Terroiriste

Back home in Sävar, I am making an Italian dinner and reminding myself of Roger Scruton’s words that “terroir” is the sense of place in a glass. As such, someone who emphasis this aspect of wine over dispassionate taste receptor signals, is per definition a “terroiriste”. For me, being deeply invested in a cosmopolitan worldview that focuses on what we share as humans rather than what divides us, talk about “place” always makes me wary. Yet, when it comes to wine, I must admit that it has always been precisely these imaginative qualities that have appealed to me, and that a glass of Italian wine has been as much a spiritual as a medical antidote to the winter darkness of the High North.

Tonight, I am drinking some #småparti Chianti as I am reading up on the resignation of Liz Truss and Russia’s threats to leave (sic!) the United Nations if the organization goes ahead and investigates Russia’s use of Iranian drones. More than ever, it is difficult to tell what the road ahead looks like, but I share Francis Fukuyama’s analysis that history is still, essentially, “over” and that reality, as in the war in Ukraine or Covid, has shown how incapable seemingly strong authoritarian states are of learning and how futile their attempts to control reality actually are.