Sancho Panza, David Hume and Wine Connoisseurship.

I’m intrigued by the references to Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Sancho Panza within the connoisseurship debate.

Just for the hell of it I googled “Cervantes and connoisseurship” and came up with an interesting link to an essay by the Scottish philosopher David Hume; his essay on taste which mentions Cervantes. Found this blog with a quote from Hume.

But as our intention is to mingle some light of the understanding and the feelings of sentiment, it will be proper to give a more accurate definition of delicacy than has hitherto been attempted. And not to draw our philosophy from too profound a source, we shall have recourse to a noted story in Don Quixote (Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, chapter 13).

This extract from my copy of Don Quixote refers to a dialogue between Sancho Panza and another squire on the subject of wine connoisseurship.  

But now by the remembrance of her you love best, pray thee tell m, is not this your right Ciudad wine? “Thou hast a rare palate,’ answered the Squire of the Wood, ‘it is the very same, and of a good age too.’ ‘I thought so’ said Sancho, ‘but is it not strange now, that but turn me loose among a parcel of wine I shall find the difference? Adad! sir, I no sooner clap my nose to a taster of wine, but I can tell the place, the grape, the flavour, the age, the strength, and the qualities of the parcel: and all this is natural to me, sir, I had two relations by the father’s side that were the nicest tasters that were known for a long time in la Mancha; of which two I will relate you a story that makes good what I said. It fell out on a time, that some wine was drawn fresh out of a hogshead, and given to these same friends of mine to taste; and they were asked the opinions of the condition, the quality, the goodness, the badness of the wine, and all that. The one tried it with the tip of his tongue, the other only smelled it; the first said the wine tasted of iron; the second said, it had rather had a taste of goat’s leather. The vintner swore his vessel was clean, and the wine neat, and so pure that it could have no taste of any such thing. Well, time ran on, the wine was sold, and when the vessel came to be emptied, what do you think, sir, was found in the cask? A little key, with a bit of leather thong tied to it. Now, judge you by this, wether he that comes of such a generation, has not reason to understand wine.?’

Theree are interesting parallels here that can be drawn between the wine connoisseur and the connoisseur of pictures or drawings. Sancho’s ability to separate out different wines from each other puts one in mind of the those eighteenth- century connoisseurs who claimed they were able to spot the genuine Parmigianino sheet amongst the imitators. And wine has played some role in the social construction of the connoisseur; fine wine, fine art.

Hume’s excerpt from Cervantes should seen in the wider context of debates about taste and aesthetics in the eighteenth century, in which connoisseurship in its various manifestations plays a part. Interestingly, Hume never used the word “connoisseur”; but he did write about the “critic” and how like discernment in wine tasting it is necessary to separate the true critic from those that pretend to be.  It might be worth pursuing the relationship between critic and connoisseur as it evolved during the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries. 

By the way I don’t drink wine that much; I much prefer real ale, which doesn’t quite fit with the image of the art connoisseur, or even the art historian. I can’t think of many art history bacchanalias (sorry, conferences) where beer was on tap, an omission I’ve pointed out when I’ve been on various organising committees- to no avail. I usually correct this deficiency by repairing to a local hostelry.

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Sancho Panza, David Hume and Wine Connoisseurship. - Art History Today