Asador Etxebarri | Atxondo 2016/2017

Assistant Sommelier

Etxebarri (Re-)visited: ON THE NOTION OF ATTUNEMENT — 2022

15min read.

One month in, it was the beginning of a late summer lunch service, a Spanish winemaker, famous for his ethereal Garnachas, came in for a devine feast with his friend. My Spanish was still patchy, but hell: I could definitely understand his pronunciation of La Tâche. I was trembling.

Legendary wine, little max.

But I did feel prepared and tasked myself with a quality-control test in one of those ridiculously small tasting glasses. Conclusion: that Pinot’s so utterly dense and concentrated, if she could talk, she would definitely whisper “Oxygène, s’il vous plait!”

So I immediately tuned in that wicked 1976 album of Jean-Michel Jarre and the whole Etxebarri crowd was going mad until the end of days.

… And you thought, Germans have no humor … tze tze Schweinerei !

Jokes aside, building up on my prior knowledge I knew exactly what to do.

I silently took this sublimely glimmering Zalto decanter, and tip-toed toward the table. Arriving diagonally to the guests, I put my feet firmly onto the ground with my weight onto the heels to avoid further wobbling. I embraced an upright stance, pulling my belly in, breast out, and with elbows aligned to not interfer with the diners’ space, I adopted my over many napping-sessions developed, smoothly hibernating-like breathing technique.

I was breathing slightly slower than the flow rate of the wine, to take out tempo and keep the - on chemistry level incredibly vigorous - reaction between oxygen and wine to the bare but inevitable minimum. I managed to gracefully decant the wine, earnestly trying to mimick the serene and tranquil aura of Mount Anboto silently leaning in through the window.

Although I thought I had decanted the wine rather flawlessly, leaving the depot elegantly behind and the guest amused, I turned around and saw my mentor twenty meters down the hall - frozen.

While he had a genuinely warm and kind look on his face, his eyes were wide open. We locked eyes and without blinking, he turned around and left service, not to be seen until the next day.

Needless to say, I was baffled about this abrupt reaction and more so about the situation’s culmination: pure indecisiveness.

My first thoughts tried to make sense of his reaction.

Is there a misunderstanding? Was he overreacting? But for what exactly? Maybe it’s simply a codex not to decant any DRC? Or was it the way I decanted it? Was it the cheeky taster I drank before? Was it my behavior toward the guest?

I finished service pretty upset, constantly tripping over my ego, leaving with a big question mark above my head.

CONTEXT: etxebarri’s modus operandi

A week before my very first shift, I was invited to come over to discuss the procedures of service, or at least that was what I expected.

Upon arrival, he spoke with his warm and calm voice:

“Take in the atmosphere, the smell, the light, the colors, the temperature, the forms and textures of dining room.”

I was a bit confused and hesitant at first, but his incitement was dead serious.

I slowly let go and commenced wandering through the room, trying to grasp the outlines of the room, the spacing, the bottlenecks, the impression of the renovated farm’s high ceiling with its remnant timber beams and stone walls. Then I tried to deeply soak in the atmosphere, continously changing with the state of indirect light reflecting off the imminent majestic mountain range, embedding Etxebarri.

Eventually I was closing my eyes to focus on the various smells, feeling the temperature, and surrounding sounds. On suggestion, I started touching the chairs and tables for differing textures - not even the wall and artwork were safe from my blind hands.

After a while, I noticed myself doing slight pirouettes, could you believe it? That tall stark German dude liberating his inner Ballerina?

While his proposal sounded a bit frivolous to me at first, I wasn’t aware that this particular moment of what I call “the attunement to the dining room” struck me so deeply, that it will have altered and diffused my life perspective permanently.

Later in life, this attunement became a personal project: a attunement to things, to space in general, also to people and animals, to any social contexts, to the world at large if you will. It is a process of tuning in one’s own frequency with the ones one can find outside of yourself.

decating: a matter of thought or spirit?

With this paradigm in mind, it became crystal clear, that when I resorted with a strong ego to my learned knowledge about decanting, I missed the point - the fragile point of attunement.

Technically, it might be correct to aerate a dense and compressed wine, sure.

But here, it was about the spirit of these diners, their table at the window overseeing the vast calm mountainous landscape, the long tasting menu ahead, the already big burgundy wine glasses, the faint, soothing and atmospheric music, and the idea that wine as well as humans, can only fully reveal themselves on their own accord - especially with Pinot Noir being such a profoundly vulnerable phenotype.

So why the hell, would you want to speed up this divine process and thereby disrupt the flow of becoming, becoming as in letting things fall into place naturally?

A debrief that evening did not occur, leading to my assumption that I was left to digest these experiences precisely through my own stomach and therefore, be able to draw my own conclusions.

In light of the bigger picture - I admit, which was not immediately clear to me - I now, and that is me 4 years later, feel gratitude and respect for his decision to disengage.

If he were to abruptly intervene my set protocol to decant, or even rightfully critize me post-hoc in service, he would have not only aggregated the disrupting effect on the sourrounding space and flow of service but also embark toward a circuit of condemnation.

Not thematizing this faux-pas and drag it in front of me for the next days, he somehow knew or atleast gambled that I will be sufficiently reflect on the situation without him having to provide any explanation or comment.

Now, giving me the freedom to discern and rediscover my own past decisions, was risky. While I proved to be curious, I was also naive, and at times simply craving for explicit structure to carry out.

As it turns out, this encounter was only the beginning, followed by a few similar situations where criticism was only insinuated implicitly. Somehow, I had to accept and adapt to this non-dialectic way of learning.

Later when I found out that he’s sympathetic to Heraclitus’ fragments, it became clear to me that here, I’ve encountered not only an inspiring and great human being, but also a rare one. One who actually embodies and shines forth his art and concepts througout life, beyond the comfort of armchairs.

Over the course of many similar situations I reacted with increasing affinity to, hmm let’s call it an ‘experimental approach to learning’. At last, I think I became to see his approach as a sign of wisdom if not anything else.

BEYOND DECANTING

A proposal on incorporating failure into life

The approach of ‘creating an open space for (self-)discovery’ - admist the, dare I say it

Standardized, at times sanctimonious yet prescriptive, normative-laden and amply pontificated sommelier world soaked with an undying love for pendantic indignation

stroke me profoundly. Damn, what a sentence - even Cicero were to blush..

Let me try to develop this thought and work out some of its underlying assumptions:

There are two common reactions on how to deal with the confrontation of the foreign and the implicit need to resolve ones relationship to it

1. One can blindly affirm / agree offhand with ones failure; or

2. Pass judgment through opposition

As I will argue here, neither approach is fruitful. While agreeing offhand, seems to be a reliable and conflict-free and therefore a sweet solution. As a result however, one becomes estranged with the failure. The agreement to avoid conflict, to surrender so to speak, turns the tension inward instead.

Simply opposing and punching back at the failure or criticism evoked, isnt exactly prolific either, as it isolates and condemns any possible future solution. As most failure occures in social contexts, not only the critique but also the critic becomes a powerful counterpart.

Taking the example from above:

Condemning Max’ decanting for instance, would establish a clear division and immediately shut down the discussion, and with it, any potential opportunities to let the conflict play out in open field. The tension turns inward..

“Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend [...]”

Carl Jung, 1933

Hence, the task does not lie in blindly accepting nor opposing the critic, critique or self-reflected diagnosed failure.

Instead, I believe it is about

Inducing a space for feeling, carving out ‘finely-tuned antennas’ - Rilke would say - toward the unknown; a kaleidoscope of opportunities.

The Principle of Judo

So in my mind, the solution is more like the principle of Judo.

It’s not about overcoming a hostile force (conflict or disagreement) by opposing it but instead by swinging and rolling with the punch.

Appeasing the conflict is a route toward static and lifeless being;

Containing and resolving it into higher grounds, oh boy … hearing this, Freud would instantly drop his pipe while jumping up from his extremely comfy armchair in excessive joyfulness..

To me, rolling with the punch allows for an opportunity to genuinely feel and actually reflect on the situation at hand. By feeling, I mean an attunement toward change, rather than a sort of confinement reacting to change.

Ergo, feeling is not to be exactly equated with emotion. Surely, feeling can give rise to emotions and affects but in itself, it’s rather rational in nature.

Feeling is rational? Yep, let me try to unpack this:

In normal use, feeling is a process which determines events regarding inner and outer past experiences in light of your values.

Is it agreeable or not? Desirable or undesirable? Pleasant or unpleasant?

Beautiful or ugly? Good or bad?

In other words, it’s an evaluative function, a judgmental process deeply concerned with values and norms. This function then can lead to emotions and affects, when answering these questions above for example

In itself however, the function remains rational as it simply followes up upon, or puts into practice your explicit and implicit values.

As outlined in my Polemic, when it comes to wine, music, arts, anything sensual really, I strongly favor this normative approach over the relentless pursuit of objectivity.

HALT MAX!!

Didn’t you just spit upon the “sanctimonious, pontificated and normative-laden sommelier world” merely two breathes ago?

Damn it, you hypocrite donkey!

Well, for some reason, I knew you’d say this.

I might be a donkey, yep, and a hypocrite… sure. It’s difficult to be in complete unity at my tender age of 30, alright??

To me there is an important, maybe the most important liberating realization I’ve had thus far. That there are two types of Freedom (embedded in value-systems): ‘Freedom from’ and ‘Freedom to’.

You can see value systems through a lens of dogma, striving to fulfill its set of believes yielding a sense of security through a constant reinforcement of intelligibility — re-active in nature

OR

You can invigorate valuing with an active approach to experimenting, yielding continous opportunities of re-construction in the face of the unknown — active in nature

A risky undertaking:

Freedom to (create)

Rather than a

FREEDOM FROM (CONSTRAINTS)

Which to me, is the usual axiom of idealogies.

I hope that clarifies it. Now, let me get back to those lush greens in the Basque country.

Feeling, Intuition and that damned Decanter

Now, this process of ‘feeling’ is of course shaped by upbringing, social context, language, possibly genetics and in our context very important: Intuition. The notion seems to be out of reach for most of us, just taking it to be a lonesome cowboy of some kind, impossible to come to terms with precisely.

Intuition is not completely indepentent though, when you think of it as the capacity, to draw inferences from hitherto unknown possibilities into awareness.

In short:

I believe, that what really gets us humans to change our views, are the self-discovering and strongly affective aspects of our psyche, guided by an expansion of our intuition and willingness to create value (Freedom TO).

In German, there is the beautiful word: ‘zu schätzen’ = ‘to estimate’ or literally, ‘to give value’ as in: ‘to treasure’.

While strict rules (don’t ever decant DRC) or learned patterns would have urged me to act differently; taking the time to generate a feeling for what happened, probably at that time quite intuitively, was key. It engaged my capacity for reflection, instead of pushing back, or agreeing offhand with my mentor, especially considering that I tumbled into that dawning and yawning void of indecisiveness, right when he left service.

This I believe, was the magic trick, the big gamble of his - to remain mute. The experience itself was necessary for understanding the truth he wished to convey.

An unarticulated truth which I translated into my world, rendering it vivaciously arcticulate.

Wonder if Wittgenstein would approve here..?

Of course, this makes so much more sense in hind-sight. Back then I was more like: Oh shit, we have a leakage in the basement, it’s getting flooded, better be finding the leak soon.

Admittedly, it has become untenable to hold that all of this thought process has crystallized from this one moment of implicit conflict. It has not.

Along many crossroads, there were many erroneous decisions being made, no doubt about it.

However, this ‘decanting event’ constitutes - atleast to my conscious mind - a tracable and explicit origin which shaped my approach hitherto to all things unknown.

This moment gave birth to a new way of rendering opportunities into actions rather than re-actions which over the months unleashed a beautiful and creative dynamic between us two.

At a later stage, this also laid a foundation within me, and yet continues to re-embed itself over and over again for whatever is to come.

Attunement — A Promise of Happiness?

Life’s big and small decision take place let’s say, within a matrix of resistances, that’s the nature of ‘being a decision’, one decides for one thing and excludes a zillion of other alternatives, concurrently.

Conflict’s inevitable.

Now, it is one thing, to overcome one’s own resistance and “act” according to one’s personal understanding or to “re-act” in which resistance embellishes itself with tension. In my opinion, it’s that tension which won’t make one fall into rythm and sucessively into dance with others, dancing with life, dancing with the world at large.

While this is more of a hunch, one thing I can claim to be true, namely the reverse:

How can one become hale, healthy and wholly, when one is divided against oneself in inner conflict?

I take a stab and whisper into the wind:

Attuning oneself, by flatten out inner tension first and then overcome the resistance blowing ones way.

In this vein, one allows atleast for a promise of happiness!

Admittedly, I’m nowhere close to confirming its truth and might never be. Every now and then I still fade away into inanity or leash out temperamentally.

It’s a long march, but contemplation seems to help.

So thanks for inducing me to this therapy, little decanter.

And congratulations for your endurance surviving that far!

Quint-Essentially, my experience at Etxebarri was not an exploration of wine, but an exploration with wine, continuously putting my character under siege.

A Grand Experiment.