Rachel Black

During my time at the University of Gastronomic Sciences from 2007-2008, I started thinking about the idea of taste memory. How is it that certain producers consistently make wines from year to year that have coherence in their taste? What role does taste play across generations of winemaking families? Could taste memory explain the coherence of specific wines from vintage to vintage? Is it taste memory that helps create the identity of specific wineries? What happens when there is a revolt against this memory? What other forms of taste memory exist and what role do they play in culinary identity? How are other taste memories preserved or not? Wine is a unique example of a much larger question of taste memory and its role in changing culinary tastes, which potentially have major nutritional repercussions. Because it can be conserved for many years, wine is a unique ‘food’ and cultural artifact: it offers an ample window onto the theoretical question of how tastes change over time.

I became fascinated by the Banca del Vino (wine bank) started by Slow Food. This very special cellar is located under the Pollenzo campus of the University of Gastronomic Sciences. The driving motivation behind the Banca del Vino is twofold. First, wines are aged longer than the usual release time so that consumers can enjoy them once they have aged enough to reach their maximum potential (a rare occurrence these days since producers and distributors cannot afford to cellar wines). Second, there is an extensive collection of old wines at the Banca del Vino that is intended to help preserve taste memory. These wines will help winemakers and those in the wine trade understand the taste of wine over the longue durée. One complication in this project is that wine is organic and continues to evolve over time–like human memory, wine’s sensory elements (color, scent, taste and mouth feel) change and fade as it ages. How does this biochemical evolution effect taste memory?

While conducting ethnographic research on wine in the town of Barbaresco, I was struck by a second instance of taste memory at work in the wine world: most wine producing families keep an “infernot” (a small cellar that is usually dug into the earth) and these cellars hold the families’ wine memories, which often consist of bottles dating back to the beginning of the family’s production history (usually the first half of the nineteenth century). These collections are important for reminding the current winemaker (often a family member) of the main sensory themes and they help give their wine a consistent style. Some producers described this as taste coherence. While there is talk of tradition in production methods, I started to wonder how much of these ideas about tradition are still driven by taste memory, even as technology increasingly factors into winemaking. Does tradition depend more on taste than method? If so, what has been the impact of taste fads, promoted and awarded by wine critics such as Robert Parker and the Wine Spectator, on the value of this historic record? Wine banks and private family collections can be seen as historical ‘documents’ that require a unique cultural interpretation involving the senses.

Why do restaurant reviews never talk about how food makes you feel after you eat it? This was a question I was left pondering as I stared at the ceiling with my stomach rumbling last night.

The first food writers were extremely preoccupied with digestion and how food altered the humours (bile and mood, equally). In Physiologie du goût (1825), Brillat-Savarin devotes an entire chapter to digestion and realises its central importance in the act of eating. How did we loose touch with our stomachs in the act of eating? Why does taste only refer to our mouths and less frequently our noses?

Isn’t a large part of how food makes us feel about what happens after it enters our bodies? The instance of incorporation (in the true sense of the word) does not really occur in our mouths. Why then does modern food writing lack a language and vocabulary to address how food makes us feel, or at least something beyond romantic and poetic notions of how we feel when we see, taste and smell food. What about the culinary contentment of sated hunger or the lovely feeling of  a full belly? What about the wretched physical feelings after eating a rotten oyster or the regretful pains of over indulging in a second helping? Dare I go so far as to mention the unmentionable? Yes, we all know the primal pleasures of defecation, the ultimate output of all eating experiences.

Strong cultural taboos now keep us from associating eating with pooping. However, this was not always the case. It is interesting to note that North American culture is deeply obsessed with the pleasure and healthfulness of eating but we dare not speak about its physiological functioning. What happens in our bodies has been covered over, sanitized and banished from popular discourse. During the eighteenth century, the term restaurant was used to describe the dishes that were given to the ill and weak–often a rich meat dish to restore health and energy to the convalescent eater. Eventually, venues opened in Paris where pale and weak patrons could come and restore their health. Restaurants were initially all about how food made you feel, in a very physiological sense.

Surely, I have pushed this discussion to an extreme, but I am still left wondering how we ended up so disconnected from the act of eating. Perhaps its time to overcome our prudishness and really talk about how food makes us feel.

Further reading:

Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme. The Physiology of Taste. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/brillat/savarin/b85p/

Spang, Rebecca. The Invention of the Restaurant. Harvard UP, 2001.

I am a cultural anthropologist and I have never been to Africa. I have to admit that this has always caused me to feel inadequate as far as being an anthropologist goes. I have no stories of terrifying plane rides, recurring malarial symptoms nor do I have a wall full of tribal masks gifted to me by important chiefs. You have to understand that these are the standard trappings and tales that all of my Africanist friends have acquired. At anthropology cocktails parties, I am often the odd woman out. Perhaps only the North Americanists who don’t study Native Americans have it worse than me.

You see, I study Italy and France. No, this wasn’t a ploy to find a way to travel and live in two countries with amazing food and wine. Really, I have always been drawn to Italy and France and food and wine have been in my blood (figuratively) forever. While my work is interesting and gratifying, I often feel guilty because I am not helping save the world like many of my colleagues. I used to think that they were drawn to Africa because   of its exoticism, because Africa is the field par excellence.

Lately, I can’t shake the feeling that Africa is calling my name, and, no, my name sounds nothing like Florence Nightingale. Africa is seductively whispering to me: it is telling me to come and face myself, to figure out who I really am in relation to the world. You have to understand that part of my motivation for becoming an anthropologist (not just studying the academic discipline) was to face all the awkward, uncomfortable social situations I could possibly encounter. I have a feeling that going to Africa will cause me to lose myself and question my points of reference. Through this process I think I will gain a better understanding of my place in the world.

Now, I just have to find a way to get to Africa and do something useful there.

Michele and some lovely uva nera

When I was in Turin last month I returned to the field where I did the research for my PhD dissertation, the Porta Palazzo market. I was very anxious about going back after many years and only a few sporadic visits. I was going to find out what had happened during my absence, to find my old friends and informants and to see if I could salvage the manuscript I had written about this magic place.

As I approached the market from via Milano, I felt the same uncertainty I initially had when I first started my fieldwork: would I be accepted by the people at the market, would they remember me, how had our relationship changed from when I was here each day working next to the vendors doing my shopping and living a large portion of my life in piazza? What personal questions would they ask me (because they always do ask personal questions) and how would I tell them about the changes in my life? How would I recount all the places I had been and lived? How would I bring our worlds together again?

The first people I encounter were Luigi and his family at the candy stand. They were possibly the hardest people to get to know, with their guarded Piedmontese manners and closed family circle. As the shy smile rolled across Luigi’s face, I knew he remembered me. The whole family began to ask me where I had been? Where did I live now? We fell into our old prattle about life, health, relationships and happiness. Everything had changed but everything had stayed the same. I would soon learn that this largely held true for most of Porta Palazzo.

That week I went to the market each day. I spent time with my old friends. I drank wine and ate salami with Oscar and Walter. I went to Said’s house to break the Ramadan fast and catch up with his wife Naima. I even got to meet one of their beautiful daughters, who is a new edition since I first met this young Moroccan couple in 2002. At the farmers’ market, Pier let me mind his vegetable stand while he went to fetch his truck and his uncle Michele made me taste each type of grape he had brought to market as I waited. Andrea still looked as much in love as the last time I saw him selling bananas and pineapples. He told me about what happiness his relationship brings him. While there was some joy, there was also the usual storm clouds: everyone lamented the poor economy (like they always do) and talked about the impossibility of going forward in such a depressed state. No one except Piero had left (and that was family feud) the market. We are all a little older. There are more children. Most importantly, the market marches on as it satiates the city’s hunger.

For an anthropologist returning to the field can be one of the hardest things to do. However, it can also been one of the most interesting and fruitful activities. Returning to Porta Palazzo after a five-year break I had new questions to ask about the market. I saw more continuity. I could grasp long-term changes and trends. Yes, it was all the same but all different as well.

A Cultural Encyclopedia of Alcohol (Greenwood/ABC Clio Press)

This A-Z encyclopedia takes a wide-ranging pop culture look at a topic that engages students today but will also appeal to adults for browsing. The content will not glamorize the use of alcohol but instead put it in its cultural context, primarily today in the United States, but also considering the wider historical and international associations when appropriate. There are books that look at the historical aspects of drink but there are no reference works that also take into consideration the contemporary and popular culture of alcohol and which bring together both the production and consumption of alcohol.

This book will serve as a reference to students and educators studying the culture of alcohol and issues surrounding its consumption in North America. It will be an excellent resource for courses and programs that deal with health, addiction prevention and responsible alcohol consumption. Seeing alcohol within a cultural framework will promote a better understanding of issues surrounding its consumption in the United States in the past and present.