Ferran Adrià puts a final point to the most important encyclopedia in the world of wine

Barcelona“This is for you. We have done it from Catalonia. And it had never been done before. It is the most important encyclopedia in the world of wine and we should be proud of it,” said Ferran Adrià. And the fact is that at elBullifoundation they have reason to celebrate because they have put an end to one of their most colossal works. An ambitious investigation that has required a lot of effort and more than 100,000 euros per volume.

Since they set out to research and publish the encyclopedia about the world of wine, more than nine years have passed, more than thirty experts have participated – such as Pitu Roca and Joan Carles Ibáñez – and they have edited eight books that add up to more than 4,500 pages. This Wednesday at CosmoCaixa they presented precisely this eighth volume, which puts an end to a collection led by the sommelier and head of beverages at elBullifoundation Ferran Centelles. This last installment focuses on the diner. Published in Spanish, it is titled Wine and Food in the Gastronomic Restaurant Experience, it is large format, like all of them, and has 696 pages.

The diner, at the center

What makes us choose one restaurant over another? What memory does it leave us? How do we decide which restaurant to go to? Ferran Adrià, for example, has explained that he does not go “to places where there are children.” And he has highlighted the importance of lighting or temperature. They have developed what a restaurant's ambiance is, which is determined by the atmosphere but also by the clients. The conclusion for Adrià is that food is not the main reason for going to a place. In the case of wine, the approaches are also very diverse and it is necessary for restaurateurs to know them in order to provide a better experience. Centelles, for example, embodies knowledge, but for Adrià, wine is pure enjoyment. “I only know how to drink wine. Don't ask me about the grapes. I neither know nor care. What I want is to enjoy it,” he said in front of many winemakers. In this book, they have studied what actions the diner takes, whom they call homo degustator, and what experiential system emerges from it, which they have been able to systematize in a diagram. At this point, Ferran Adrià gave an example unintentionally. He knocked over a glass of water, which shattered into many pieces on the stage. He added: “See? That is an experience”.

To generate knowledge and connect it, they have applied the Sapiens method, which the chef and his team created so that it can be applied to any discipline. The work was made possible because it had the support of CaixaBank and the wine distributor Vila Viniteca. Quim Vila, precisely, recalled that this entire collection, which is now coming to an end, began as a tribute to Juli Soler, the other half of El Bulli, a great connoisseur of wine, and missed by them all.