I Drink, Therefore I Am:  A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine.  That is the title of a recent volume by Roger Scruton reviewed by John von Heyking at VoegelinView.  Here’s a sample, or tasting, from the review:

The oenophile is not a neo-Kantian transcendental ego who stands over and against the wine in a subject-object dichotomy, but the loving being-for-another whose olfactory organs stretch forth to receive wine, as a lover’s lips stretch forth to receive the other’s lips, and as Augustine’s soul stretches toward God.

It should be clear by now that the intoxication of wine, which engages the full personality of the oenophile, including the eroticism of his intellect, differs in kind from drunkenness as well as the effects of drugs like cannabis. Whereas wine inculcates an opening of the soul to another, cannabis and other narcotics induce the soul’s closure. The intoxicating conversation of a symposium of friends differs drastically from the “mutual befuddlement” of a group of stoned teenagers. Wine inculcates convivium, whereas cannabis aggravates the solipsism.