Purpose & Framework for Postings for Reward in the Cognitive Niche
My purposes in writing, the framework and assumptions I
make about what is true and right, as well as more about reward in the cognitive niche can all be found in the future posts or on my student website in progress. Briefly, my
desire is to share the infinitely renewable pleasures of seeking, finding, knowing, appreciating, imagining, and caring for. Most
posts will bear directly or indirectly on evolutionary aesthetics in the context of the California Central Coast area. Evolutionary aesthetics deals with bests: best elements linked in the best way for the best outcomes, using ecological values to judge good and best. As is traditional at the end of a year, the next few posts will be about the year's best celebratory wines, the best food to pair with those wines, and the top 10 marine animals in the Santa Barbara Channel and adjacent marine areas.
Top Two Wines
All that is required to experience great pleasure in superb wine is to select the right wine, open the bottle, stay conscious, and taste. That said, your choice of food will alter both food and wine experience.
Top Two Wines
All that is required to experience great pleasure in superb wine is to select the right wine, open the bottle, stay conscious, and taste. That said, your choice of food will alter both food and wine experience.
What’s the right wine? The gatekeeper for me is quality, both
in the usual sense of something exquisitely tasty and satisfying, but at the
end of 2011, quality is necessarily evaluated
from the perspective of ecological sustainability. As the concept implies, ecological frameworks are based on whole ecosystems.
This is different from grape growing and winemaking that are certified organic or biodynamic. While certification of either of these two
approaches is very demanding and indicative
of frameworks consistent with ecological sustainability, neither necessarily reflects
on environmental practices related to energy use, water conservation, attention to packaging, distribution, waste
and recycling, establishment of riparian corridors, or responsibility to
consumers to be transparent about
winemaking practices and to share with consumers environmental
stewardship.
To identify which wine is likely to be at the very top of
most lists of best sensory qualities of sparkling wine I rely on third parties. Ratings of 90 or
above (100 point scales) by Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast , the Connoisseurs' Guide
to California Wine, or 15 to 20 by Gayot generally indicate outstanding wines. For sustainability, certifications by third party
organizations include the self-assessment program developed by
the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, Napa Green in northern California , and SIP
(Sustainability in Practice) here in central to southern California ,
reliable proxies for commitment by winemakers to practicing ecological
sustainability as well as for actual performance.. Expert rating systems
and third
party certifications are invaluable shortcuts for the conscientious
consumer
who accepts stewardship responsibilities but has limited time to
investigate
every enterprise. Of course you still need to rate the raters.
After Christmas the year is just about effervesced, so
associatively, we select bubbly wines to celebrate its finale. The gold standard is champagne. Taking
Gayot’s list of top sparkling wines ordered by rating , including champagne and
non-champagne sparklers, the number one rated sparkling wine is Champagne Krug, Clos D'Ambonnay
1996, rated 19/20, with a price tag of $2,250 a bottle. Even if I could afford
this wine, it would not be my first choice, since all champagne comes from
Champagne, France, and for Californians, necessarily embodies at least 3000
pounds of CO2 per bottle (using an average of about .5 pounds of CO2 per mile
per pound).
Optimizing Pleasure through Strategic Trade-offs
We all have experienced guilty pleasures, but guilty
pleasures are not optimized. Optimizing is about weighing the costs and benefit of a
particular set of values in play for a specific choice event, then making those
trade-offs that will result in the greatest net pleasure. In the cognitive niche, when we weigh
our options, we imagine the future,
largely based on the past, and we pre-experience how we might feel if we make
decision A rather than decision B. The right trade-offs lead to the
greatest pleasure, with the least pain.
An example coming to mind for New Year’s is that of wild Beluga caviar to accompany the above
Krug champagne. Almas caviar
benchmarks great caviar, the unfertilized roe of female Huso huso sturgeon (that
in the past had passed 100 years in age). But today there are few sturgeon in the Caspian, and
almost none older than 10. Many of those
who manage to become olde, despite black market fishers, are afflicted with
cancers and other diseases from Caspian pollution. Would the pleasure of the
moment of tasting the caviar considered world-best outweigh the pain?
Pleasure, though a leading motivator, and the primary
motivator for this website, is insatiable: quickly replaced by a desire for even
greater pleasure; while guilt, a lagging motivator, is relentlessly enduringly
naggy. Doing the right thing, on the
other hand, is rewarded with pervasive,
largely enduring feelings of pleasure in
one’s own true self. Homo sapiens, the species occupying top spot in the
cognitive niche, is nicely rewarded for thinking ahead, maybe generations
ahead, weighing odds, proceeding strategically, and doing what seems right. When we do right by the environment, we feel
good.
What makes pleasure guilty is the knowledge of doing harm:
Beluga sturgeon are endangered; many Caspian sturgeon are harvested
illegally when immature (females mature around 20); we know we do harm
when one bottle of champagne increases through transportation over a long distance about 3000 new pounds of CO2
into a system at its
tipping point. To avoid guilt and optimize pleasure through
understanding clear choices and consequences, we need help from experts,
whom we still need to evaluate.
Back to the wine choices and trade-offs. Let’s say for
purposes of this discussion that all sparkling wines made using the champenoise
method rated by every one of my experts as higher than 90 are to me more or
less equal choices as far as sensory quality goes: all great wines, and I am
not a super taster, so probably all more or less equally desirable. Drinking a
wine that puts 3000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when we are
already at a CO2 tipping point for all systems—land, sea, and
air—would be unconscionable. Just to make sure that that the house of
Krug Champagnes is not supporting some fabulous biodiversity
project that could offset the food miles, I go to the site: http://www.krug.com/ and check out the splash page for
mention of sustainability. Nothing. I go to the site map to find a page on
sustainability. Nothing that would help consumer like me make an ecologically responsible
choice. Recognizing that all champagne
comes to us in Santa Barbara with a heavy food miles burden, I descend Gayot’s
list of top world sparklers until I hit a California sparkling wine, which
becomes my prime candidates for celebratory drink.
Best Choices for Ecologically Sustainable Sparkling Wine for 2011
Best choices in 2011 for California sparkling wines are wines from two houses producing top
quality in ecologically sustainable ways:
Schramsberg and Domaine Carneros. Almost any sparkling wine from these
wine houses is guaranteed to be exceptional. For me, ecological responsibility
necessarily includes on their website sufficient environmental information for
me to make informed choices—see below. Top
wines still available as of December 29, 2011, are:
·
J Schram 2004 , or 2003, both with ratings from 93 to 97
" World-class bubbly in every dimension, this deep, rich, complex, layered, lively, developed yet youthful wine has achieved what only a handful have ever been able to accomplish. From the very first sniff of its creamy, yeasty, lightly toasty, brioche, pie crust, Meyer lemon, crisp apple notes to its insistently foamy, pinpointy mousse to the artful blending of rich and austere elements all the way to its long, refined, tangy, complex and flavorful finish, this brilliant bottling is about as good as good gets." 97 points - 2004 J. Schram - Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine November 2011)
" World-class bubbly in every dimension, this deep, rich, complex, layered, lively, developed yet youthful wine has achieved what only a handful have ever been able to accomplish. From the very first sniff of its creamy, yeasty, lightly toasty, brioche, pie crust, Meyer lemon, crisp apple notes to its insistently foamy, pinpointy mousse to the artful blending of rich and austere elements all the way to its long, refined, tangy, complex and flavorful finish, this brilliant bottling is about as good as good gets." 97 points - 2004 J. Schram - Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine November 2011)
·
2005 Le Rêve Blanc de Blancs, Carneros. “the fourteenth vintage in a highly
distinguished line of Blanc de Blancs, repeatedly voted Best of Class. 95
Points, Wine Enthusiast. 92 Points, Wine Spectator. The blend
of the 2005 Le Rêve is 99% chardonnay selected from an array of five different
estate-grown clones with 1% pinot blanc. It has been aged in the bottle
on the lees for five and a half years. The appellation is 100% Carneros, 100% from
the 2005 vintage and 100% estate-grown”
“Generous aromas of honey-suckle, baked pear, pineapple and
lemon cream tempt the palate. Tastes of white fruit, crème brûlée and a
note of toasted almond engage the palate. The flavors are full and
followed by a long, silky finish.” http://www.domainecarneros.com/2005LeReveBlancdeBlancs
Both Schramsberg and Domaine Carneros publish sufficient
information about environmental practices along with third party certifications
to enable a concerned consumer to make informed decisions about the ecological
sustainability of their wines. Their top ecological sustainability credibility ratings
are based on the following:
In 2010 Schramsberg Vineyards installed a 466,806 kilowatt-hours solar array,
consisting of 1,655 panels, powering total energy needs for all winery
operations and offsetting the amount of
CO2 absorbed by 700 acres of trees or produced by powering 2,981 100-watt
incandescent light bulbs. Schramsberg Vineyards is certified under the Napa
Green Winery Program by the Napa County Department of Environmental Management (DEM)
and the Association of Bay Area Government’s (ABAG) Green Business Program and
completed all the regulatory components needed for environmental
sustainability. These components included developing water and energy
conservation methods, preventing pollution, and reducing solid waste. In
addition to developing sustainable winery practices, this program is set to
become the standard for the state of California.
Certified Napa Green Land: Schramsberg Vineyards is also certified
under the Napa Green Certified Land Program:
Schramsberg has created and implemented a customized farm plan with
measured results that addressed all aspects of its property, vineyard land as
well as non-farmed land, including practicing soil conservation, water conservation,
stable drainage, riparian corridor enhancement, fisheries and wildlife habitat
enhancement and long-term improvement and sustainability.
Certification
- certification is granted by the Napa County Agricultural Commissioners Office
of Pesticide Regulation, the Regional Water Quality Control board, the
California Department of Fish and Game, and the National Marine Fisheries
Service.
The Napa
Green program is supported by a wide variety of groups including the Sierra
Club, the Audubon Society, and the University of California.
The Napa
Valley Vintners, along with Fish Friendly Farming, the Napa Valley
Grapegrowers, and the Napa County Farm Bureau, developed the Napa Green
program.
Domaine Carneros: Certified organic, 196
kW solar electric system provides up to 40% of the winery’s electricity – and
powers production of equipment, air conditioning, refrigeration and other
operations at the facility.… using no
animal products: the fining agent used in the rémuage process is Clarifiant S,
sodium bentonite, a clay-based product with no animal additives. Clarifiant S
is a gentle, vegan-friendly product that produces clear wines that meet the
exacting winemaking standards of Domaine Carneros. Further ecological
enhancements include encouraging red-tailed hawks and owls to live on the
premises to keep pests in check. The winery also hires staff year-round, rather
than just seasonally, which allows them to have a steady income and earn
benefits, but also to have intimate knowledge of the vines. Commitment and practices
easily accessed on their website
