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10 fantastic single malt Scotch whiskies to warm you this fall

These Scotch whisky brands have some wonderful single malts

https://www.themanual.com/food-and-drink/best-single-malt-scotch-whisky/

When the calendar turns to autumn, if your first thought is to crack open a bottle of bourbon or rye, you’re missing out on one of the best fall whisk(e)y options. Single malt Scotch whisky is a great choice for autumnal drinking. There’s something for everyone, from peat-smoked expressions to soft, honey, and heather-centered bottles.

For those new to this type of whisky (only the U.S. and Ireland use the “e” in whiskey), single malt Scotch whisky (like bourbon) has a few rules and regulations. First, it must be made in Scotland (this seems fairly straightforward). It also must be distilled at a single distillery using pot still distillation. It must also be made from barley (hence single malt), matured in oak barrels for at least three years. There are a few more rules, but those are the most important for all Scotch whisky brands.

The best single malt Scotch whiskies to warm you up this fall

 

The main reason single malt Scotch whisky is a great choice for fall drinking is the fact that there are so many nuanced, complex bottles available. Whether you choose an expression from the Highlands, Lowlands, Speyside, Campbeltown, or Islay, there’s a bottle available to fit every palate. The key is finding them.

Related

• Highland Park Whisky launched a new product design inspired by its archipelago home
• Johnnie Walker is releasing the perfect blended whisky for Après Ski
• Loch Lomond is launching a new series of single malt whiskies with a 16-year-old

Fear not; we won’t make you spend an afternoon slowly meandering around your local liquor store with a confused look on your face in hopes that someone will help you. We did the work for you. Below, you’ll find the best single malt Scotch whiskies to warm you up this fall. We found a mix of great whiskies to keep you feeling cozy inside and out, through autumn and well into the holiday season.

 

Laphroaig 10

If you want to take a deep dive into everything that the sheep-filled island of Islay has to offer, you’ll grab a bottle of Laphroaig 10. The famed distillery’s flagship bottle gets its flavor from peat-smoked barley. Matured for at least 10 years in oak casks, it’s known for its bold kick of peaty smoke, as well as ocean brine, vanilla, caramel, and oak. It’s a complex, smoky sipper you’ll go back to again and again.

 

 

Ardbeg An Oa

Another classic Islay distillery, Ardbeg is well known for its smoky, peaty, sweet, balanced expressions. One of its best, most warming bottles is Ardbeg an Oa. Named for the Mull of Oa along the Kildaton Coast, this non-chill filtered single malt whisky is a vatted whisky made up of expressions aged in Pedro Ximenez, ex-bourbon, and virgin charred oak barrels. The result is a complex sipper with notes of dark chocolate, toffee, dried cherries, baking spices, and robust campfire smoke.

 

 

Aberlour A’Bunadh

When it comes to sherry matured or finished single malt Scotch whiskies, there are few as popular and well made as Aberlour A’Bunadh. The name translates to ‘the original’ from Gaelic. This sherry-matured whisky is bottled as a potent cask strength (although the alcohol content varies by batch). It’s known for its flavors of dried cherries, raisins, ginger, candied orange peels, dark chocolate, vanilla, and oaky wood.

 

 

Talisker Storm

With a name like Talisker Storm, you must have a pretty good idea that you’re in for a whisky swirling with flavors when you crack open one of these bottles. First released in 2013, this no-age-statement single malt Scotch whisky is known for its nose of caramel apples, oak, campfire smoke, and vanilla and a palate of oak, vanilla, peppery spice, dried fruits, and robust smoke. It’s a nice mix of sweetness, spice, and smoke.

 

 

Highland Park 18

Also known as Highland Park 18 Viking Pride, this popular expression is aged for at least eighteen years in a combination of first-fill sherry season European and American oak barrels. The result is a memorable whisky that begins with a nose of dried cherries, vanilla, oaky wood, and campfire smoke. Drinking it reveals a symphony of dark chocolate, sweet honey, candied orange peels, salted caramel, and gentle, rich smoke.

 

 

Aberfeldy 12

If you’re a fan of Dewar’s blended whiskies, you’ve enjoyed your fair share of Aberfeldy. This is because it’s the base for some of that brand’s most popular expressions. But it’s so great, it belongs on its own. Especially Aberfeldy 12. Known for its nose of sherry, raisins, honey, and vanilla. Drinking it brings forth notes of chocolate fudge, toasted vanilla beans, dried fruits, candied orange peels, oak, and light smoke at the very end.

 

 

Lagavulin 16

While some distilleries opt for a ten-year-old or a twelve-year-old as its flagship expression, Lagavulin decided a sixteen-year expression was a better choice. Matured for a minimum of sixteen years in oak casks, this award-winning sipper is known for its nose of iodine, peat smoke, oak, and vanilla and a palate of salted caramel, oak, vanilla, dried fruits, and bold peat smoke. There’s a reason it’s one of the most popular Islay single malts.

 

 

The GlenDronach 12

When it comes to sherried single malt Scotch whiskies, it’s tough to beat the appeal of GlenDronach 12. Also known as “The Original,” it’s aged for at least twelve years in a mixture of Spanish Pedro Ximenez and oloroso sherry casks. This creates a sweet, rich, highly complex sipping whisky. It all begins with a nose of ginger candy, vanilla, and orchard fruits before melding into a palate of oak, sweet sherry, dried cherries, vanilla, and cream.

 

 

Glenmorangie Nectar D’Or

If you want to go basic, you can grab a bottle of Glenmorangie The Original. This 10-year-old expression might be the best gateway bottle of Scotch available today. If you’re trying to up your fall sipping game, you’ll opt for Glenmorangie Nectar D’Or. This indulgent, dessert-like single malt whisky loaded with flavors of toffee, almond cookies, oak, and spices gets its flavor from being matured in a combination of ex-bourbon casks and Sauternes wine barrels.

 

Craigellachie 13

Often referred to as the “Bad boy of Speyside,” Craigellachie spent a long time as mostly a nameless whisky used in Dewar’s blend. In the last decade, it’s gained in popularity. Its 13-year-old expression is a great choice for a cool fall night. First matured in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry barrels before having half the batch finished in first-fill sherry casks, and the other half in first-fill bourbon barrels, it’s known for its bold, rich flavor profile featuring notes of caramel, toasted marshmallows, dried cherries, oak, and spices.

Bottom line

 

If you’ve never tried single malt Scotch whisky before, now is the time to get on the proverbial, whisky-soaked bandwagon. Single malt Scotch whisky is more than just a drink for fancy, bearded, tweed jacket-wearing gentlemen. It’s a warming, complex drink for everyone. Especially during the chilly autumn months.

Edited October 18, 2024 by Vesper

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Loch Lomond is launching a new series of single malt whiskies with a 16-year-old

https://www.themanual.com/food-and-drink/loch-lomond-wayypoint/

Loch Lomond is a rising name in the world of Scotch whisky. This is made more evident with the news of its new collection of whiskies that were crafted to pay tribute to the distillery’s home along the body of water called Loch Lomond and its history in the Trossachs (an area of wooded glens near the loch).

The Waypoint Series was created for a specific ‘Waypoint’ in the National Park. The first age-statement single malt whisky is a 16-year-old expression.

Loch Lomond Waypoint 16-Year-Old

 

The first expression, made to pay tribute to the Falls of Falloch, was matured for sixteen years in ex-bourbon barrels before being finished for twelve months in ex-cognac barrels. The result is a complex, memorable whisky that begins with a nose of candied orange peels, honey, and oak. The palate is a mix of caramel apples, honey, oak, and toffee. The finish is warming, sweet, and filled with citrus flavors.

Related

• Indian whisky brand Royal Tiger is releasing two new single malt whiskies
• Monkey 47 is releasing a new gin called Distiller’s Cut Edition 14
• Benromach is releasing an un-peated single malt Scotch with the perfect name

“There are so many layers to this whisky. There is depth in every drop, with each one bringing a different dimension to the collective character,” Michael Henry, Master Distiller at Loch Lomond Whiskies, said in a press release.

Where can I buy it?

 

This 46.2% ABV non-chill-filtered 16-year-old expression isn’t available everywhere. It’s available exclusively through The Whisky Shop on Loch Lomond’s website for a suggested retail price of $82 before being rolled out to select retailers worldwide. If this looks like a whisky you’d like to add to your collection, look out for its eventual US release.

Buy Now

Edited October 18, 2024 by Vesper

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Greek man convicted of causing disturbance by entering neighbors’ properties to smell their shoes

https://apnews.com/article/greece-court-smelling-shoes-conviction-thessaloniki-ec071292e0c413f7adc4b848642e1f5c

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — A judge in northern Greece on Thursday imposed a suspended one-month prison sentence on a man convicted of disturbing his neighbors by repeatedly sneaking into their properties to smell their shoes.

The 28-year-old Greek man told the Thessaloniki court that he was unable to explain his behavior, which, he said, had caused him great embarrassment.

He stressed that he had no intention of breaking the law or harming anybody, and neighbors testified that he never displayed any sign of aggression during his nocturnal visits.

The man was arrested before dawn on Oct. 8 in the small town of Sindos, about 15 kilometers (9 miles) west of Thessaloniki. Police had been called after a neighbor found the defendant in his front yard sniffing his family’s shoes, which had been left outdoors to air.

The court heard that there had been at least three similar incidents in the past six months, despite neighbors having asked the defendant’s family to get him to stop.

The man was ordered to attend therapy sessions.

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Your life is not a story: why narrative thinking holds you back

Our stories help us make sense of a chaotic world, but they can be harmful and restrictive. There’s a liberating alternative

https://psyche.co/ideas/your-life-is-not-a-story-why-narrative-thinking-holds-you-back

Narratives are everywhere, and the need to construct and share them is almost inescapable. ‘A man is always a teller of tales,’ wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in his novel Nausea (1938), ‘he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.’

We rely on narratives because they help us understand the world. They make life more meaningful. According to Sartre, to turn the most banal series of events into an adventure, you simply ‘begin to recount it’. However, telling a story is not just a powerful creative act. Some philosophers think that narratives are fundamental to our experiences. Alasdair MacIntyre believes we can understand our actions and those of others only as part of a narrative life. And Peter Goldie argues that our very lives ‘have narrative structure’ – it is only by grappling with this structure that we can understand our emotions and those of others. This suggests that narratives play central, possibly fundamental, roles in our lives. But as Sartre warns in Nausea: ‘everything changes when you tell about life.’

In some cases, narratives can hold us back by limiting our thinking. In other cases, they may diminish our ability to live freely. They also give us the illusion that the world is ordered, logical, and difficult to change, reducing the real complexity of life. They can even become dangerous when they persuade us of a false and harmful world view. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too eager to live our lives as if we were ‘telling a story’. The question is: what other options do we have?

Narratives work by organising our experiences by connecting them into sequences, which give our lives meaning. The ability to form these sequences is something we learn very young. As the educator Carol Fox found during research in the 1990s, stories begin shaping us from childhood. Fox found that reading to children at home gives them tacit knowledge of linguistic and narrative structures, which they incorporate into their own spoken stories. Her research showed that children as young as three used stories to experiment with language as they made sense of the world. The older we get, the more we keep playing – and the more we keep relying on narratives.

Random events can be reframed as being part of some grand plan

As adults, we adopt different roles, including friend, lover, employee, parent, carer and more. The way we understand these roles is often framed in terms of expected behaviour. For example, we have a narrative grasp of what a ‘friend’ is, and we judge ourselves and others by how well they fit that narrative – sometimes favourably, sometimes less so.

So, why is this a problem? One issue is complexity. Seeing yourself as the main character in a story can overly simplify the fullness of life. Think of the way in which people talk about their ‘journey’ through life. Through this narrative, certain events become more significant while others are overlooked, and random events can be reframed as being part of some grand plan. Yet viewing our lives in such a narrow way hinders our ability to understand the complex behaviour of others and ourselves. For example, a child that accepts the narrative of being ‘naughty’ may incorrectly frame their behaviour as bad, rather than as an expression of their unmet needs. Stories can change us by locking us into ways of acting, thinking, and feeling.

In the 1970s, a recognition of this limitation gave rise to narrative therapy. Rather than seeing people as illogical or overly emotional, this new form of psychotherapy focused on the role of narratives in a person’s life. As the therapist Martin Payne explains in his book Narrative Therapy (2000), the approach allows ‘richer, combined narratives to emerge from disparate descriptions of experience’. A new narrative can be incredibly powerful for someone who is unaware of how their established stories are obscuring other ways of understanding their life.

The stories that might need changing are not only grand, but also minor, such as the ‘scripts’ that we rely on throughout our lives. These scripts can become habitual patterns of thinking, influencing our interpretations of family members, friends or colleagues. As narrative therapy shows, we can also get these scripts wrong, and may need help altering them.

Though narrative therapy can be effective, it is unable to help people understand what creates and shapes their narratives. It merely helps them to choose between different narratives or construct new stories about themselves and the world. Swapping one ‘script’ for another doesn’t help someone see the full range of possibilities that lie in front of them, including what it might mean to reject a narrative altogether.

The narrative he follows gives him a limited understanding of himself

The possibility of rejecting a narrative can be found in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943) where he describes a café waiter. According to Sartre, the waiter has adopted a particular narrative that shapes his identity and governs how he ought to behave. Being wedded to a narrative view of the self can lead to living in what Sartre calls ‘bad faith’ – that is, living without being aware of one’s responsibility or in control of one’s own destiny:

All his behaviour seems to us a game. He applies himself to chaining his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other; his gestures and even his voice seem to be mechanisms; he gives himself the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things. He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café. There is nothing there to surprise us.

In other words, he is playing the role of a waiter in a similar manner to an actor on stage who follows a script. As a result of embodying the waiter-narrative, he lives inauthentically because he can only act in a way that fits with the role. The narrative he follows gives him a limited understanding of himself, determining his actions and preventing him from taking ownership of his life. But what would happen if the waiter rejected that narrative identity? For Sartre, this would be a step towards true selfhood, or an authentic existence – what he called ‘being’ – rather than merely playing a role.

So, what does it mean to reject a narrative? Living in a non-narrative way means rejecting a particular identity, and instead seeing life and meaning as a set of open choices. For the waiter, rejecting his narrative identity would mean acting in a way that reflects his choices and sense of self, not just the story he tells about himself.

To understand what is involved in rejecting a narrative, it is important to remember that narratives do not exist outside of people’s minds. The stories we tell ourselves are not out there in the world. They are tools that mediate our relationships with the world. Though they relate to facts, and real events, they are not factual. In fact, they are neither true nor false. Instead, stories help us make sense of things. So, if we rejected the power of narratives to sequence events in our lives, how else would we organise our thoughts about the world?

Think of the ways that perspectives organise experiences differently. By ‘perspective’ I mean something more complex than ‘point of view’. I’m referring to the way we engage with the world from a particular position or orientation that draws our attention to aspects of experience, like how our visual ‘perspective’ allows bright colours to show up more easily than dull ones. Perspectives are shaped by our place in the world, our beliefs, values and what we think matters. As the philosopher Elisabeth Camp explains, a perspective ‘helps us to do things with the thoughts we have: to make quick judgments based on what’s most important, to grasp intuitive connections, and to respond emotionally, among other things.’ Through perspective some features of our experiences ‘stick out in our minds while others fade into the background.’

Poetry captures a way of seeing and feeling, not just a sequence of events

Perspectives, then, determine the narratives we adopt. In other words, our core beliefs and values shape the way we see things and what we take to be important in our experiences. It is our perspectives that generate our narratives. Perspective also explains why our narratives can differ so radically from those of other people, even when we experience the same events. But once we understand these perspectives, we can see how flexible our narratives can truly become. Perspectives, it turns out, don’t have a linear, ordered structure. We can’t think of them in terms of sequences of events, like stories. In some ways, perspectives are better represented by the non-linearity of poetry.

Poems, particularly lyric poems, are inherently perspectival; they unify words, images, thoughts and feelings to express value. Poetry captures a way of seeing and feeling, not just a sequence of events.

Think of ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird ’ (1917) by the American poet Wallace Stevens. Each stanza focuses on a different way of looking at a blackbird and its relationship to the self:

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

In Stevens’s poem, he brings experiences together without explaining how they are related – they are connected only by his perspective. Likewise, understanding ourselves in a non-linear way means seeing how we relate to a complex and chaotic world in the present moment. Within that moment, we find significance without needing an ordered pattern.

And so, instead of just changing our narratives, we should learn to understand the perspectives that shape them. When we focus on our own stories, we live life as we already know it, but by loosening the grip that stories hold over our lives – by focusing on the perspectives of ourselves and others – we can begin opening ourselves up to other possibilities. We can adopt new orientations, find significance in new places, and even move toward the exciting unpredictability of shared perspectives.

As Sartre warned, everything changes when you tell a story. Narratives limit our potential. Though we are complex beings, living in a chaotic universe, our stories create the illusion that our lives are ordered, logical and complete.

We might never fully escape the narratives that surround us, but we can learn to change the perspectives behind them. And so, we are never bound by stories, only by our ability to understand how our beliefs and values shape the way we perceive and engage with the world. We don’t need better narratives; we need to expand and refine our perspectives.

 

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Great value wines you might not have heard of

Under-the-radar grapes from traditional regions give you a flavour of a grand vin for a lot less money, says our wine critic

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/best-budget-wines-good-value-supermarket-9bhjxs080

With heavy duty increases already heading our way in February next year, and rumours of yet another duty hike in this month’s budget, smart cost-conscious drinkers need to track down unsung, undervalued wines right now. A good place to start is with the lesser grapes and wines from traditional regions that give you some of the flavour of a grand vin for a lot less money.

Climate change has brought with it warmer, riper harvests, so grapes such as Burgundy’s lean, mouth-puckeringly acidic bourgogne aligoté, once only made drinkable by being sweetened with cassis in a kir, now makes a happy solo swig. Sylvain Pataille produces wonderful old vine biodynamic bourgogne aligoté grown on Marsannay’s limestone soil (see best buys) that really does give you some of the mineral richness of meursault. If it’s reds you want, cooler sites in the Rhône are worth plundering. A decade ago higher, cooler vineyards surrounding Mont Ventoux wouldn’t ripen, but that’s not been an issue in the extraordinary run of recent sunny, tip-top Rhône vintages. Check out the concrete tank-aged, soft, plump, velvety 2022 Ventoux from Rémy Ferbras (Waitrose, £9.99).

Further south, clairette is an under-the-radar, dwindling but still important white Rhône and Languedoc grape that in the right squeaky-clean, low-yielding, oxidation-preventing hands turns into a star. Best known for its role in sparkling Clairette de Die, besides popping up in about a third of white Châteauneuf du Pape blends, clairette is rarely found solo. All the more reason to scoop up Gérard Bertrand’s delicious night-harvested, bold orchard-fruited 2023 Clairette du Languedoc Adissan with its fine creamy finish (Majestic, £14.99).

• Budget bottles! Great wines under £6

Further afield, Austria’s zweigelt grape is making waves for its aromatic, dark, tangy, full-bodied reds. Even Aldi sells a zweigelt blend, the vibrant, ripe, spicy, sweet black and red cherry-stashed 2023 Specially Selected Australian Zweigelt-Shiraz, £9.99, from southeastern Australia. We can also expect to see lots more of the similarly dark-hearted and deeply coloured saperavi grape from Georgia on our shop shelves (see the Bedoba best buy). The Wine Society, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, is strong on the wilder shores of wine. Its soft, floral, lemony 2022 Pinot Blanc from the Czech Republic’s Thaya winery is worth a punt (thewinesociety.com, £11.95). It is just 11.5 per cent alcohol and has an appealing saline, fish pie-friendly finish.

 

From left: Lentsch Zweigelt; Grecanico Dorato Mandrarossa; Generation Series Bourgogne Aligoté; Bedoba Saperavi

Under-the-radar wines

2021 Lentsch Zweigelt, Austria
13 per cent, Waitrose, £8.99 down from £9.99
Little known but brilliant beetroot and cherry-licked Austrian bursting with zweigelt’s crunchy, dark-hearted fruit.

2023 Grecanico Dorato Mandrarossa, Sicily
12.5 per cent, nywines.co.uk, £13.95
Transport the garganega grape south and it turns into a lively, citrussy stone fruit gem with a fine honeysuckle finish.

2022 Generation Series Bourgogne Aligoté, France
13.5 per cent, thewinesociety.com, £18
Sylvain Pataille’s meursault taste-alike is crammed with complex, golden, nutty, tangy, minerally oomph.

2021 Bedoba Saperavi, Georgia
13.5 per cent, cambridgewine.com, £19
Inky, exotically spiced Georgian, made from the indigenous saperavi grape — it’s a silky, sweet black-chocolate charmer.

From left: Vista Castelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo; Pierre Jaurant Cahors Malbec; Villa Maria Private Bin Riesling; Domaine de Pellehaut Chardonnay

Supermarket star buys

2022 Vista Castelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Italy
12.5 per cent, Tesco, £5.50
The best vintage for almost a decade from the Citra co-op of this juicy, sweetly fruited red berry gem.

2022 Pierre Jaurant Cahors Malbec, France
13 per cent, Aldi, £7.19
Malbec’s first home was Cahors and this elegant, leafy, herby, big food winter warmer gets my thumbs-up.

2023 Villa Maria Private Bin Riesling, New Zealand
11.5 per cent, Waitrose, £8.99 down from £10.99
Mouthwatering Marlborough riesling with oodles of racy, spritzy, mandarine zip and tangy acidity.

2023 Domaine de Pellehaut Chardonnay, France
12 per cent, Booths, £10.50
Straw-gold, lively, yeasty, new mown hay-scented Gascon white from a tried and trusted producer.

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The fermented crescent

Ancient Mesopotamians had a profound love of beer: a beverage they found celebratory, intoxicating and strangely erotic

https://aeon.co/essays/mesopotamians-found-beer-celebratory-intoxicating-and-erotic

Depiction of a banquet in shell and lapis lazuli, 2550-2450 BCE, your, Iraq. Courtesy the Penn Museum

Hamoukar, Syria. 20 May 2010. We are midway through what will be the last excavation season at the site for some time. The following spring will see the outbreak of a long and brutal civil war. Today, though, the archaeologist Salam Al Kuntar, balanced on tiptoe at the bottom of a tomb, has just uncovered a little green stone. It is a cylinder seal, an ancient administrative device. We roll the tiny seal in clay – just as its former owner once would have – to reveal an impression of the intricate scene carved into its surface. It may not be the finest seal ever seen, but the tableau is eye-catching: a stick-figure man and woman are having sex, the man standing behind the woman, who bends over to drink from a jug on the ground. And is that a straw emerging from the mouth of the jug?

This is not the only erotic drinking scene that has survived from ancient Mesopotamia. And many of the others quite clearly feature a straw. Indeed, the drinkers of ancient Mesopotamia often drank via straw – though not always, shall we say, in this particular position. Hundreds of cylinder seals feature banquet scenes, and many show drinkers seated around a shared vessel, sipping beer through long straws. Banquets were a key part of the social calendar in Mesopotamia, and beer was an essential element. But people also drank beer at home, on the job, in the tavern, in the temple, pretty much everywhere.

Ancient clay plaque depicting an erotic drinking scene, 2000-1500 BCE, Tello (Girsu), Iraq. Courtesy the Louvre, Paris

Perhaps you have encountered the notion that beer was ‘invented’ in Mesopotamia. That is a hypothesis at best. Our knowledge about the early days of beer in Mesopotamia – about the prehistory of beer in the region – is scant. And, as the global search for earlier and earlier traces of alcoholic beverages gains steam, there is at least one key takeaway: beer was invented (or discovered) many times in many different places. Moreover, many of the earliest beverages were hybrids, drawing their fermentable sugars from a mix of fruits, grains, honey and other sources.

As I recount in my new book In the Land of Ninkasi, Mesopotamia was the world’s first great beer culture: an ancient society that was thoroughly steeped in beer, where beer was not a novelty but an everyday necessity and a fundamental cultural touchstone. The famous ‘land between the rivers’ was also the land of Ninkasi, goddess of beer. When Ninkasi poured out the finished beer, ready to drink – a Sumerian song tells us – it was like ‘the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates’.

It is in the centuries just before 3000 BCE, the late Uruk period, that the beer scene in ancient Mesopotamia begins to come into focus. Unheard-of numbers of people were living together in the world’s first cities. Inequality was on the rise. Decision-making power had been handed over to the world’s first states, the first centralised governing regimes (or, if you buy one recent theory, a more democratic system of councils and popular assemblies). In the midst of all this, somebody (or more likely, somebodies, plural) also pioneered the world’s first writing system and, along with it, the first bureaucracies and red tape. And what were those trailblazing bureaucrats writing about? Beer! The late Uruk period has given us both the earliest physical traces of beer in Mesopotamia, preserved as organic residues within ceramic vessels, and the first written evidence for beer in world history.

 

A cylinder seal impression depicting beer-drinking through straws, 2600-2350 BCE, Khafajeh, Iraq. Courtesy ISAC Museum/University of Chicago

Hundreds of thousands of clay tablets, densely packed with cuneiform characters, testify to more than three millennia of history in Mesopotamia. And thousands of those tablets testify to more than three millennia of beer. They allow us to peer into the minds and mouths of our beer-drinking forebears – what kind of beverages they preferred, how these beverages were made, what they meant to people. Thanks to more than a century of archaeological excavation, we can also bring these documentary sources into conversation with other remains – architecture, ceramics, stone tools, cylinder seals, carbonised seeds – that allow us to look beyond what was put down in writing. We can, for example, take a virtual tour through the spaces where beer was brewed, reconstruct the brewer’s toolkit (and use replica vessels to brew some beer ourselves), or sneak a peek at exclusive elite banquets through the eyes of ancient artists.

Once the beer has done its work, the goddess’s ploy bears fruit

Given the time that separates us from them, it is a wonder that so much has survived. But there is one thing about studying people who lived thousands of years ago and spoke languages long-dead: one must get comfortable with uncertainty. I say that we face up to this issue head-on and try to achieve an honest assessment of what we know about beer in ancient Mesopotamia, how we know it and what we do not know for certain. To give you a sense of where things currently stand, I offer here a series of snapshots. Each begins with a brief vignette, a bit of historical fiction to set the scene.

First stop, the abzu, domain of the god Enki, deep down below the earth’s surface in the underground freshwaters. The aftermath of a drinking party. A beer-befuddled Enki – in most other situations, a wise trickster – has just regained his wits. Frantic, he turns to his minister Isimud: ‘Where am I? Where did she go? Where’s all my stuff?’ The panic rising, he begins to enumerate the missing items, all the so-called arts of civilisation, his most prized possessions. ‘Where are the noble sceptre, the staff and crook, the noble dress, shepherdship, kingship? Where are the craft of the carpenter, coppersmith, scribe, leatherworker, and builder? Where are wisdom, attentiveness, respect, awe, and reverent silence?’ The list goes on. In every case, the answer from Isimud remains the same: ‘You gave them to Inana.’

This (paraphrased) episode from a classic piece of Sumerian literature – the tale of Inana and Enki – establishes one point of connection between beers past and present. In ancient Mesopotamia, the beverage known as kaš in Sumerian and šikaru in Akkadian (pronounced ‘kash’ and ‘shi-ka-roo’) was not just liquid bread, a nutritious and filling foodstuff. It was a beverage that did things to people. In this case, the goddess Inana exploits the inebriating effects of beer. She dons her most beguiling outfit – topped off with a special crown – and gives the ensemble a once-over to make sure that it will have the desired effect. The gist of her appraisal: ‘My genitals are absolutely amazing!’ Satisfied, Inana heads off to visit Enki at home, where she plans to ‘speak coaxingly’ to him. He welcomes her, and they sit down together to drink. Once the beer has done its work, a competition ensues and Inana’s ploy bears fruit. A drunken Enki hands over many of his coveted powers, and Inana boards the Boat of Heaven to make a rapid getaway.

So drinking beer could lead to inebriation. That’s hardly an earth-shattering statement. But not all specialists agree about the alcohol content of Mesopotamian beer. Some think the beer would have been only mildly alcoholic. The logic here varies, but one could point to the fact that children were sometimes given beer, not just on the sly but direct from the hands of temple administrators. How do we know? Because they made sure to provide careful documentation. In one case, children like Andurre, Ebina, Ili-ešdar, Baran-kagal, Bilzum, Il-zima and Ergu-kaka each received 10 litres of beer per month. Can we assume that the beer in question was low in alcohol content? I’m sceptical. Sure, doling out beer (of any sort) to minors might be frowned upon today and might very well land one on the wrong side of the law. But world history offers up an abundance of counterexamples.

I’m even more sceptical about any suggestion that we can generalise further and assume that all beer in ancient Mesopotamia was low in alcohol content. Why, for example, would the drinkers who populate Mesopotamian literature – drinkers like Enkidu, soul mate of Gilgamesh, who guzzles seven goblets and begins to sing – experience effects consistent with a higher level of alcohol consumption, such as feelings of freedom, elation, lightness, energy, satisfaction, wellbeing, conviviality? And why, in the written record, would drinking be associated with impaired judgment, interpersonal friction and (perhaps, in one case) impotence? It’s clear that at least some of their beer was plenty potent. In the Mesopotamian worldview, beer was not just a generic foodstuff. It was a beverage that did things to those who drank it, that could impact them physically, mentally, emotionally. We cannot accurately assess the role of beer in ancient Mesopotamia without acknowledging its inebriating potential.

The Mesopotamian tavern was a commercial space where one could purchase beer, food and possibly sex

The year is 650 BCE. Ashurbanipal is king. We are in the city of Nineveh, capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire, at a small tavern near the river. We have managed to stake out a spot at a corner table, ideal for people-watching. We raise our mugs of beer (or could it be date wine?) for a taste but then freeze. All eyes have suddenly shifted to the front door, left open to catch any hint of a breeze. What are those two guys outside up to? One has just dipped his fingers into a small jug and then smeared something across the doorframe. They both enter and head straight for the stairway that leads to the roof. A few minutes later, we hear some muffled chanting and then clear and firm (in Akkadian, not English): ‘Ishtar, Nanay, Gazbaya help me in this matter!’ When the chanting picks up again, we turn back to our beers but cannot help a few more furtive glances back at the stairway. What is happening?

If we could have followed those two men en route to the tavern, we would probably be even more confused. They had taken a winding route through the city, one of them stopping periodically to collect dirt from the ground and place it in a pouch on his belt. Their last stop was the river, where they had collected water in a jug and mixed in the contents of the pouch and a few dribbles of oil. It is that mixture that ended up smeared onto the doorframe of the tavern. This whole strange trip across the city of Nineveh was part of an elaborate ritual procedure. The cuneiform tablet that spells it out stipulates the collection of 18 different kinds of dust: dust from a god’s house, from a city gate, from a sandstorm, from the door of a tailor, a maltster, an innkeeper, a gardener, a carpenter, and many more. And all that dust-gathering was just one among the many steps in this ritual – all for the sake of guaranteeing profit for the tavern.

A Sumerian beer cup, 2700-2600 BCE. Courtesy the Met Museum, New York

This was a namburbi ritual, an effort to counteract the effects of a negative omen. The Mesopotamian world was full of signs, messages from the gods imprinted in the flight of birds, the bark of a dog, the folds of a sheep’s entrails. Ritual specialists could read these signs – for example, signs predicting financial ruin for a tavern – and recommend preemptive measures. In Mesopotamia, the tavern was a commercial space, a privately owned business where one could purchase beer and food (and possibly sex, if one desired). By the Neo-Assyrian period, one could also purchase date wine at many taverns. Confusingly, this newly popular beverage was also called šikaru or ‘beer’ in Akkadian. Taverns were often run by female tavern-keepers, most famously Shiduri, a wise tavern-keeper at the edge of the world in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Taverns were places of celebration, inebriation, fornication and sometimes criminal collaboration. The Code of Hammurabi demands that a tavern-keeper report and arrest any criminals gathered in her establishment. Taverns also had a special ritual potency. Certain remedies, for example, required the patient to visit a tavern and touch the brewing vessel or its wooden stand.

Kushim pulls the wooden door tight and heads off down the street, surprisingly busy for this hour of the day. A friend peeks out from a doorway and tries to stop him for a chat, but there is no time. Kushim rushes on with a quick wave, catching a glimpse of the slow-moving Euphrates River between buildings on the right. Up ahead, a white temple glitters in the early morning sun, high above the city of Uruk. Kushim turns his attention to the colourful structures that cluster atop another height to the right. He is headed in that direction, on his way to work. When he reaches the brewery, Kushim heads straight to a side room, off the main courtyard, and breaks the mud seal locking the door. Grabbing two small clay tablets from a shelf inside, he scans down the columns of figures and breathes a sigh of relief. No need to worry. Everything checks out. The supplies of malted barley delivered last week match up perfectly with the batches of beer that he sent out yesterday.

These tablets are some of the earliest written documents in world history, dating to about 3000 BCE. We may not know exactly where they were produced or who this ‘Kushim’ was. But we do know that someone was carefully recording deliveries of beer and the ingredients used to produce particular types of beer. Quite a few of the so-called archaic texts revolve around the production and distribution of beer. And beer remained a matter of official, administrative concern over the ensuing three millennia of Mesopotamian history.

The room is nearly silent, except for a gurgling: ‘dubul dabal, dubul dabal’ – the sound of beer brewing

Beer appears on thousands of cuneiform tablets. We learn, for example, about different types of beer. At one point: golden, dark, sweet dark, reddish brown, and strained beer. Not long after: ordinary, good, and very good – or possibly ordinary, strong, and very strong beer. Then a bit later, some beers of less certain translation: maybe sweet, red, date-sweetened, and bittersweet varieties. Often the two key brewing ingredients were malted barley, like many of our beers today, and the enigmatic bappir – possibly a dry, crumbly fermentation starter. Some beers also featured unmalted barley, emmer wheat, date syrup and/or aromatics. Exactly which aromatics is up for debate, but hops, so crucial today, were not in the mix.

Beer was brewed at home, in neighbourhood taverns, and in breweries managed by palace and temple authorities. In some cases, we know the names of the brewers – for example, homebrewers Tarām-Kūbi and Lamassī (both women), tavern-keepers Magurre and Ishunnatu (both women), and palace brewers Qišti-Marduk and Ḫuzālu (both men). Others remain anonymous but left traces of their brewing activities in the archaeological record: for example, in a temple brewery excavated at the site of modern-day Tell al-Hiba, Iraq, in what was the ancient city of Lagash.

We are walking down a narrow alleyway, mudbrick walls rising to either side. On the right, we pass an inconspicuous doorway, a side entrance that leads into the Bagara, the main temple of Ningirsu, patron god of the city of Lagash. A wisp of smoke escapes from another doorway to the left. We ease open the wooden door and are hit with a blast of malty aroma. Avoiding the smoke that pours out of a room to the right, we step into another room on the left, pulling the door shut behind us. The room is dimly lit and nearly silent, except for a faint gurgling: ‘dubul dabal, dubul dabal, dubul dabal.’

That is the sound of beer – at least according to one piece of Sumerian literature. It is the sound of two brewing vessels speaking with one another. The one with a hole in its base sits above the other, and they make a ‘dubul dabal’ sound, Sumerian onomatopoeia for the sound of a liquid dripping from the upper to the lower. These two brewing vessels, well attested in the written record, were not actually uncovered by archaeologists within the room that we visited in the building next to the Bagara temple at Lagash. But we have good reason to suspect that this building was a brewery. What is more difficult is pinning down exactly what took place in each room, exactly how beer was brewed.

The most detailed account of the brewing process appears in the ‘Hymn to Ninkasi’, goddess of beer. But this lyric portrait of Ninkasi at work in the brewery is hardly a set of instructions for brewing beer. It is preserved only on three known tablets, in each case followed immediately by another song, perhaps a sort of drinking song written to celebrate the opening of a new tavern. What makes the hymn so useful for students of Mesopotamian beer is that it seems to depict Ninkasi brewing up a batch of beer, step by step, from start to finish. But how much weight should we really place on this one song? Is it really a useful guide to exactly how beer was actually brewed in Mesopotamia? Imagine that you are an archaeologist of the future. You are trying to recreate the beers of the mid-20th century CE, and all you have to go on are these lines from a contemporary drinking song known as ‘Beer, Beer, Beer’: ‘A barrel of malt, a bushel of hops, you stir it around with a stick…’ The ‘Hymn to Ninkasi’ has more to offer than that, but it is still more song – maybe even legit drinking song – than recipe.

Cuneiform tablet recounting the ‘Hymn to Ninkasi’. CDLI/Louvre Musuem, Paris

So, what exactly does this song from the distant past offer us? In one sense, it offers the possibility of establishing a direct channel of communication between brewers past and present, of establishing a sense of shared tradition across a span of nearly 4,000 years. But there is also a persistent danger of inadvertently flattening the past into the present, of missing some of what made their world different from our own. Ultimately, it’s all about translation. What exactly is Ninkasi up to – if we follow the classic but now dated translation by Miguel Civil – when she mixes the bappir (a key brewing ingredient) with sweet aromatics and bakes it in a big oven, when she waters the malt and then soaks it in a jar, when she spreads out the cooked mash on reed mats, when she holds the sweetwort in her hands? Can we assume that she’s basically just doing some version of what brewers still do today, if in a less scientific or less sophisticated fashion?

I think not. More specifically, I think we need to be careful to avoid two seductive ‘traps’ that have hindered interpretation of this challenging Sumerian text. The terminological trap tempts us to translate the text using terminology drawn from the European brewing tradition. I suspect a square-pegs-round-holes situation, a modern brewing lexicon that does not match up well with past reality. The minimalist trap, on the other hand, entices us into assuming that ancient brewers relied on a simple, straightforward set of steps: just the basics. To the contrary, since the Mesopotamian brewing tradition probably stretched back deep into the prehistoric past, we should expect sophistication, creativity, complexity and diversity.

The beers provided our audiences with a unique sort of visceral, embodied connection to the ancient past

14 August 2013, 5:55pm. Pat Conway, co-owner of Great Lakes Brewing Company, and I are huddled in an office off the main dining room at his Cleveland brewpub. The first tasting event for our Sumerian Beer Project kicks off in five minutes. But we have just realised – we forgot to name the beers. After some quick brainstorming, we settle on a tribute to the famous adventuring duo, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Fast-forward 45 minutes. Pat has waxed lyrical about our collaborative brewing effort. I have given a lecture about ancient Mesopotamia. The brewers have explained our brewing process. The guests have had a taste of our two beers, Gilgamash and Enkibru, served up in tasting glasses. But now the moment of truth. A large ceramic vessel waits at the front of the room, straws emerging from its mouth. Will anyone be willing to try sipping some Enkibru Sumerian-style? We had our doubts, but the audience did not. The answer was a resounding ‘Yes!’

 

Photo supplied by the author

This event set the pattern for others to follow. We served our guests two beers. Enkibru was brewed using authentic ingredients, equipment and brewing methods. It was tart, uncarbonated, milky-looking and intriguingly herbal. Gilgamash, brewed using the same ingredients but modern equipment and a commercial yeast, was more familiar, something like a Belgian saison. These beers were the result of a multi-year collaboration between Great Lakes Brewing Co and the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (at the time, the Oriental Institute) at the University of Chicago. I signed on as a graduate student and never looked back. This was my entry point into the world of Mesopotamian beer.

Did we manage to produce an exact replica of any beers from the distant past? Definitely not. We had to rely heavily on educated guesswork. But we did provide our audiences with a unique sort of visceral, embodied connection to the ancient past. If you would like to have a taste of Gilgamash too, my book includes a brew-it-yourself recipe to try at home. If you give it a go, I suggest a ceramic jug and some long straws. And with the first sip – or any time you find yourself in need of a toast – I propose that you borrow a line from our ancient Mesopotamian drinking song and call on Ninkasi, goddess of beer. ‘May Ninkasi live together with you!’ Or give it a try in Sumerian: ‘Ninkasi zada ḫumu’udanti!’

[Vesper 30,085]

Sichuan Chilli Oil Smashed Cucumber Salad & Soy-Cured Egg

This is just one of the best things ever. The textures and tastes set you up for a perfect meal. Normally, smashed cucumbers are served simply as a side to just nibble on while you’re waiting for noodles or dumplings to come out. I think this treatment takes the cucumbers to more of a comprehensive dish. This is so refreshing. I’m so hyped on this salad, and I know this will be a staple for you and your family or friends, or maybe your lover.

Serves

6

Ingredients

For the soy sauce eggs

6 eggs

½ cup of water

1 cup of soy sauce

¾ cup of mirin

For the cucumber salad

2 English cucumbers, cut into 2-inch strips

Salt

½ red onion, sliced as thinly as possible

½ bunch of coriander, chopped

½ bunch of spring onions, chopped

2 tbsp of toasted sesame seeds

For the black vinegar chilli crisp dressing

¼ cup of chilli crisp

2 tbsp of black vinegar

2 tbsp of soy sauce

3 tbsp of toasted sesame seeds

Zest & juice of 1 lime

2 garlic cloves, grated

1 small knob of ginger, grated

2 tbsp of rapeseed oil

Method

Step 1

First, we’re going to make the soy sauce eggs. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Lower each egg into the pot and set your timer for 6 minutes. Transfer the eggs to an ice bath until they get cold, then peel them. To marinate the eggs, place a Ziploc bag in a small bowl. Fill it with the water, soy sauce and mirin. Add the eggs and squeeze the air out of the bag to ensure the eggs are covered in the soy sauce mixture. Seal the bag closed and store in the refrigerator. Ideally wait 24 hours, but they can be used after 6 hours.

Step 2

When you are ready to make your salad, prepare to smash your cucumbers. Lay them on a cutting board and smash them with the bottom of a pot. Transfer them to a strainer set over a bowl, generously salt them, and place them in the fridge for 30 minutes. Salting them draws out a lot of the moisture in the cucumbers. Press them with paper towels to remove all the moisture you can.

Step 3

In a large bowl, mix the onions.

Step 4

Make the black vinegar chilli crisp dressing. In a small bowl, mix up the chilli crisp, black vinegar, soy sauce, sesame seeds, lime zest and juice, garlic, ginger and rapeseed oil.

Step 5

Carefully remove your beautiful little soy eggs from their salty bath. Break them gently with your hands. Do it artfully, we are trying to make art here.

Step 6

When you’re ready to serve, get a large platter out. First put down your smashed cucumber. Toss with the dressing. Top it with the broken-up soy eggs. Add the onion and coriander, and top with the sesame seeds.

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Pork Katsu Sando

As classic as it gets, pure and simple. Brine your pork chops; you’ll thank me later. Or don’t, but still make this sando. It’ll still slap if you don’t brine, but holy cow, if you brine, you’ll win, and winning is what it’s all about. For some reason, these eat better than any other sandwich. They seem smaller and more perfect in every way, like most things in Japan. Very thoughtful and no fluff, only 100% execution. I love you, Japan. Thank you for always leading the way with restraint.

Serves

2

Ingredients

Two 6oz boneless pork chops, from the shoulder end

1 cup of all-purpose flour

3 eggs, whisked

1 cup of panko breadcrumbs

Oil, for frying

Salt

Four 1-inch-thick slices milk bread or brioche

2 tbsp of Kewpie mayonnaise

1 piece of pickled daikon

¼ head green cabbage, sliced as thinly as possible

For The Brine

1 tbsp of sugar

2 tbsp of salt

4 cups of water

For the katsu sauce

1 cup of ketchup

¼ cup of soy sauce

¼ cup of HP Sauce

1 heaping tbsp of prepared horseradish

1 cup of tonkatsu sauce

Method

Step 1

Let’s start by making your brine. In a large bowl, dissolve your sugar and salt in the water. Add the pork chops to the bowl, making sure they’re completely submerged. Place in the fridge for 2 hours to brine. Then, rinse them off and pat them dry with paper towels.

Step 2

Next, make your katsu sauce. In a medium bowl, stir together the ketchup, soy sauce, HP Sauce, horseradish and tonkatsu sauce. Transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to use.

Step 3

Prepare your pork katsu. Set up three shallow bowls for your breading station: one with the flour, one with the whisked eggs, and one with the panko. Dip each pork chop first in the flour, then the eggs, then the panko. Make sure each pork chop is completely coated. The best method is to have one wet hand and one dry hand. Alternatively, you can use a fork to pick up the pork and move it around.

Step 4

Line a plate with paper towels. Heat 4 inches of oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until it reaches 180°C. Gently place the pork chops in the hot oil and fry until golden brown, about 6 minutes total. Then transfer them to the paper towel-lined plate to drain. Season both sides with salt. While the katsu is still hot, brush both sides with your katsu sauce.

Step 5

Spread your mayo on your bread, place your daikon, then your sauced katsu. Top with a big pile of sliced cabbage and your remaining slice of bread. Repeat with the other sandwich.

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Crispy Lamb Pho

This recipe is for an old friend and was inspired by a memory of one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. Danny Bowien used to have a burrito spot called Mission Cantina on the Lower East Side, and some days they would serve pho. Because why not? The lamb pho really hit me hard because it was two things that I love but had never really had together. The deep lamb pho broth and the crispy lamb ribs blew my mind. I hope you enjoy my version inspired by Danny’s genius.

Serves

4

Ingredients

For The Soup

2 large yellow onions, cut in half

1 8-inch piece ginger, cut in half

1.4kg of marrow bones

1 bone-in lamb shoulder (take out of the fridge 2½ hours before starting recipe)

2 racks of bone-in lamb ribs (take out of the fridge 2½ hours before starting recipe)

15 cups of water

½ cup of fish sauce

2 tbsp of sugar

1 tbsp of salt, plus more as needed

½ tsp of MSG

4 garlic cloves, halved

1 cinnamon stick, broken in half

1 tbsp of coriander seeds

2 star anise pods

3 or 4 cloves

½ cup of mala spice (I like Fly By Jing)

450g of dried pho noodles

Garnishes

Shiso leaves

Coriander

White onion, sliced

Spring onions, sliced

2 limes, quartered

Handful of bean sprouts

Bird’s eye chillies

Thai basil

Method

Step 1

Let’s make pho. First, let’s char our onions and ginger in a cast-iron pan over medium-high heat. You want them to get caramelised to give our broth a deep flavour. Set aside.

Step 2

In a large pot, place the marrowbones, lamb shoulder and lamb ribs, and cover the goods with cold water. Bring to a boil for 5 minutes to blanch, and then drain and quickly wash off all the bones, shoulder and ribs.

Step 3

Place everything back into the pot and add your 15 cups of water, fish sauce, rock sugar, salt, MSG and garlic cloves. Bring to a boil and then immediately reduce it to a simmer. Skim the scum and add your charred onions, charred ginger, cinnamon, coriander, star anise and cloves. Keep simmering the pho broth, removing the scum from the surface of the water until the liquid is clear and no more scum rises to the surface. There will be a lot of it – the lamb ribs are very fatty.

Step 4

After about 2½ hours (when you can almost pinch through the ribs), take them and the lamb shoulder out. Let them cool on a wire rack and move to the fridge. Let the broth continue to simmer for another 4 hours. Keep adding water if too much is cooking off. In the end we should have about 6 litres of delicious broth. Strain after 4 hours.

Step 5

Preheat your oven to grill on high. When you are ready to serve, slice your lamb shoulder meat and ribs into 1-inch-thick pieces, then cover all your lamb in the mala spice and season with salt. Grill until they are nice and crispy (5-10 minutes).

Step 6

To serve, boil the noodles according to the package instructions. Divide among four bowls. Put the lamb shoulder and ribs on top. Bring the broth to a rolling boil and ladle it over all that deliciousness in your bowls. Set up your garnishes on a large plate and serve.

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Rage against the machine

For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to resist – something no machine does

https://aeon.co/essays/can-computers-think-no-they-cant-actually-do-anything

Computers don’t actually do anything. They don’t write, or play; they don’t even compute. Which doesn’t mean we can’t play with computers, or use them to invent, or make, or problem-solve. The new AI is unexpectedly reshaping ways of working and making, in the arts and sciences, in industry, and in warfare. We need to come to terms with the transformative promise and dangers of this new tech. But it ought to be possible to do so without succumbing to bogus claims about machine minds.

What could ever lead us to take seriously the thought that these devices of our own invention might actually understand, and think, and feel, or that, if not now, then later, they might one day come to open their artificial eyes thus finally to behold a shiny world of their very own? One source might simply be the sense that, now unleashed, AI is beyond our control. Fast, microscopic, distributed and astronomically complex, it is hard to understand this tech, and it is tempting to imagine that it has power over us.

But this is nothing new. The story of technology – from prehistory to now – has always been that of the ways we are entrained by the tools and systems that we ourselves have made. Think of the pathways we make by walking. To every tool there is a corresponding habit, that is, an automatised way of acting and being. From the humble pencil to the printing press to the internet, our human agency is enacted in part by the creation of social and technological landscapes that in turn transform what we can do, and so seem, or threaten, to govern and control us.

Yet it is one thing to appreciate the ways we make and remake ourselves through the cultural transformation of our worlds via tool use and technology, and another to mystify dumb matter put to work by us. If there is intelligence in the vicinity of pencils, shoes, cigarette lighters, maps or calculators, it is the intelligence of their users and inventors. The digital is no different.

But there is another origin of our impulse to concede mind to devices of our own invention, and this is what I focus on here: the tendency of some scientists to take for granted what can only be described as a wildly simplistic picture of human and animal cognitive life. They rely unchecked on one-sided, indeed, milquetoast conceptions of human activity, skill and cognitive accomplishment. The surreptitious substitution (to use a phrase of Edmund Husserl’s) of this thin gruel version of the mind at work – a substitution that I hope to convince you traces back to Alan Turing and the very origins of AI – is the decisive move in the conjuring trick.

What scientists seem to have forgotten is that the human animal is a creature of disturbance. Or as the mid-20th-century philosopher of biology Hans Jonas wrote: ‘Irritability is the germ, and as it were the atom, of having a world…’ With us there is always, so to speak, a pebble in the shoe. And this is what moves us, turns us, orients us to reorient ourselves, to do things differently, so that we might carry on. It is irritation and disorientation that is the source of our concern. In the absence of disturbance, there is nothing: no language, no games, no goals, no tasks, no world, no care, and so, yes, no consciousness.

Can machines think? Turing dismissed this as ‘too meaningless to deserve discussion’. Instead of trying to make a machine that can think, he was content to design one that might count as a reasonable substitute for a thinker. Everywhere in Turing’s work, the focus is on imitation, replacement and substitution.

Consider his contribution to mathematics. A Turing machine is a formal model of the informal idea of computation: ie, the idea that some problems can be solved ‘mechanically’ by following a recipe or algorithm. (Think long division.) Turing proposed that we replace the familiar notion with his more precise analogue. Whether a given function is Turing-computable is a mathematical question, one that Turing supplied the formal means to answer rigorously. But whether Turing-computability serves to capture the essence of computation as we understand this intuitively, and whether therefore it’s a good idea to make the replacement, these are not questions that mathematics can decide. Indeed, presumably because they are themselves ‘too meaningless to deserve discussion,’ Turing left them to the philosophers.

In the same anti-philosophical spirit, Turing proposed that we replace the meaningless question Can machines think? with the empirically decidable question Can machines pass [what has come to be known as] the Turing test? To understand this proposal, we need to look at the test, which Turing called the Imitation Game.

The game is to be played by three players: one man, one woman, and one person whose gender doesn’t matter. Each has a distinct task. The player of unspecified gender, the interrogator, has the job of figuring out which of the other two is a man, and which a woman. The woman’s task is to serve as the interrogator’s ally; the man’s is to cause the interrogator to make the wrong identification.

The point is to explore whether substituting a machine for a player has any effect on the rate of success

This might make for fun adult entertainment, but Turing feared it would be too easy. Even today, when gender-experiment is commonplace, it wouldn’t be that hard, in most circumstances, to sort people by gender on the basis of superficial appearance. So Turing proposed that we isolate the interrogator in a room, limiting their access to others to the posing of questions. And he added: ‘In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms.’

What does the Imitation Game teach us about machine intelligence? Here is what Turing says:

We now ask the question, ‘What will happen when a machine takes the part of [the man] in this game?’ Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, ‘Can machines think?’

The interrogator’s goal is not to out the computer; it’s to out the human players as having this or that gender. But Turing’s goal, and the game’s point, is to explore whether substituting a machine for one of the players has any effect on the interrogator’s rate of success. It is this last question, whether or not there is an effect on outcomes, that is proposed, by Turing, as proxy for the ‘meaningless’ question of whether machines can think.

Instead of arguing about what thinking is, Turing envisions a scenario in which machines might be able to enter into and participate in meaningful human exchange. Would their ability to do this establish that they can think, or feel, that they have minds as we have minds? These are precisely the wrong questions to ask, according to Turing. What he does say is that machines will get better at the game, and he went so far as to venture a prediction: that by end of the century – he was writing in 1950 – ‘general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.’

Despite Turing’s apparent hostility to philosophy, it is possible to read him as capturing a critical philosophical insight. Why should we expect that evidence would be able to secure the minds of machines for us, when it doesn’t perform that function in our ordinary human dealings? None of us has ever found out or proved that the people around us in our lives actually think or feel. We just take it for granted. And it is this observation that motivates his conception of his own task: not that of proving that machines can think; but rather that of integrating them into our lives so that the question, in effect, goes away, or answers itself.

It turns out, however, that not all of Turing’s replacements and substitutions are quite so straightforward as they seem. Some of them are downright misleading.

Consider, first, Turing’s matter-of-fact suggestion that we replace talking by the use of typed messages. He suggests that this is to make the game challenging. But the substitution of text for speech has an entirely different effect: to lend a modicum of plausibility to the otherwise absurd suggestion that machines might participate at all. To appreciate this, recall that a Turing machine is what in mathematics is called a formal system. In a formal system, there is a finite alphabet, and a finite set of rules for combining elements of the alphabet into more complex expressions. What makes the system formal is that the vocabulary needs to be specified in terms of physical properties alone, and rules need to be framed only in terms of these physical, that is to say, formal properties. This is the crux: unless you can formally specify the inputs and the outputs – the vocabulary – you can’t define a Turing machine or a Turing-computable function.

And, crucially, it isn’t possible formally to specify the inputs and the outputs of ordinary human language. Speech is breathy, hot movement that always unfolds with others, in context, and against the background of needs, feelings, desires, projects, goals and constraints. Speech is active, felt and improvisational. It has more in common with dancing than text-messaging. We are so much at home, nowadays, under the regime of the keyboard that we don’t even notice the ways text conceals the bodily reality of language.

The gamification of life is one of Turing’s most secure, and most troubling, legacies

Although speech is not formally specifiable, text – in the sense of text-messaging – is. So text can serve as a computationally tractable proxy for real human exchange. By filtering all communication between the players through the keyboard, in the name of making the game harder, Turing actually – and really this is a sleight of hand – sweeps what the philosopher Ned Block has called the problem of inputs and outputs under the rug.

But the substitution of text-message for speech is not the only sleight of hand at work in Turing’s argument. The other is introduced even more surreptitiously. This is the tacit substitution of games for meaningful human exchange. Indeed, the gamification of life is one of Turing’s most secure, and most troubling, legacies.

The problem is that Turing takes for granted a partial and distorted understanding of what games are. From the computational perspective, games are – indeed, to be formally tractable, they must be – crystalline structures of intelligibility, virtual worlds, where rules constrain what you can do, and where unproblematic values (points, goals, the score), and settled criteria of success and failure (winning and losing), are clearly specified.

But clarity, regimentation and transparency give us only one aspect of what a game is. Somehow Turing and his successors tend to forget that games are also contests; they are proving grounds, and it is we who are tested and we whose limitations are exposed, or whose powers as well as frailties are put on display on the kickball field, or the four square court. A child who plays competitive chess might suffer from anxiety so extreme they are nauseated. This visceral expression is no accidental epiphenomenon, an external of no essential value to the game. No, games without vomit – or at least that live possibility – would not be recognisable as human games at all.

All this is to say that true games are much more than they seem to be when we view them, as Turing did, through the lens of the regime of the keyboard. (Which is not to deny that we can, and do, usefully model aspects of the game computationally.)

Here’s the critical upshot: human beings are not merely doers (eg, games players) whose actions, at least when successful, conform to rules or norms. We are doers whose activity is always (at least potentially) the site of conflict. Second-order acts of reflection and criticism belong to the first-order performance itself. These are entangled, and with the consequence that you can never factor out, from the pure exercise of the activity itself, all the ways in which the activity challenges, retards, impedes and confounds. To play piano, for example – that other keyboard technology – is to fight with the machine, to battle against it.

Let me explain: the piano is the construction and elaboration of a particular musical culture and its values. It installs a conception of what is musically legible, intelligible, permitted and possible. A contraption made of approximately 12,000 pieces of wood, steel, felt and wire, the piano is a quasi-digital system, in which tones are the work of keystrokes, and in which intervals, scales and harmonic possibilities are controlled by the machine’s design and manufacture.

The piano was invented, to be sure, but not by you or me. We encounter it. It pre-exists us and solicits our submission. To learn to play is to be altered, made to adapt one’s posture, hands, fingers, legs and feet to the piano’s mechanical requirements. Under the regime of the piano keyboard, it is demanded that we ourselves become player pianos, that is to say, extensions of the machine itself.

But we can’t. And we won’t. To learn to play, to take on the machine, for us, is to struggle. It is hard to master the instrument’s demands.

To master the piano is not just to conform to the machine’s demands. It is to push back, to say no

And this fact – the difficulty we encounter in the face of the keyboard’s insistence – is productive. We make art out of it. It stops us being player pianos, but it is exactly what is required if we are to become piano players.

For it is the player’s fraught relation to the machine, and to the history and tradition that the machine imposes, that supplies the raw material of musical invention. Music and play happen in that entanglement. To master the piano, as only a person can, is not just to conform to the machine’s demands. It is, rather, to push back, to say no, to rage against the machine. And so, for example, we slap and bang and shout out. In this way, the piano becomes not merely a vehicle of habit and control – a mechanism – but rather an opportunity for action and expression.

And, as with the piano, so with the whole of human cultural life. We live in the entanglement between government and resistance. We fight back.

Consider language. We don’t just talk, as it were, following the rules blindly. Talking is an issue for us, and the rules, such as they are, are up for grabs and in dispute. We always, inevitably, and from the beginning, are made to cope with how hard talking is, how liable we are to misunderstand each other, although most of the time this is undertaken matter-of-factly and without undue stress. To talk, almost inevitably, is to question word choice, to demand reformulation, repetition and repair. What do you mean? How can you say that? In this way, talking contains within it, from the start, and as one of its basic modes, the activities of criticism and reflection about talking, which end up changing the way we talk. We don’t just act, as it were, in the flow. Flow eludes us and, in its place, we know striving, argument and negotiation. And so we change language in using language; and that’s what a language is, a place of capture and release, engagement and criticism, a process. We can never factor out mere doing, skilfulness, habit – the sort of things machines are used effectively to simulate – from the ways these doings, engagements and skills are made new, transformed, through our very acts of doing them. These are entangled. This is a crucial lesson about the very shape of human cognition.

If we keep language, the piano, and games in view, and if we don’t lose sight of what I am calling entanglement – the ways in which carrying on is entangled with everything required to deal with just how hard it is to carry on! – then it becomes clear that the AI discussion tends unthinkingly to presuppose a one-sided, peaches-and-cream simplification of human skilfulness and cognitive life. As if speaking were the straightforward application of rules, or playing the piano was just a matter of doing what the manual instructs. But to imagine language users who were not also actively struggling with the problems of talk would be to imagine something that is, at most, the shell or semblance of human life with language. It would, in fact, be to imagine the language of machines (such as LLMs).

The telling fact: computers are used to play our games; they are engineered to make moves in the spaces opened up by our concerns. They don’t have concerns of their own, and they make no new games. They invent no new language.

The British philosopher R G Collingwood noticed that the painter doesn’t invent painting, and the musician doesn’t invent the musical culture in which they find themselves. And for Collingwood this served to show that no person is fully autonomous, a God-like fount of creativity; we are always to some degree recyclers and samplers and, at our best, participants in something larger than ourselves.

But this should not be taken to show that we become what we are (painters, musicians, speakers) by doing what, for example, LLMs do – ie, merely by getting trained up on large data sets. Humans aren’t trained up. We have experience. We learn. And for us, learning a language, for example, isn’t learning to generate ‘the next token’. It’s learning to work, play, eat, love, flirt, dance, fight, pray, manipulate, negotiate, pretend, invent and think. And crucially, we don’t merely incorporate what we learn and carry on; we always resist. Our values are always problematic. We are not merely word-generators. We are makers of meaning.

We can’t help doing this; no computer can do this.

[Vesper 30,085]

Dover sole à la meunière

Meunière means miller’s wife in French, so this is fish cooked in the style of the miller’s wife — dusted with flour. This is still my favourite fish dish. I always say if you think you don’t like fish, order yourself a Dover sole if you can afford it. I would defy anybody not to love this dish. As with many a prime cut of meat or poultry, the simplest ways of cooking fish are generally the best.

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 2 x 400-450g Dover soles, trimmed (see method) and skinned
• Salt and freshly ground white pepper
• 25g plain flour
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 50g unsalted butter
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley
• 2 tsp capers

To serve

• Lemon wedges
• Sautéed potatoes

Method

1. To trim a sole, take a pair of sharp scissors and cut the frilly fins and the fleshy bones off both sides. You want to cut about 4cm off all round so that you are left with just the four fillets on the backbone. Repeat with the other sole. Season the fish with salt and white pepper. Dip both sides of each fillet into flour, then pat off the excess.
2. Heat the oil in a large well seasoned or nonstick frying pan. Add one of the soles, lower the heat slightly and add a small piece of butter. Fry the fish over a moderate heat for 4-5 minutes, without moving it, until richly golden.
3. Carefully turn over the fish and fry for a further 4-5 minutes until golden brown and cooked through. Transfer it to a serving plate and keep warm. Repeat with the second fish.
4. Discard the frying oil. Add the remaining butter to the pan and allow it to melt over a moderate heat. When the butter starts to smell nutty and turn light brown, add the lemon juice, parsley, capers and some seasoning. Pour some of this beurre noisette over each fish and serve with lemon wedges. Good with sautéed potatoes.

[Vesper 30,085]

Pan-fried John Dory with beer, bacon and lettuce

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with craft ale. I’m of a generation that prefers delicate English hops to the enormous power of American ones. When we were filming at the Wild Card Brewery in Walthamstow, east London, recently, brewer Jaega Wise gave me bags of both English and American hops to sniff. The American hops were like New Zealand sauvignon blanc in the strength of their aroma. But when it comes to using beer in a sauce for fish, that extra fragrance makes all the difference.

I’m very fond of this simple treatment for a great fish like John Dory, which is perfectly complemented by the bitterness of the beer and the smokiness of the bacon.

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 4 x 175g John Dory or gurnard fillets, skin on
• Salt and black pepper
• 50g butter, melted
• 75g rindless smoked streaky bacon, chopped
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped or grated
• 300ml good chicken stock
• 300ml pale ale
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 750g Cos lettuce, shredded
• Small handful of parsley, chopped

Method

1. Place the fish fillets on a plate and sprinkle generously with salt. Leave them for about 15-20 minutes, then rinse off the salt and pat the fish dry with kitchen roll. Brush the fish with a little of the butter and season with pepper, then set aside.
2. Heat some of the butter in a frying pan, add the bacon and fry until golden and crisp. Add the remaining butter and gently fry the onion and garlic for 5 minutes until softened. Add the chicken stock and beer to the pan and cook over a high heat until the liquid has reduced by three quarters. Turn the heat down as much as possible, cover the pan and leave the sauce over the low heat while you cook the fish.
3. In a separate pan, heat the oil over a medium heat and cook the fish, skin-side down, for about 6-7 minutes until the skin is crisp and the fish is opaque.
4. Stir the lettuce into the sauce and allow it to wilt, then stir in the chopped parsley and season, if needed, with salt and pepper. Divide the lettuce and bacon between four plates, top with a piece of fish and spoon around the sauce. Serve immediately.

[Vesper 30,085]

Pasta with roasted squash, sage and walnuts

Serves 4

Sage and roasted squash is a classic flavour combination that always hits the spot, and the walnuts add some welcome crunch. If you want extra-crispy sage leaves, remove them from the frying pan, sprinkle with salt and leave to rest on a piece of kitchen roll — they will magically crisp up.

Ingredients
1 squash (about 900g)
Salt and pepper
Pinch of chilli flakes
Olive oil
400g pasta
300g ricotta
100g butter
1 packet fresh sage
Handful of walnut pieces
Grated parmesan

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180C fan/gas 6. Peel the squash, discard the seeds and chop the flesh into 2.5cm pieces. Season, sprinkle with chilli and drizzle with oil and roast for 20-30 minutes, turning halfway, until soft and slightly caramelised.

2. Cook the pasta in salted boiling water until al dente and drain, reserving 1-2 tbsp cooking water. Stir the water into the ricotta to loosen it and create a sauce.

3. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pan and fry the sage and nuts until the butter is golden and the sage crisp.

4. Combine the ricotta and squash with the pasta and serve. Drizzle over the sage, butter and nuts and top with parmesan.

Edited October 26, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,085]

Stuffed pumpkin with feta and spicy grains

Serves 2

Those precooked packets of rice and grains are a great cheat for this recipe. They also come flavoured so you could even do away with the extras, although I find a squeeze of lemon juice and a few fresh herbs help to brighten them up no end.

Ingredients
1 medium pumpkin or squash
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 red onion, peeled and cut into quarters
1 x 250g packet of precooked mixed grains
25g pine nuts
40g dried apricots, chopped
1 tbsp harissa paste
Small bunch of parsley, chopped
100g feta, crumbled

Method
1. Heat the oven to 180C fan/gas 6. Halve the pumpkin or squash and discard the seeds to make a decent-sized hollow. Rub inside and out with oil, season and add two onion quarters to each half. Roast for 45 minutes.

2. Heat the grains in the microwave according to the instructions, then mix in the remaining ingredients as well as the roasted onion. Spoon into the pumpkin or squash halves and return to the oven for 15 minutes before serving.

[Vesper 30,085]

Squash and paneer curry

Serves 4

The sweetness of squash works well with curry spices, so don’t be shy when adding heat. If you can get it, Fudco Kashmiri chilli (fudcoshop.com) adds great colour without blowing your head off.

Ingredients
Splash of vegetable oil
200g paneer, cut into cubes
1 squash (about 900g), peeled and diced
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 x 5cm piece of ginger, grated
Small bunch of coriander, stems chopped and leaves reserved for garnish
1-2 tbsp garam masala, to taste
Chilli powder, to taste
2 tins chopped tomatoes
150ml double cream
Cooked rice, to serve

Method
1. Heat the oil in a large pan over a high heat and fry the paneer for several minutes until golden. Place on kitchen roll to drain. Add more oil and cook the squash, turning it until caramelised (about 10 minutes) and drain.

2. Add more oil if needed and gently fry the onion, garlic, ginger and coriander stems for about 5 minutes, then add the garam masala and chilli and cook for a further minute.

3. Add the tomatoes and squash and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until thickened. Add the paneer and cream and warm through. Sprinkle with coriander leaves. Serve with rice.