In Search of Taste has arrived in the publishing domain.
Months of activity have preceded its arrival, with many points of view and creative convictions slowly building its expansive ideology.
As the Editor-in-Chief I am occasionally prone to quote the words of the French renaissance philosopher, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) – “I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers, and nothing is mine but the thread that binds them.” A point of view he made his own, unassuming but necessary, critical to proceedings yet reserved in action. Quite some boots to fill, but the sentiment offers shades of the curatorial rather than the control of the auteur. Here I grasped simple and inclusive concepts that allowed me to feel at home with my new task – that of bringing a new wine and food magazine to the marketplace.
From the outset I was aware of a flight of international writers who wanted more than the fleeting. They shared a wish to drill down past the evanescent and mine the real, locate the wellspring, and examine the context of matters gastronomic. Many were conventionally published, others held considerable sway within the expanding realms of social media, it is to them our magazine owes so much. Artists, illustrators and photographers, some whose formal tasks were often to modestly illustrate existing text elsewhere, joined with the conviction that images were as much storytelling tools as the words they upheld. They were crucial in the establishment of a singular culture within the covers of our magazine. Alongside the invaluable contribution by our commissioning editor and our designer, it is this inclusive culture that I have had the pleasure of curating over the past months.
The story doesn’t end there. The privilege of curation not only allows for an assembly of distinguished writers and artists, it goes beyond our immediate contributors and includes the wishes and opinions of a greater community – that of an engaged, global readership. The subjects we examine not only contain the basis of life itself, they offer glimpses into aspects of geography, culture, biology, sociology and commerce. Eating and drinking are as much an agricultural act as they are a sustaining necessity and a reinforcement of social codes. To treat ingredients as products or food and wine as mere comestibles is to erode experience and short change the civilization in which we function. Links to this wider world, context if you like, underpin the choices we make and the tastes we perceive.
I am proud of the many insightful voices that have created the homogeneity that is our first issue, but even prouder of their ability to connect and share with a growing readership, who in turn generously support and enhance our values here at In Search of Taste.
Keith Reeves. May 2015.