Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course: Explore the TV Series That Introduced the Wines of the World (1995)

‌

“The word ‘connoisseur’ is not an attractive one,” writes Jancis Robinson in her memoir Tasting Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover. “It smacks of exclusivity, preciousness and elitism.” Indeed, “connoisseurship is not a necessary state for wine appreciation. It is perfectly possible to enjoy wine enormously without really understanding it. But a connoisseur sees each individual wine in its historical, geographical and sociological context and is truly sensitive to its possibilities.” Those who drink wine too carelessly or too stringently, “those who will not meet a wine halfway, and who consistently ignore the story each wine has to tell, deprive themselves of a large part of the potential pleasure associated with each bottle.”

How best to experience that pleasure — or rather, how best to attain the state of connoisseurship that makes it accessible in the first place? One could do worse than starting with the works of Robinson herself, who’s not just one of the most respected wine writers alive today, but also onetime supervisor of the luxury wine selection on British Airways’ […]

Why Georges Seurat’s Pointillist Painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte Is a Masterpiece

‌

Everyone knows that Georges Seurat’s Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte, or A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, resides at the Art Institute of Chicago. Or at least everyone who’s seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off knows it. The Art Institute appears as just one of the…

Watch a Visual Symphony of Everyday Objects in the French Stop Motion Film, “Grands Canons”

‌

“A brush makes watercolors appear on a white sheet of paper. An everyday object takes shape, drawn with precision by an artist’s hand. Then two, then three, then four… Superimposed, condensed, multiplied, thousands of documentary drawings in successive series come to life on the screen, composing a veritable visual symphony of everyday objects. The accumulation,…

How 99% of Ancient Literature Was Lost

‌

Ancient Greece and Rome had plenty of literature, but practically none of it survives today. What exactly became of almost everything written down in Western antiquity is the subject of the video above by ancient-history Youtube channel Told in Stone, previously featured here on Open Culture for its investigations into everything from the…

An Architect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Subway Stations, from the Oldest to Newest

‌

With 26 lines and 472 stations, the New York City subway system is practically a living organism, and way too big a topic to tackle in a short video.

Architect Michael Wyetzner may not have time to touch on rats, crime track fires, flooding, night and weekend service disruptions, or the