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For Aristotle, our unique capacity to reason is what defines us as human beings. Therefore, our happiness, or our flourishing, consists in leading a life that enables us to use and develop our reason, and that is in accordance with reason.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states that all human beings are ‘endowed with reason’, and it has long been held that reason is something that God gave us, that we share with God, and that is the divine, immortal element in us.

At the dawn of the Age of Reason, Descartes doubted everything except his ability to reason. ‘Because reason’, he wrote, ‘is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us…’

But what is reason? Reason is more than mere associative thinking, more than the mere ability to move from one idea (such as storm clouds) to another (such as imminent rain). Associative thinking can result from processes other than reason, such as instinct, learning, or intuition. Reason, in contrast, involves providing reasons—ideally good reasons—for an association. It involves using a system of representation such as thought or language to derive or arrive at an association.

Reason is often amalgamated with logic, also known as formal logic or deductive reasoning. At the very least, logic is seen as the purest form of reason. Yes, logic is basically an attempt to codify the most reliable or fail-safe forms of reasoning. But logic, or at any rate modern logic, is concerned merely with the validity of arguments, with the right relationship between premises and conclusion. It is not concerned with the actual truth or falsity of the premises or the applicability of the conclusion. Reason, in contrast, is a much broader psychological activity which also involves assessing evidence, creating and testing hypotheses, weighing competing arguments, evaluating means and ends, developing and applying heuristics (mental shortcuts), and so on. All this requires the use of judgement, which is why reason, unlike logic, cannot be delegated to a computer, and also why it so often fails to persuade. Logic is but a tool of reason, and, in fact, it can be reasonable to accept something that is or appears to be illogical.

It is often thought, not least in educational establishments, that ‘logic’ is able to provide immediate certainty and the authority or credibility that goes with it. But logic is a lot more limited than many people imagine. Logic essentially consists in a set of operations for deriving a truth from other truths. In a sense, it merely makes explicit that which was previously implicit. It brings nothing new to the table. The conclusion merely flows from the premises as their inevitable consequence, for example:

  1. All birds have feathers. (Premise 1)
  2. Woodpeckers are birds. (Premise 2)
  3. Therefore, woodpeckers have feathers. (Conclusion)

Another issue with logic is that it relies on premises that are founded, not on logic itself, but on inductive reasoning. How do we know that ‘all birds have feathers’? Well, we don’t know for sure. We merely suppose that they do because, so far, every bird that we have seen or heard about has had feathers. But the existence of birds without feathers, if only in the fossil record, is not beyond the bounds of possibility. Many avian species are hatched naked, and a featherless bird called Rhea recently took the Internet by storm.

Inductive reasoning only ever yields probabilistic ‘truths’, and yet it is the basis of everything that we know or think that we know about the world we live in. Our only justification for induction is that it has worked in the past, which is, of course, an inductive proof, tantamount to saying that induction works because induction works! To rescue it from this Problem of Induction, Karl Popper argued that science proceeds not inductively but deductively, by making bold claims and then seeking to falsify those claims. But if Popper is right, science could never tell us what is, but only ever what is not. Even if we did arrive at some truth, we could never know for sure that we had arrived. And while our current paradigms may represent some improvement on the ones that went before, it would be either ignorant or arrogant to presume that they amounted to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Putting these inductive/deductive worries aside, reason is limited in reach, if not in theory then at least in practice. The movement of a simple pendulum is regular and easy to predict, but the movement of a double pendulum (a pendulum with another pendulum attached to its end) is, as can be seen on YouTube, extremely chaotic. Similarly, the interaction between two physical bodies such as the sun and the earth can be reduced to a simple formula, but the interaction between three physical bodies is much more complex—which is why the length of the lunar month is not a constant. But even this so-called Three-Body Problem is as nothing compared to the entanglement of human affairs. God, it is sometimes said, gave all the easy problems to the physicists.

The intricacies of human affairs often lead to a paralysis of reason, and we are left undecided, sometimes for years or even into the grave. To cut through all this complexity, we rely heavily on forces such as emotions and desires—which is why Aristotle’s Rhetoric on the art of arguing includes a detailed dissection of what used to be called the passions. Our emotions and desires define the aims or goals of our reasoning. They determine the parameters of any particular deliberation and carry to conscious attention only a small selection of all the available facts and alternatives. Brain injured people with a diminished capacity for emotion find it especially hard to make decisions, as do people with apathy, which is a symptom of severe depression and other mental disorders. Relying so heavily on the emotions comes at a cost, which is, of course, that emotions aren’t rational and can distort reasoning. Fear alone can open the gate to all manner of self-deception. On the other hand, that emotions aren’t rational need not make them irrational. Some emotions are appropriate or justified, while others are not. This is why, as well as coming to grips with science, it is so important to educate our emotions.

Another shortcoming of reason is that it sometimes leads to unreasonable conclusions, or even contradicts itself. In On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle says that, while the opinions of certain thinkers appear to follow logically in dialectical discussion, ‘to believe them seems next door to madness when one considers the facts’. In Plato’s Lesser Hippias, Socrates manages to argue that people who commit injustice voluntarily are better than those who do it involuntarily, but then confesses that he sometimes thinks the opposite, and sometimes goes back and forth:

My present state of mind is due to our previous argument, which inclines me to believe that in general those who do wrong involuntarily are worse than those who do wrong voluntarily, and therefore I hope that you will be good to me, and not refuse to heal me; for you will do me a much greater benefit if you cure my soul of ignorance, than you would if you were to cure my body of disease.

The sophists of Classical Greece taught rhetoric to wealthy young men with ambitions of holding public office. Prominent sophists included Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Thrasymachus, Callicles, and Euthydemus, all of whom feature as characters in Plato’s dialogues. Protagoras charged extortionate fees for his services. He once took on a pupil, Euathlus, on the understanding that he would be paid once Euathlus had won his first court case. However, Euathlus never won a case, and eventually Protagoras sued him for non-payment. Protagoras argued that if he won the case he would be paid, and if Euathlus won the case, he still would be paid, because Euathlus would have won a case. Eualthus retorted that if he won the case he would not have to pay, and if Protagoras won the case, he still would not have to pay, because he still would not have won a case!

Whereas philosophers such as Plato use reason to arrive at the truth, sophists such as Protagoras abuse reason to move mobs and enrich themselves. But we are, after all, social animals, and reason evolved more as a means of solving practical problems and influencing people than as a ladder to abstract truths. What’s more, reason is not a solitary but a collective enterprise: premises are at least partially reliant on the achievements of others, and we ourselves make much better progress when prompted and challenged by our peers. The principal theme of Plato’s Protagoras is the teachability of virtue. At the end of the dialogue, Socrates remarks that he began by arguing that virtue cannot be taught, but ended by arguing that virtue is no other than knowledge, and therefore that it can be taught. In contrast, Protagoras began by arguing that virtue can be taught, but ended by arguing that some forms of virtue are not knowledge, and therefore that they cannot be taught! Had they not debated, both men would have stuck with their original, crude opinions and been no better off.

Why does reason say ridiculous things and contradict itself? Perhaps the biggest problem is with language. Words and sentences can be vague or ambiguous. If you remove a single grain from a heap of sand, it is still a heap of sand. But what happens if you keep on repeating the process? Is a single remaining grain still a heap? If not, at what point did the heap go from being a heap to a non-heap? When the wine critic Jancis Robinson asked on Twitter what qualifies someone to call themselves a sommelier, she received a least a dozen different responses. Another big problem is with the way we are. Our senses are crude and limited. More subtly, our minds come with built-in notions that may have served our species well but do not accurately or even approximately reflect reality. Zeno’s paradoxes, for example, flush out the limits of our understanding of something as rudimentary as movement. Some of Zeno’s paradoxes side with quantum theory in suggesting that space and time are discrete, while others side with the theory of relativity in suggesting that they are continuous. As far as I know (I am not a physicist), quantum theory and the theory of relativity remain unreconciled. Other concepts, such as infinity or what lies outside the universe, are simply beyond our ability to conceive. A final sticking point is with self-referential statements, such as “This statement is false.” If the statement is false, it is true; but if it is true, it is not false.

In concluding, I want to make it very clear that I hold reason in the highest regard. It is, after all, the foundation of our peace and freedom, which are under constant threat from the forces of unreason. In highlighting its limits, I seek not to disparage or undermine it but to understand and use it better, even to exalt it.

‘The last function of reason’, said Blaise Pascal, ‘is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. It is but feeble if it does not see so far as to know this.’

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Food and wine can have a synergistic relationship, such that the wine improves the food and the food the wine, unleashing the full taste potential of both. In many European wine regions, the wine styles and culinary traditions developed reciprocally such that the wines naturally pair with the regional fare. Many of these so-called ‘food wines’ can seem overly tart or tannic if drunk independently, but come into their own once paired with food, and, in particular, those dishes that they co-evolved with. If you respect these time-honoured pairings, you are unlikely to go wrong.

Otherwise, you need to choose what to put into focus: the food or the wine. For instance, if it is the wine that you wish to emphasize, pick a dish that is slightly lighter and complements rather than competes with it. Take care not to pick a dish that is too light or it will be overwhelmed by the wine: although you want the wine to lead, you want the dish to follow closely behind. If it is the food that you wish to emphasize, you are effectively using the wine as a sauce or spice. In all instances, the wine and the food should interact synergistically, with the wine bringing out the best in the food, and the food the best in the wine. This is certainly the case with such classic pairings as Muscadet and oysters, Claret and lamb, and Sauternes and Roquefort.

Taste, however, is subjective, and there cannot and should not be rigid rules for pairing foods and wines. Indeed, part of the pleasure of the wine lover is in experimenting with combinations and, in so doing, multiplying the flavours, textures, and sensations of everyday life. That said, you do need to be versed in the principles that you may, or may not, decide to break.

First, identify the dominant component of your dish. For example, the dominant component of fish served in a creamy sauce is more likely to be the sauce than the fish itself. Then pick a wine that either complements or contrasts with the dominant component. Examples of complementary pairings are: a citrusy Sauvignon Blanc with sole in a lemon sauce, an earthy Pinot Noir with mushroom vol-au-vents, a peppery Syrah with a steak in peppercorn sauce, and a nutty Vin Jaune with Comté cheese.

Four important elements to bear in mind are weight, acidity, tannins, and sweetness. The weight and texture of a wine is determined by such factors as alcohol level, amount of extract and tannin, and winemaking processes such as extended maceration, lees ageing, and oaking. In general, lighter wines pair with lighter foods, whereas heavier, more robust wines pair with heavier, more rustic foods. Good examples of pairings by weight are Chardonnay and lobster or Chardonnay and roast chicken.

Acidity stimulates appetite and cuts through heaviness, explaining the success of such contrasting pairings as Sancerre and goat cheese, Alsatian Riesling and pork belly, and Tokaj and foie gras. In all cases, the wine must be at least as acidic as the dish, and preferably more so: if not, the wine is going to seem thin or insipid.

Tannins can lend chalkiness or grittiness to a wine, and also bitter astringency. Tannins bind to and react with proteins in food, by which process they are ‘softened’. While tannic wines go hand in hand with red meats and cheeses, they pair poorly with spicy or sweet dishes, which can accentuate their bitterness and astringency, and also with fish oils, which can make them taste ‘metallic’.

A sweet dish requires a wine that is just as sweet or sweeter if the wine is not to be overpowered. Sweetness balances heat and spiciness, and also contrasts with saltiness, as, for example, in the case of port and blue cheese. Conversely, alcohol accentuates the heat in spicy food and vice versa. So much explains why Mosel Riesling, which is both high in residual sugar and low in alcohol, is often an excellent choice for spicy food. However, very spicy food will overwhelm almost any wine, so pair with some other beverage such as water, tea, beer, or lassi. Some foods are difficult to pair with wine, most notably chocolate, eggs, fresh tomatoes, and asparagus.

Finally, remember also to match your wine to the occasion, your companions, the season, the weather, the time of day or night, and your mood and tastes. If you are serving more than one wine, think about your line up and make it as varied or interesting or educational as possible.

And of course—even if the tasting conditions are far from ideal—serve the wines blind!

Adapted from the new edition of The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting

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The hallmark of narcissistic personality disorder is grandiosity. The narcissist harbors a strong sense of entitlement, self-aggrandizing fantasies, and a craving for admiration. In severe cases, she may be envious, lacking in empathy, and ready to exploit others in the pursuit of her lofty ambitions. Although she can be charismatic and charming, she more often seems self-absorbed, controlling, and insensitive. If she feels slighted or ridiculed, she might be provoked into a fit of destructive rage and revenge seeking. Such a paroxysmal reaction is sometimes called ‘narcissistic rage’ and can have disastrous consequences for all those involved, including the narcissist herself.

In the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, both the characters of Lord Henry Wooton and Dorian Gray are strongly narcissistic. Lord Henry’s narcissism is insightful and often quite charming and no doubt similar to that of his creator and alter ego, Oscar Wilde.

I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.

On the other hand, Dorian Gray’s narcissism is cold and destructive, leading, among other things, to the suicide of actress Sibyl Vane. In Chapter 7, Sibyl tells Dorian that he brought her to “something [higher] of which all art is but a reflection” and made her understand the nature of true love. Instead of feeling flattered or humbled or otherwise moved, Dorian castigates Sibyl for her poor acting, claiming that it has killed off any love that he might ever have had for her.

‘Yes,’ he cried, ‘you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My God! How mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of you. I will never mention your name. You don’t know what you were to me, once. Why, once… Oh, I can’t bear to think of it! I wish I had never laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of my life…’

A study carried out by Board and Fritzon at the University of Surrey in England found that narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and another personality disorder called anankastic personality disorder are actually more common in high-level executives than in mentally disordered criminal offenders at the high-security Broadmoor Hospital.

This suggests that people commonly benefit from strongly ingrained and potentially maladaptive personality traits. For example, people with narcissistic personality disorder may be highly ambitious, confident, driven, and able to exploit people and situations to maximum advantage. People with histrionic personality disorder may be adept at charming and manipulating others, and thus adept at building and exercising business relationships.

In their study, Board and Fritzon described the executives with a personality disorder as ‘successful psychopaths’ and the criminal offenders as ‘unsuccessful psychopaths,’ and it may be that highly successful people and disturbed psychopaths have more in common than first meets the eye. As the psychologist and philosopher William James put it more than a hundred years ago, ‘When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce… in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.’

Over in the United States, Mullins-Sweatt and her colleagues investigated how successful psychopaths might differ from unsuccessful ones. They asked several members of the psychology and law division of the American Psychological Association, professors of clinical psychology, and criminal attorneys to first identify and then to rate and describe one of their acquaintances (if any) who could be counted as successful and also conformed to psychologist Robert Hare’s definition of a psychopath:

…social predators who charm, manipulate and ruthlessly plow their way through life… Completely lacking in conscience and feeling for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.

From the responses that they collated, the researchers found that successful psychopaths matched unsuccessful ones in all respects but one: conscientiousness. So, it seems that the key difference between unsuccessful and successful psychopaths is that the former behave impulsively and irresponsibly, whereas the latter are able to inhibit or at least restrain destructive tendencies and build on their achievements.

Narcissistic personality disorder is, of course, named for the Greek myth of Narcissus, of which there are several versions. In Ovid’s version, which is the most commonly related, the nymph Echo falls in love with Narcissus, a youth of extraordinary beauty. As a child, Narcissus was prophesized by Teiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes, to ‘live to a ripe old age, as long as he never knows himself’.

One day, Echo followed Narcissus through the woods as he hunted for stags. She longed to speak to him but dared not utter the first word. Overhearing her footsteps, the youth cried out, “Who’s there?” to which she responded, “Who’s there?” When at last she revealed herself, she rushed to embrace Narcissus, but he scorned her and pushed her away—just, in fact, as Dorian did Sibyl. Echo spent the rest of her life pining for Narcissus and slowly withered away until there was nothing left of her but her voice.

Some time after his encounter with Echo, Narcissus went to quench his thirst at a pool of water. Seeing his own image in the water, he fell in love with it. But each time he bent down to kiss it, it seemed to disappear. Narcissus grew ever more thirsty, but would not leave or disturb the pool of water for fear of losing sight of his reflection. In the end, he died of thirst, and there, on that very spot, appeared the narcissus flower, with its bright face and bowed neck.

What does this myth mean? On one level, it is an admonition to treat others as we would ourselves be treated, and in particular to be considerate in responding to the affections of others, which, as with Echo, are often so raw and visceral as to be existential. After being rejected by him, poor Echo had no self and no being outside of Narcissus, and ‘slowly withered away until there was nothing left of her but her voice’.

On another level, the myth is a warning against vanity and self-love. Sometimes we get so caught up in ourselves, in our own little egos, that we lose sight of the bigger picture and, as a result, pass over the beauty and bounty that is life. Paradoxically, by being too wrapped up in ourselves, we actually restrict our range of perception and action and, ultimately, our potential as human beings. And so, in some sense, we kill ourselves, like so many ambitious or self-centered people. Treating other people badly is a sure sign that we are still trapped in ourselves.

Teiresias prophesized that Narcissus would ‘live to a ripe old age, as long as he never knows himself’, because to truly know oneself is also to know that there is nothing to know. Our self, our ego, is nothing but an illusion, nothing more substantial than the ever-receding reflection that Narcissus was unable to grasp. Ultimately, Narcissus’s ego’s boundaries dissolved in death and he merged back into the world in the form of a flower. In Greek myth, the hero—Theseus, Hercules, Odysseus—has to die and travel through the underworld (the unconscious) before re-emerging as a hero. He has to conquer himself, to die to himself, to become more than merely human.

Echo had not enough ego, and Narcissus far too much. The key is to find the right and dynamic equilibrium, to be secure in oneself and yet to be able to dissociate from the envelope that we happen to have been born into.

References

  • Board BJ and Fritzon KF (2005): Disordered personalities at work. Psychology, Crime and Law 11:17-23.
  • James W (1902): The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 1 ‘Religion and Neurology’, Footnote 6.
  • Mullins-Sweat S et al. (2010): The Search for the Successful Psychopath. Journal of Research in Personality 44:554-558.

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The Manic Defence: Why You Can’t Bear to Stop

Sisyphus, by Titian
Sisyphus, by Titian.  Sisyphus is condemned to push his rock forever. Worse than that, he can never put it down.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 17 August 2026.

A horse galloped down the path at speed. It seemed as if the rider was on some urgent and vital mission. ‘Where are you heading?’ hollered a bystander. ‘I don’t know!’ came the already distant reply, ‘Ask the horse!’ —A Zen story

The manic defence is the tendency, when confronted with threatening thoughts and feelings, to distract the conscious mind with a flurry of activity or with the opposite thoughts and feelings.

A paradigm of the manic defence is the person who spends all their time rushing around from one task to the next, unable to tolerate even short stretches of inactivity. Other examples include the socialite who attends one event after another, the small and dependent boy who charges around declaiming that he is Superman, and the insecure teenager who laughs ‘like a maniac’ at the slightest intimation of sex. The behaviour or activity need not be frantic or compulsive. It might involve working, exercising, socialising, travelling, even helping others.

But that is all beside the point. What matters is what is being blocked out.

In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), one of several ways in which Clarissa Dalloway prevents herself from thinking about her life is by planning needless events and then fussing over their every detail. In the 2002 film The Hours, which takes its inspiration from Woolf’s novel, the poet Richard Brown puts it rather more cruelly: ‘Oh, Mrs Dalloway… Always giving parties to cover the silence.’

The Essence of the Manic Defence

The essence of the manic defence is to prevent feelings of despair and helplessness from entering the conscious mind by occupying it with opposite feelings of euphoria, purposeful activity, and omnipotent control.

This might be why people feel driven not only to mark but also to celebrate such depressing milestones as entering the workforce (graduation), getting ever older (birthdays, anniversaries, New Year), and even, in more recent times, death and dying (Halloween). Our forefathers would be turning in their graves if they could see what had become of All Saints’ Day. 

It can be no coincidence that Christmas, originally a pagan solstice festival, is celebrated in the bleak mid-winter, in the shortest and darkest days of the year. A few years ago, I spent Christmas in New Zealand, where it is summer at that time of year—and the people there made much less of a fuss of it.

The manic defence may also take on more subtle or covert forms, such as creating a commotion over something trivial; filling every ‘spare moment’ with reading, study, or talking on the phone to a friend; spending several months preparing for some civic or sporting event; seeking out status or celebrity so as to be a ‘somebody’ rather than a ‘nobody’; entering into baseless relationships; and even, sometimes, getting married and having children. Of course, I don’t mean you.

When the Manic Defence Becomes a Problem

Everyone uses the manic defence, but some people use it to such an extent that they find it difficult to cope with even short periods of unstructured time such as holidays, weekends, and long-distance travel—which explains why airport shops are so profitable.

Since the advent of smartphones, it can be a struggle to go a few hours, or even the space of a toilet break, without checking our device. God forbid that we should be left alone, even for five minutes, with our own thoughts. The significance of the smartphone is that it has put the manic defence in your pocket, available anytime, anywhere.

Of course, keeping busy need not be unhealthy. It becomes so when we cannot bear to stop—when the activity serves not simply to live or exalt life, but to avoid being alone with ourselves.

‘To do nothing at all,’ observed Oscar Wilde, long before the advent of the smartphone, ‘is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.’

People with a strong manic defence are unable to live in the moment, unable to be truly alive. They leave themselves no opportunity to integrate their thoughts or process their emotions, that is, no opportunity to gather perspective or come to terms with reality, that is, no opportunity to grow.

Because they never let it in, they lose all immunity to despair. And so when it finally hits them, it hits them like a tidal wave.

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In the 19th century, French Basque settlers brought the Tannat grape into Uruguay, a small bucolic nation to the northeast of Buenos Aires. Today, Uruguay is a welcoming, liberal, and forward-looking country with lush grasslands, virgin beaches, and no traffic jams. Cattle, mostly reared on grass, outnumber people by four-to-one, and an invitation to stay for lunch typically takes the form of “Would you like an entrecôte?”Many people assume that Uruguay is a tropical country, but, at 35 degrees South, the capital of Montevideo shares a similar latitude to Colchagua in Chile, Cape Agulhas in South Africa, and McLaren Vale in Australia. Uruguay is at the northern end of the cold Falklands Current, and the Atlantic Ocean exerts a strong moderating influence, as does the immense Plata Estuary at the confluence of the Uruguay and Paraná Rivers. Indeed, the climate in and around Montevideo is often compared to that of Bordeaux, although average temperature and average rainfall are both higher. The most common training systems are espaldera alta (VSP) and lyre to mitigate against high humidity and minimize frost damage.

The terrain in Uruguay is mostly flat or gently undulating. The coastal and more populated south of the country accounts for some 90% of production, and the Canelones department around Montevideo accounts for some two-thirds of that. The soils in Canelones are for the most part limestone clay. Other centres of viticulture include Carmelo near the Argentine border, and Garzón to the east in the Maldonado department. Garzón is noted for its rockier granitic soils and slightly cooler climate and has seen some heavy investment especially from Argentina.

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No expenses spared at Bodega Garzón

Uruguay counts around 180 wineries, often run by the third or fourth generation of Italian, Basque, or Catalonian settlers. From the 1970s, these families shifted from bulk to quality wine production, with a focus on Tannat which has come to account for more than a quarter of the ~6,500ha under vine. In my time in Uruguay, I tasted every possible style of Tannat, including a soft, ‘nouveau’ style made by carbonic maceration (at Pizzorno) and even a sparkling style made by traditional method double fermentation (at Pisano). The signature full-bodied style is deep purple with a heady aroma of plum and dark fruit, tobacco, leather, and petrichor. In the mouth, the wine is full-bodied with high tannins, balanced alcohol, and refreshing, multiform acidity. Compared to Madiran or Irouléguy (which are also Tannat or Tannat-dominated), it is likely to be softer, with slightly higher alcohol and more spiciness than minerality.

Other important grape varieties in Uruguay include Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay, and I also tasted successful examples of Petit Verdot, Riesling, Syrah, Tempranillo, Torrontes, Viognier… Because there are many parallels between Garzón and Galicia, I was very curious to taste the Albariño from Bodega Garzón: compared to its Old World counterpart, it is fuller and riper, with notes of white peach, canteloupe melon, honey, fennel, sage, and cardamom, a bitter and balancing backbone, and a long and salty finish.

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Tasting with Pablo Fallabrino of Viñedo de los Vientos

Because Uruguay has no appellation system, the wineries have a very free hand to experiment and respond to consumer tastes. With some ‘softening’ blends, this can seem as much a curse as a blessing—by which I mean, if you’re going to put 20% Viognier into your Tannat, you might as well be making Merlot.

Unfortunately, Uruguayan wines can be hard to source. Compared to Chile and Argentina, production is small and artisanal, and the silver beaches around Punta del Este are a magnet for well-heeled (and often high-heeled) Argentine and Brazilian tourists. Still, most wineries are keen to export their wines and show the world what they can do.

Favourite producers include Pisano (the RPF range is especially good value), Antigua Bodega Stagnari (try if you can the Osiris), Bouza (pronounced ‘Bow-za’), Familia Deicas, Garzón, de Lucca, Marichal, Pizzorno, and Viñedo de los Vientos. 2018 is an exceptional vintage in Uruguay, while 2014, owing to harvest rains, is the weakest in recent years.

Neel Burton is author of The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting

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