Wine in Pills: Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s Wit at the Garden Table
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
April 1, 1755
Dearest reader,
On this day, society was quietly set aflutter by the birth of a man whose name would become as synonymous with the pleasures of the table as roses are with June—Monsieur Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, French lawyer, canny politician, and, perhaps most memorably, the oracle of taste and epicurean delight.
If the garden's toil is its poetry, then surely Brillat-Savarin’s pen was its music, for he composed not with notes or petals, but with the flavors and nuances of a well-laid feast.
Is it not fascinating, darling gardeners, how the soil that brings forth a carrot might also inspire a philosophy?
In Brillat-Savarin’s seminal work, The Physiology of Taste, he mused not only upon food, but upon life itself, blending wit and wisdom as deftly as one might combine herbs in a Provençal bouquet.
Picture the scene: a gleaming Parisian dining room, laughter bubbling, and our hero, who was offered grapes at dessert after his dinner. How deliciously contrary his response—to decline the grapes, quipping, “Much obliged,” said he, pushing the plate aside;
“I am not accustomed to taking my wine in pills.”
What a provocateur!
As in the best gardens, where the rarest blossoms lie hidden until one is prompted to examine the hedgerow, so too did Brillat-Savarin invite us to discover the subtleties between food and nature.
He asked us—what truly separates the savoring of the grape from savoring the glass?
Do we, as cultivators, sometimes overlook the extraordinary found in the humble fruit while chasing the brilliance of transformation?
Might not a gardener’s love for the grapevine echo the epicure’s devotion to a nuanced Bordeaux? Are we, with hands stained by soil, so very different from those whose appreciation is reserved for the harvest’s final, most intoxicating expression?
Let us ponder this, and raise our trowels (or perhaps our glasses) to Brillat-Savarin, whose keen sense of humor and appreciation for earthly delights remind us: the garden and the table are not so far apart.
We are all participants in nature’s endless banquet, selecting, savoring, and—oh yes—occasionally pushing the plate away with a smile.
