Notes from Left Field

Video from the day that sparked this reflection. Turn on audio to hear Oz Clarke on the subject of natural wine. This, fatigue and appearance of a creature that pre-dates the dinosaur could not but set off some crazy mental sparks

Part One - The Holy Grail Has Been Found - by a Drunken Monkey!

Wine the Creator

Sang Greal or holy blood, the Arthurian Holy Grail was found long ago and drunk from long and deep! It turned out to be quite other than what the Knights of Camelot, Sion or the Disney Channel expected. But so much more wonderful.

There are two searing insights I wish to advance which speak to wine as the real Holy Grail, the actual exilir of life, 1) wine is not only an essential part of a balanced life, your existence as a super sophisticated, largely hairless ape, is only possible because of wine, and 2) the wine you're hopefully drinking today is little changed from pre-human vintage stuff! Both observations should excite your imagination and cause you to consider that glass in hand with a great deal more reverance. It was found and partaken of long ago not by Merovingian Kings but by a hairy proto-Hominid ancestor; to which we owe our lives.

In the beginning there really was wine

Whether the light at the beginning was from a cosmic bang or from the tip of some chap's index finger is your call. Regardless, soon after the light there was wine. Not "soon" in news cycle terms but wine certainly emerged once the primordial soup cooled off and life began manifesting all over the show. We can happily say that we owe our very existence as a species to wine. I'm saying it! Although in all likelihood wine will probably be my financial if not existential demise.

It was Rotten Fruit Not a Monolith and Bone!

And it's not just me saying it! There is an excellent school of thought called Drunken Monkey Theory you have probably heard about (or at least muttered the phrase while observing massed youth at an unchaperoned social event or 3 or more IT sales people together at lunch). DMT argues that groups of ape-ancesters began foraging for fallen fruit from the forest floor when the arboreal trees that had, until then, sustained them began to fail. The tree-huggers who were too afraid or prudish to come down soon failed too. But the bottom-dwellers thrived. They were selected for additional evolution and that culminated in you! Raise your glass to them!

Forest floor fruit was abundant, easy to find, and rich in sugars. It also came in various states of ferment and was therefore mildly alcoholic. The ground apes had found food and shelter from the storm of their existence. Unfiltered, fault-ridden and not an anchovy on toast in sight but in its essentials we have natural wine. Five stars! DMT doesn't say this but you could gaily make a case for monkey-gets-tipsy as the true zero point for the emergence of life. After all, until floor wine, life was probably pretty tedious, brutish and unpleasant for our proto-ape tipuna. The Drunken Monkey moment is a much more compelling image than that of two protozoa merging or a slimy leg-fin fish beaching itself on some mud, bro.

By now it will be apparent that I am not Linnaeus or Attenborough. Therefore I think I can be afforded leeway to gloss over some details here. Suffice to say this early wine-drinking behavioural adaption led to abundant dietary energy and a whole new set of social considerations (and probably regrets!) for our increasingly clever ancestor. There were now a continuation of sufficient kilojoules and ample social complexity to warrant the growing of some decent cerebral cortex!

Howling at the Moon

I am no Mark Rowlands either. His rather special 2008 book The Philosopher and the Wolf (which has influenced our family in ways he could never imagine), amongst other things, contrasts the development of the ape brain with that of the wolf brain (and mind). Rowlands has distain for the ape brain. Nevertheless, he writes beautifully of the complex inner world of the drunken monkey, requiring a Moore's Law approach to brain development inorder to process the burgeoning information stemming from the apes' social living arrangements. To live long and prosper, the ape must have a theory of mind. And you'll need more hardware to run it and store it. icloud is some way away. Having a theory of mind is particularly important if you are not the Charles Atlas Silverback sort of ape; trading on great looks, shear bulk and a jackedup amygdala. If you can't bully and fight your way through the social jungle you have nothing but your wits! You must know the rules and apply them to your advantage.

Rowlands gives the example of a troupe sauntering through a forest. A lesser monkey towards the tail of the line spots a strawberry, or a Grand Cru or something, just off the trail. No one else has noticed. Its ancient brain wants it to scream huzzah! rush over, pop the cork and glug. But our wiley sub-alpha's new brain knows that to do that will have the jocks rush in to snatch it and beat the shit out of us while they're at it. So, hold your peace little monkey. You'll need a cunning plan. "Oh, I think I left my cellphone back at the clearing. You guys carry on. I'll be right back". Such deviousness needs cortex power. And that needs calories. And leathery leaves just aren't going to cut it. All this mental exhaustion surely needs a way to quiet a busy and coritsol-soaked mind. A drink madame Koko?

Welcome to the Jungle

What has changed, really? The Silverbacks now run hedge funds and have podcasts and crypto or trust accounts but still think of themselves as gods. That's the jungle we've created since coming down from the tops to taste of drops of god. The essential point of DMT is that without the disinhibiting effect of wine (alcohol) the ability to maintain exceedingly complex, frequently fractuous, social bonds would not have been possible. Communities, cities, and civilisations are built on wine. To paraphrase Garrison Keillor's Powder Milk Biscuit jingle, wine gives shy persons the strength to get out and do what must be done! At a very prosaic level, I suspect there are many many marriages, and more children, that would not exist at all but for wine!

The Quest for the Holy Grail

First, we need to know what we're looking for. And then we'll need some coconut shells.

Before teeing off on the subject of Grails and making the vaunting leap to wine, as homework, I think we might just watch some Monty Python tonight! And drink to those fearless, non-discriminating wine scooping/sucking primate ancestors and their modern day equivalents - those who continue to fearlessly make wine. To the winemaker!

Part two to come. But first, a vintage to prep for!