also has a tendency to blame others for being subjective and fallible but then ‘puts his hands up’ to the same (as he did on the programme). I also pointed out to him that it was in my opinion the worst proof-reading of a  book I have seen in some time… In person he was polite and amiable, perhaps as many people do, he adopts a media persona that is suited to its function.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to one and all and here’s to a positive new decade.

Belated update on the ‘mad’ world of wine

By mthomas

Photography by Steve Howse for Decanter

I have been so caught up in my practice, teaching, marking, writing and acting as an external examiner for Doctoral vivas that I feel like a terrible slacker in terms of blogging and wine. There have been some incredible things going on in the world of wine (dare I mention Billionaire’s Vinegar?) but I have not been able to find time to comment on these seismic events or the ‘fall-out’ on other blogs. I think the picture of me to the left captures a sense of the world speeding along as I contemplate things… 

Despite this, I have managed to read a couple of books and have added them to the bibliography/research list as I think they are both fundamentally psychological in terms of what they say about important issues and figures in the world of wine. The first Billionaire’s Vinegar has resulted in some really contentious blogs and forum contributions that have been fascinating to follow. I would not want to add to hurt feelings or lawyers’ profits but would urge people to be aware of the issues involved as they cut across the world of  ‘fine, rare and old wine’ in terms of  provenance, reputation, expert opinion, economics and potential conflicts of interest. The psychological implications of this compelling but slightly tawdry tale could occupy a gaggle of PhD students for some time.

The other book, now in paperback, is the Emperor of Wine by Elin McCoy (hardback picked up in an Oxfam bookshop in Bristol between vivas) which I have been meaning to read for some time. Robert Parker is, without doubt, a fascinating character and probably the most influential person in the world of wine (perhaps ever). Being that influential is bound to involve costs and benefits and I am constantly weighing these up in terms of his influence. Again, some blogs take polemic stances on homogeneity, the validity of scales and issues of independence and are often compulsive reading. For example this recent contribution from Jonah Lehrer on the neuropsychology of ratings and the inherent limitations of the approach. I think there are other limitations linked not only to subjectivity but to the properties ascribed to scales (which are sometimes not grounded in statistical logic).  I also think we need to distinguish issues from people and that simplistic splitting into good\bad usually fails to capture the complexity of human experience. I will review the books when things calm down (in every sense).

McCoy, E. (2008) The Emperor of Wine - The remarkable story of the rise and reign of Robert Parker Published by Grub Street

ISBN-10: 1906502242  ISBN-13: 978-1906502249

Wallace, B. (2009) The Billionaire’s Vinegar; The mystery of the world’s most expensive bottle of wine Three Rivers Press (CA)

ISBN-10: 0307338789 ISBN-13: 978-0307338785

Wine Enjoyment

By mthomas

I have kindly been asked to lecture on the groundbreaking Masters degree in Applied Positive Psychology run by Dr Illona Boniwell and have agreed that my talk will focus on ‘enjoyment’. I have therefore been musing on content for this and previously suggested that wine enjoyment W(e) can be understood as a function of 3 main variables;

- features of the wine itself (W),
- personality or self (P)
- environment or context in which it is drunk (E)

W(e) = f (W, P, E)

I am trying to model this in more detail and would really appreciate suggestions regarding the variables involved. The ultimate aim is to minimise attribution errors and optimise the integrative transformation that defines our subjective experience of drinking a wine, and the enjoyment or interest derived from it.

I am also interested in the relationship between Hedonic and Eudaimonic Valence associated with wine consumption. In less jargonistic terms the different types of enjoyment or value that can be had. I sometimes joke that the former (Hedonic-  which is associated with the pleasing taste and intoxicating properties of wine) is more likely to give you a hangover than the enjoyment derived from the latter (Eudaimonic aspects such as learning about wine or sharing it with friends).

Martin Seligman, the ‘godfather’ of positive psychology, is a wine fan and I wonder what a positive psychology of wine might look like. I guess key concepts might include ‘temperance’.  I would be interested in your suggestions…

Boniwell, I (20068) Positive Psychology in a Nutshell (second edition)PWBC ISBN 978-0954838782

The website of Illona’s Personal Well-Being Centre (PWBC) is here

Wine Tasting Workbook by Jancis Robinson

By mthomas

My recent break in France allowed me to improve my knowledge of wines from the Loire and to catch up on reading. The piles of articles, journals and books on my three different desks (home, work one and university - work two) seem to grow much taller each year despite my efforts.  Books are also moved from one stack to another in an attempt to stave off my anxieties. 

It doesn’t help that I often buy second-hand wine books and have duplicate copies of many. I recently picked up a copy of Jancis Robinson’s Wine Tasting Workbook for the bargain price of 99 pence (reflecting charity shop pricing rather than the quality of the book). Reading through it, as families raked the beach at Noirmoutier for palourdes, the local clams, was hugely relaxing. It was also useful as it refreshed my memory of some of the basics (the structure and purpose of tasting, grape varieties etc.) but perhaps more importantly it helped me to reflect on what makes good wine writing.

As an Educational Psychologist I am mindful of what is, and is not, effective communication. The Wine Tasting Workbook is clear evidence that Jancis Robinson excels as a communicator and does so with a humility and humour underpinned by a superb knowledge base. Wine is a complex subject and to introduce readers to it in a systematic and accessible manner, as she does in this book, takes great skill. This approach is different from the wonderful prose of a writer such as Andrew Jefford and the complete opposite of some of the more pompous, and in some cases ego driven, writing in the wine world.

The ‘work’ in ‘workbook ‘ is central to the way in which content is supported by practical activities such as comparing Rieslings from different countries with guidance on possible learning outcomes. The 6 chapters move from ‘Learning to taste’ to ‘Wine food and fun’ providing an incentive for completion. In between these chapters a huge amount of information is condensed into a reasonably sized volume. The information is punctuated, and eased along, by opinions that I was generally in tune with.  One exception being the notion that “The most important aspect of any wine is that you enjoy it” - the debate between the merits of Eudaimonic and Hedonic valence needs another blog, or maybe a book. This is a terribly small gripe and the greatest strength of the book is its inclusiveness. This generous attitude seems to be rooted in her love of wine and I would recommend the book wholeheartedly to any ‘novice’ wanting to broaden their knowledge base. All the ‘experts’ out there might also benefit from revisiting the basics in the company of a superb writer.

The Irrestible Inheritance of Wilberforce

By mthomas

It may seem strange to review a work of fiction but this book combines the two areas at the heart of this site; wine and psychology. It is also very readable and asks some interesting questions about ‘human nature’.

The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, written by Paul Torday (probably best known for ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’), tells the story of a man, the epononymous Wilberforce, seduced by a collection of  ‘fine wine’.  Robert Parker is given an acknowledgement for some of the wine descriptions, many of which are First Growths from significant vintages.

The story is essentially a tragedy in that a decent, if emotionally distant, man is ‘brought low’. Torday uses a reverse chronology for the narrative so that the story starts with Wilberforce’s downfall and gradually reveals events leading up to it. This device is successful, to a degree, and does not offer up an oversimplistic aetiology of Wilberforce’s woes although his slightly ‘autistic’ personality clearly undermines him having insight into his emotional difficulties.

I would not want to give away the plot but areas covered include adoption, love, class, work-life balance and addiction. There is also lots about his relationship with wine including a great section early on in the book where he has a  Pétrus  moment. He is a complex and contradictory character to spend time with and the novel is a very readable protrait of a life.

The Irrestible Inheritance of Wiberforce by Paul Torday

ISBN-13: 978-0297851592