A Philosophy of Natural Wine: Nature, Artifacts, and the Space in Between (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Food)

This book examines whether wine can be natural and explores what this means and why it matters. Natural wine is one of the most contested notions in contemporary food and drink culture.Its defenders celebrate it as a return to authenticity; its critics dismiss it as a conceptual contradiction.This book argues that both sides have missed the deeper philosophical significance of the debate.Drawing on metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics, The Philosophy of Natural Wine develops a rigorous account of what it would mean for a human-made object to also be natural.It introduces the concept of naturefactual artifacts-objects intentionally produced so that natural properties become central to their appreciation-and shows that natural wine is a paradigm instance of this broader category.The book examines how such objects ought to be appreciated, what excellences their making requires, and why they represent a genuinely new kind of aesthetic value.Written to be accessible to non-specialists, this