Preview Salvador Dalí’s Surrealist guide to wine

Salvador Dalí was an incredibly impressionable being. Not just because of his paintings, his photography, that Disney film he made, the brilliant/borderline insane things that he said or his bizarre/potentially deathly appearances, but also through the gifts that he gave the culinary world. Namely, his erotic and Surrealist cookbook, Les Dîners de Gala, which was re-published earlier this year by Taschen. But his latest, is the re-publishing of Dalí’s erotic wine bible, titled (Vins de Gala) The Wines of Gala – again, named after his wife.

Accompanying almost 140 new illustrations and appropriated works from the artist’s oeuvre – alongside texts from Max Gérard and Louis Orizet – is Dalí’s unique spin on the world of wine. This includes a system whereby he has classified wines dependent on their emotional resonance; we have “Wines of Generosity”, “Wines of Frivolity” and “Wines of Sensuality”, to name a few. He writes, “We take pleasure in furthering our knowledge of wines through a classification we call intromission. As you have already guessed, we will organise wines according to the sensations they create in our very depths, beyond the limits of the soma, far into the infinite reaches of our soul.”

Originally published in 1978, the book had since gone out of print a long time ago but has been thankfully brought back to shelves by Taschen, and is available now.