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Category Independent Aesthetic Experience: The Case of Wine

1. Introduction

In his much discussed article “Categories of Art” Kendall Walton

argues that there are aesthetic features of artworks that cannot

be found in the immediately perceptible properties of the artwork

alone. Walton attempts to show that the tradition in which a work

is made, its societal context, and the intentions of the artist

all contribute to how a work is properly experienced; knowledge

of these contextual features is what allows one to properly

experience the aesthetic properties of a work. The aim of this

paper is to consider an extension of Walton’s view of aesthetic

properties of artworks to the experience of the aesthetic

properties of wine. Such an extension reveals certain problems in

the thesis that a work’s correct or true aesthetic properties are

only appreciable given appropriate categorization. Although wine

may not be an art object, this extension is quite natural, for

wine quality is an aesthetic topic that is treated critically in

a fashion similar to the treatment of art. There are wine experts

and wine critics, people who claim not to understand wine, and

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those who claim to enjoy it both at a surface and deeper level.

There is even some famous disagreement about wine quality amongst

critics.1 Further, some philosophers have already happily

extended Walton’s view of art-categories to argue that the taste

of a wine is a property of that wine which depends on wine

knowledge for its proper appreciation.2

The possibility of category-free aesthetic experience shall

be argued for by considering the epiphany type encounter of the

novice who first tastes a great wine as described by Barry C.

Smith. The aim of the argument advanced is to show that Walton’s

view is unable to accommodate the possibility that there are some

1Notes:

1. Several authors cite a famous dispute between Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker concerning a 2003 Chateau Pavie. See http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/winenews0422.html(accessed January 2012).

2 For example, See Barry C. Smith’s “The Objectivity ofTastes and Tasting”, in Barry C. Smith (ed.), Questions of Taste:the philosophy of wine. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)pp. 41-77; Jonathan Cohen, “Wine-Tasting Blind andOtherwise: Blindness as Perceptual Limitation”, manuscriptof a paper presented at Workshop on Wine Expertise,University of London in Paris, Paris, 13 October 2011; CainTodd, The Philosophy of Wine: A Case of Truth, Beauty and Intoxication(Montreal: Queen’s University Press, 2011); especially Ch.4. See also Steve Charter’s “On the Evaluation of Wine’sQuality”, in Barry C. Smith, pp. 157-181.

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immediate and appropriate ways to apprehend the aesthetic

properties of at least some kinds of work despite the fact that

one may lack category knowledge concerning that work. The sudden

appreciation of a great wine by the novice that Smith discusses

seems to take place independently of category knowledge.

“Independently of category knowledge” here means independently of

having some wine-specific knowledge such as: What I am drinking

now is a Sauvignon Blanc, which typically has such and such taste

properties, x amount of acidity, etc. It is likely the case that

all knowledge is categorical, and it is not the aim of this

argument to deny that someone needs to know that they are

drinking wine instead of cola to have Smith’s epiphany

experience. It will instead be argued that the way Walton

conceives of art categorization and the way his view is typically

applied to wine is difficult to square with a certain sort of

aesthetic experience epitomized by Smith’s example; that is, it

is possible that one may apprehend the aesthetic properties of an

art object without having specialized knowledge of the object of

appreciation.

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2. Walton’s View

Walton articulates a powerful criticism of the tradition within

philosophy of art that views aesthetic properties as residing

in/supervening on the perceptible properties of the work alone.3

According to Walton, the art category (for example, painting) in

which a work falls affects what aesthetic properties a work has.

He holds that a work’s aesthetic properties are not only

dependent on the perceptual properties of the work, but also on

what category the work is perceived in.4 To put this point

another way, the categories do not just affect what aesthetic

properties we see works as having or take them to have, the

categories affect the aesthetic properties that are there to be

found in the work itself: “at least in some cases, it is correct

to perceive a work in certain categories and incorrect to perceive

it in others; that is, our judgments when we perceive them in the

former are likely to be true…” and “[the relevant historical

3 For a classic presentation of this view, see Frank Sibley’s“Aesthetic Concepts”, The Philosophical Review, 68 (1959) pp.421-450. See also Nick Zangwill’s “In Defense of ModerateAesthetic Formalism”, The Philosophical Quarterly, 50 (2000) pp.476-493.

4 Kendall Walton, “Categories of Art”, The Philosophical Review, 79(1970) pp. 334-367; 338.

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facts] help to determine what aesthetic properties that a work

has…”5

A work’s aesthetic properties and its proper judgment by the

critic depend on which of its perceptible properties are

standard, variable, and contra-standard to the category in which

the work is perceived. It would be wrong to judge a marble bust

as an unfaithful likeness on the grounds that the individual

portrayed was not marble-colored. It is a standard feature of

marble busts to be marble-colored. It is a standard feature of

busts in general to be made of a material that is not flesh

colored, and as such we typically do not even notice such

features. The fact that marble does not look like human flesh is

not seen as a flaw in the likeness of the person represented in

the bust. A standard feature of a category is a feature in virtue

of which the work belongs to that category: “that is, just in

case the lack of that feature would disqualify, or tend to

disqualify, a work from that category.”6 Variable features of a

category are those features which have no effect on a work’s

5 Ibid., pp. 356 and 364, respectively. The emphasis isWalton’s.

6 Ibid., 339.

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categorization; the subject of a bust is variable for the

category of busts and the colors used in a painting are variable

to the category of paintings. Finally, a feature that is contra-

standard for a category is one which tends to disqualify the work

from a category it might otherwise be found in; Walton suggests,

for example, that an object that moves sporadically might not

count as a statue since movement is contra-standard for statues.

Given the way that categorization affects appreciation on

Walton’s view, it is important that we view a work in its correct

category or categories. Further, it seems fair to infer that the

categories in which a work falls affects the work’s aesthetic

properties.7 We should see the aesthetic properties of a work as

being determined by two factors: the perceptual properties of the

work, such as the brush strokes in a painting or its color, and

the category in which a work falls. Walton holds that when we

perceive a work in the correct category our judgments are also

likely to be correct, so there appears to be little doubt that he

also holds that the category in which a work falls affects what

7 See Brian Laetz’s “Kendall Walton’s ‘Categories of Art’: ACritical Commentary”, British Journal of Aesthetics, 50 (2010) pp.287-306.

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aesthetic properties are there to be found in the work,

regardless of what a viewer may perceive.

In summary, Walton is essentially saying the following about

art and its categories: there is a right way to view a work, and

if you view a work in the wrong way, you simply will not

appreciate what is going on in it; and to appreciate what is

going on, you must know something about the category (categories)

in which the work falls.

3. The Case of Wine

Wine is typically viewed as an object about which a great deal of

knowledge is required for its proper enjoyment, and the expert

may even be able to determine the age of the wine or its

appellation simply by taste. Smith claims that the experienced

taster, that is, one who is familiar with the wine categories,

will derive more from the wine drinking experience than the

novice. Yet in speaking about wine he also says:

We instantly recognize when something is worthy ofreflection, when it is great. So we should not think ofthe immediate experience as just the novice’s domain,in contrast with the reflective judgment of experts…Asevery wine lover knows, there was a time when they were

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unaware of the power, depth and beauty that some winespossess. Then came the epiphany. Most wine lovers willremember it: the first time they encountered a rare andastonishing wine. Until that moment they had simplydrunk wine, noticing some to be more pleasing thanothers.8

It is hard to see how a Walton-style view can account for the

aesthetic experience of the epiphany as Smith describes it. It is

not as if Smith’s novice drinker had never had wine before his

epiphany; he had had and enjoyed wine. But he had never had a

great wine. Therefore he was unfamiliar with what qualities make

a great wine great. Yet, when experiencing a great wine for the

first time, he realized its greatness by appreciating its

aesthetic properties. But how did the novice drinker know how to

appreciate its qualities? If a wine’s qualities are in relation

to its proper categorization, there should be no way for the

novice to appreciate a great wine; such epiphanies should simply

not be possible.

Perhaps a defender of the application of a Walton-style view

to wine would want to claim that such category-free epiphanies 8 Smith, op. cit., p. 52; See also Kent Bach’s “Knowledge,

Wine and Taste: What good is Knowledge (in enjoying Wine)?”in Barry C. Smith (ed.), Questions of Taste: the philosophy of wine(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 21-40.

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are not really possible. Such a person might argue that true

appreciation of wine does depend on its categorization. This is

just what Jonathan Cohen suggests in his essay “Wine-Tasting,

Blind and Otherwise: Blindness as a Perceptual Limitation.”9

There he argues that blind-tasting does not achieve its stated

goal—that of unbiased tasting, and further that “blind-tasting

positively prevents us from perceiving things that we should want

to perceive in tasting wine.”10 Cohen argues that in tasting a

wine without any knowledge of its background, such as varietal,

vintage, and appellation, the taster will be unable to direct his

attention to certain features of a wine. When one is aware that

one is about to taste a Chablis, for instance, one can direct his

attention to the delicate characteristics of a Chablis as a

Chablis. Cain Todd makes a similar claim in The Philosophy of Wine: A

Case of Truth, Beauty, and Intoxication. There he states wine knowledge

will “govern the way in which we taste wine, the expectations and

attention we will bring to our appreciation and perception,” and

that “This requires experience and practice, and the possession 9 Manuscript of a paper presented at Workshop on Wine

Expertise, University of London in Paris, Paris, 13 October2011; I thank Cohen for his correspondence on this issue.

10 Ibid., 15

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of this background knowledge is just what marks the expert from

the non-expert.”11 For Cohen, and presumably Todd would agree,

when one tastes a wine ignorant of this information, one’s

attention is drawn to those features “that are most easily

discriminable by us—for example, depth of color, intensity,

oakiness, sweetness, density.”12 As a result, when tasting wine

blindly or simply without adequate background knowledge, we will

actually neglect what may be a wine’s most rewarding taste-

features.

Cohen explicitly ties his defense of sighted wine tasting to

Walton’s categories. Both he and Todd maintain that proper

aesthetic appreciation depends on evaluating a wine within its

proper category.13 Cohen returns to the example of Chablis on

several occasions. If we taste a Chablis mixed in with typical

Chardonnays during a blind-tasting, with the bare information

that we are tasting wines made from the Chardonnay grape, the

Chablis is likely to come across as weak. Yet, Cohen notes,

Chablis has a noticeably different flavor profile than that of

11 Todd, op. cit., pp. 108-109.12 Cohen, op. cit., p. 17.13 Todd, op. cit., p. 110.

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most Chardonnays, and without proper background knowledge we will

fail to appreciate the more delicate flavor profile of a typical

Chablis, and therefore not properly appreciate it.14 One might

sum up both Cohen’s and Todd’s point in the following manner:

some flavor-notes are standard for certain varietals, and as a

result we should know what kind of wine we are tasting and look

for those notes in tasting a wine.15

It is worth noting that the position of Cohen and Todd may

actually be stronger than that of Walton, at least when it comes

to the application to wine. Where Walton says “at least in some

cases, it is correct to perceive a work in certain categories and

incorrect to perceive it in others,”16 the position of Todd and

Cohen appears to be that without wine-specific category knowledge

the novice will inevitably be drawn to some features of a wine

and neglect others. Note above that Cohen says that blind-tasting

“positively prevents us from perceiving things that we should

want to perceive in tasting wine” and Cohen states that

14 Todd makes an almost identical point; see op. cit., pp. 110-111.

15 Cohen, op. cit., pp. 19-20; Todd, op. cit., pp. 110-111.16 Op. cit., .356.

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appreciation and perception “requires experience and practice.”

The novice wine drinker essentially is tasting blindly precisely

because she lacks experience and practice, and so it seems on the

Cohen/Todd view a wine novice should be positively prevented from

experiencing a fine wine’s aesthetic properties: experience is

necessary for appreciation.

It appears at times that Smith holds a similarly strong

position to Cohen and Todd. Smith similarly maintains that

knowledge is part of enjoying a wine and that it enables one to

properly enjoy it. He states “The analytical taster and the

novice taster are doing something quite different… [The

analytical taster] guides his attention towards certain aspects

of his experience, selecting some for particular scrutiny.”17 He

goes on to say:

We are seeking out particular types of experience, andthis requires knowledge and training. Not everythingabout the taste of a wine is surrendered at first, oris accessible without a skillful search. A great bottlewill not yield everything all at once, or to justanyone.18

17 Smith, op. cit., p. 49.18 Ibid., 50

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Given the similarity of his position to that of Cohen and Todd,

as well as his use of the word “requires”, it seems he too should

deny the possibility of the epiphany experience. Thus there

appears to be a tension in Smith’s view of wine appreciation: on

the one hand he holds that the novice wine drinker may enjoy and

appreciate a great wine, while on the other he holds that some

knowledge is required for what he calls particular types of

experience. This naturally raises the question of how the

epiphany experience is possible for the novice at all.

Smith distinguishes between what he calls recognition of

quality and tasting analytically.19 Presumably the novice is

capable of the former, but not the latter. It may be true that in

making a considered comparison between two wines the novice would

be found lacking. However, Smith must at least admit that when

the novice does recognize quality, she is surely experiencing the

aesthetic properties found in the wine. Smith states, “The

tasting impressions on which a considered assessment of a wine

are based are first sought out and highlighted by selective

attention. We need to prepare ourselves to be receptive to

19 I owe this point to an anonymous referee.

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certain kinds of experiences. We need to know what we are looking

for.”20 The novice who experiences the epiphany, however, does

not know what to look for, yet she experiences the properties

nonetheless—for how else could she have the epiphany? Depending

on what Smith means by the phrase considered assessment, a novice

may not be capable of this. But it is difficult to square

acknowledging the so-called epiphany with talk of proper

preparation to experience the aesthetic qualities of a wine. It

does not seem plausible that the epiphany depends on a special

preparation, nor that the epiphany would be possible without

experiencing the kinds of experiences that a great wine has to

offer. Further, how can we experientially separate the

appreciation of quality and the appreciation of the aesthetic

properties within a wine? If one senses that something is of a

high quality, surely that judgment is based on the appreciation

of its aesthetic properties. In order for an epiphany experience

to be possible, there must be a zone of reliable appreciation

that does not depend on familiarity with categories.

20 Ibid.

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Perhaps the casual-wine drinker pre-epiphany does have

general wine tasting categories from her experience with mediocre

wine. She has categories concerning color, mouth-feel, etc, so

the epiphany is not really a category-free proper aesthetic

experience. 21 Perhaps this is all that is required for one to

have the epiphany—the epiphany takes place within those

categories. So some knowledge really is required to properly

appreciate any wine at all, just not the sort of specialized

knowledge that comes from classes on wine tasting.

We should not be persuaded by this line of thought. The

concept of epiphany has to do with transcending one’s typical

experiences. Smith’s epiphany is something along the lines of:

What I was drinking before was not really even wine; this is

amazing! An epiphany is an emergence from the allegorical cave of

taste experience. So, great wine may have aesthetic properties

that are simply not to be found in ordinary wine. Therefore we

should not believe one’s everyday wine drinking categories can

lay the category groundwork for the epiphany. The epiphany is an

epiphany because it shatters the groundwork.

21 Cohen made this point via email correspondence.

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Further, and more importantly, this response suggests that

all wine drinking counts as aesthetic experience. We should

certainly not deny that all wine has a taste, but does all wine

merit aesthetic appreciation? In other words: does all wine admit

of the sustained appreciation that a great wine admits of? If

not, it is hard to believe that all wine is then experienced

within the same aesthetic categories. So, then, the ordinary wine

drinker, although having drank plenty of wine, has not

experienced wine as aesthetic experience in the requisite sense.

Therefore, it would be safe to conclude that the ordinary wine

drinker will not be adequately prepared to appreciate a great

wine. If great wine has aesthetic properties that are simply not

to be found in ordinary wine, ordinary wine drinkers would not

become familiar with those properties. In Steve Charter’s study

of wine drinkers he found that certain dimensions, such as

complexity, tended to mark out great wines and that even good

wines lacked this taste dimension.22 Additionally, Todd

explicitly states that table wines do not offer the same kinds of

satisfaction that a great wine is able to offer.23 If the

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aesthetic experience of a great wine is different in kind from

that of table wine, it seems plausible that great wines fall in

different kinds of categories than that of ordinary wine and as

such ordinary wine simply cannot familiarize a drinker with those

categories. If a great Bordeaux offers different kinds of

experiences than that of a mediocre Bordeaux, it does not seem

possible that they could be appreciated within all the same

categories, for they offer categorically different experiences.

This is significant because surely Walton would want to deny

that all paintings can afford the viewer a significant aesthetic

experience and that looking at any painting whatsoever

familiarizes one with all the aesthetic categories in which

paintings are appreciated. For instance, it is likely that Walton

would want to deny that by looking at a child’s painting of a

house a person is as a result prepared to appreciate

impressionism and that both are appreciated within all the same

categories. If we should want to deny that any painting can

familiarize a person with the categories by which fine paintings

22 Charters, op. cit., p. 168.23 See Todd, op. cit., pp. 114-115.

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are appreciated, then we should want to do the same for wine.

Further, in both the case of visual art and wine, one needs no

category knowledge to know if the work is bad; and it is unclear

how drinking all the bad wine in the world prepares one for the

proper experience of a great wine.

Kent Bach essentially agrees with this argument on two

counts. First, he believes that mediocre wine is not in the same

category as great wine; nonetheless he believes that there is no

special knowledge required to appreciate a great wine:

Like a great work of art, a great wine has more tonotice and more worth noticing than a run-of-the-millwine… and noticing them and enjoying them is all thatis required for appreciating the wine. It reallydoesn’t go deeper than that.24

Bach argues that there may be pleasure derived from knowing a

great deal about wine, that is, from being a wine connoisseur,

but that this is a cognitive pleasure and that it does not stem

from any of the properties within the wine itself. For Bach, the

aesthetic pleasures and qualities of a wine are open to any

person with normally functioning faculties who drinks it.

24 Bach, op. cit., pp. 33-4.

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Intuitively the aesthetic qualities of a wine are in the

wine to be tasted, whatever our knowledge about wine. Does it

matter if a flavor-note is standard to a varietal for someone to

enjoy a wine and taste that note? Smith’s position that knowledge

is required for proper appreciation is somewhat odd given that he

also holds that a wine has an objective taste; he holds that

tastes “are properties a wine has, and tasting [ ] is an

experience a subject has.” 25 Given his position that wine has

objective taste properties, it should strike him as plausible

that certain flavor-notes are present in a wine and there to be

tasted regardless of categorization. A taste property may in fact

go un-noticed, but that the taste-property is there to be noticed

in no way depends on prior category knowledge; if the tastes of a

wine are objective properties of the wine, it does not seem that

wine category knowledge should be required to taste the notes

within the wine. Bach supposes that the tasting-notes on a bottle

may simply verbalize what a taster was already experiencing, but

was unable to put into words for himself—the verbalization merely

reinforces the experience.26 25 Smith, op. cit., p. 44.26 Bach, op. cit., p. 37

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If membership in a category were determinable solely in

virtue of the art object’s perceptible qualities, then it may

make sense to say that the novice wine drinker may happen to

experience a great wine’s full flavor profile, or that the

epiphany-experience itself makes new categories available to the

novice wine-taster through which he experiences the wine.27 If

aesthetic categories (and hence the aesthetic qualities) are

there to be perceived in this way then we are able to account for

Smith’s observation that “A recognition of quality does appear to

precede a detailed understanding of what is going on in the

wine.”28 But then it seems as if the categories are nothing more

than a way of organizing aesthetic properties that are

perceptible independently of category knowledge. It is not

plausible that aesthetic experience makes us aware of new

categories when the categories themselves make the experience

possible. The only way to make sense of the categories on such an

interpretation is to understand them as simply calling our

attention to aesthetic properties and in no way undergirding

them; but this is no longer Walton’s view: he holds that

“examining a work with the senses can by itself reveal neither

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how it is correct to perceive it, nor how to perceive that

way.”29 So, if aesthetic appreciation really does depend on the

categories in some kind of dependence relation, then prior

knowledge—knowledge of vintages, varietals, and terroir—is

required to properly appreciate a wine and Smith’s epiphany

really is impossible.

In our original description of Walton’s view in section two

we noted that he does not advocate a blanket view: he holds that

for some works certain knowledge is required to properly

appreciate its aesthetic properties. As a last defense of a

Walton-style position on wine appreciation, one might weaken the

strong position of Smith/Cohen/Todd described above and suppose

something like the following: in some cases individuals are able

to experience an art object’s aesthetic properties without the

need for any special category knowledge, perhaps because these

art objects are more accessible or less complex, and that it

these kinds of art objects that allow for the epiphany experience

to occur; however, not all art objects may induce epiphany. So by

27 Cohen also suggested this in email correspondence.28 Smith, op. cit., p. 5529 Walton, op. cit., p. 367

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parity of reasoning, only some great wines are able to induce an

epiphany, while other great wines may not be properly experienced

without adequate background knowledge.30 I see two problems with

this. First, great wines are supposedly marked by their

complexity. The greatness, the appreciable-ness, if you will,

lies in the multiple flavor-notes to be found in the wine—so an

accessible, non-complex wine would likely not be able to induce

an epiphany. Secondly, one is naturally led to ask what makes one

great wine capable of enabling an epiphany experience while

another great wine is unable to do so; this will likely be a

difficult question to answer.

The advocate of this position may be thinking that in the

case of painting or visual art, certain styles are clearly more

accessible and as a result may be more likely to induce an

epiphany, while other works, say some modern piece that is

attempting a commentary on earlier work, will be much less likely

to induce an aesthetic epiphany. Further they believe the more

accessible works can be differentiated from the less accessible

30 This view was suggested to me by an anonymous reviewer. Ithank that person for the suggestion.

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ones. Perhaps this is correct for visual art. But we can ask a

further question that Bach poses concerning wine: does knowing

that a visual art piece is attempting a kind of commentary

contribute to its aesthetic qualities or the aesthetic pleasure

that it may give, or does this knowledge lead to a different kind

of appreciation, say an intellectual or cognitive appreciation?

Perhaps these two things cannot be separated in the case of some

art works. At the very least the case of wine epiphanies, and the

epiphany experience in general, does show that for some kinds of

aesthetic appreciation specific category knowledge is not

necessary.

4. Conclusion

The problematic nature of the categories as applied to wine comes

out best when we consider the experience of aesthetic epiphany.

As the example of visual art discussed above indicates, we should

likely be careful generalizing the conclusion beyond the case of

wine. We can at least say the following: if the novice wine

drinker can try a wine and appreciate its aesthetic properties,

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perhaps someone completely new to the symphony can appreciate the

work of Mozart on her first listening—or at least know that it is

good, even if she does not know why it is. With the experience of

a highly sensual object such as wine at least, there seems to be

a significant arena of aesthetic appreciation that is independent

of art categories.31

31 I would like to thank Jonathan Cohen for his helpfulcorrespondence on this issue. I would also like to thankCarolyn Korsmeyer, David Braun, Patrick Kelly, and PatrickRay, all of whom discussed this issue with me at greatlength.