Art with Wine
I have a dear friend who is an Artist and we had just moved into a house with lots of beautiful wall space. I kept thinking that it would a really amazing to have a party where we pair his Art with Wine. My original thought was to go through the Art he had available and choose some pieces that paired (at least in my mind) with certain wines. He agreed to do this but with one caveat, he would create pieces to pair with the wines.
Here is a short teaser that we put together before the party.
How do you pair wine with art? There is of course taste and texture, but I really find the nose of a wine (what you smell when you put your nose in the glass) to be more inspirational. Scent often brings up scent memories that can take you back to a very specific time or place. The memories are often emotional and can bring a smile to your face or a tear to your eye. RuBen loves to paint from an emotional place. So we found wines or samples of wines that he could smell and then paint. (I think he drank a little along the way and…actually added a little wine to some of the paint!)
Inspiring the ART
Adding the sense of smell
The idea from here was to create scent jars for the tasting. I have found there is nothing better to get a party going and to get people talking than scent jars.
Wine is a constantly changing variety of compounds, that come from the grapes, the yeast that causes the fermentation and then the vessels in which it is fermented and aged. Of course there are other variables, like soil, climate and the individual winemakers style. Wine is a living liquid, constantly changing, every moment that it ages, every moment that it is exposed to air and as it’s temperature changes. What it smells and tasted like can change from the time you take your first sip of a glass to your last.
There is lots of room for discussion with people about what they are smelling and tasting. But most people are intimidated about smelling a wine and telling you what they are smelling. Without comparisons, people often feel like they might get something wrong. When you open up the scent jars, they can do that comparison, and it will be different for each person. We go back to the emotional response…somehow reflecting on smell and aroma deactivates that worry about judgement. There is something in smelling that turns off inhibitors and people get excited. They want to share the smells and see if others get that also. It can be very freeing and allows people to see the “nose of a wine”, something they thought of before as stuffy and perhaps snobby language of wine people and suddenly experience it first hand for themselves.
Opening Minds
You take this uninhibited emotional experience and then pair it with art. People then have opened their minds to experience the art in a whole new way. Some will compare a scent memory to what they see in the painting.
This whole concept is about allowing people to Open their Minds to see things in a different way, Art, Wine…and maybe so much more.
Open Minds
The party was amazing and we will be posting on how we chose the wines, the details on the wines we chose, how to set up your own scent jars and of course the Art! So stick with us!
Check back here at Crushed Grape Chronicles for more on the details on the wines we paired with the Art and our Crushed Grapes and Open Minds Event! You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
And you can find RuBen and his gorgeous art at Act2Art or on Facebook
Leave a Reply