Dali. The Wines of Gala

Following up on the best-selling cookbook Les diners de Gala, in this delightfully eccentric guide the surrealist master shares his passion for the gift of the gods. The book explores the many myths of the grape, in texts and sensuous and subversive works by the artist, always true to his maxim: "A real connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes of its secrets".

Hot on the heels (or lobster claws) of the best-selling Salvador Dali phenomenon, Les diners de Gala, Taschen presents the artist's equally surreal and sensual viticulture follow-up: The Wines of Gala. A Dalinian take on pleasures of the grape and a coveted collectible, the book sets out to organize wines according to the sensations they create in our very depths. Through eclectic metrics like production method, weight, and color, the book presents wines of the world in such innovative, Daliesque groupings as Wines of Frivolity, Wines of the Impossible, and Wines of Light.

Bursting with imagery, the book features more than 140 illustrations by Dali. Many of these are appropriated artworks, including various classical nudes, all of them reconstructed with suitably Surrealist, provocative touches, like Jean-François Millet's The Angelus, one of Dali's favorite points of reference over the decades. Dali also included what is now considered one of the greatest works from his late Nuclear Mystic phase, The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955), which sets the iconic biblical scene in a translucent dodecahedron-shaped space before a Catalonian coastal landscape. Dali was by this stage a devout Catholic, simultaneously captivated by science, optical illusion, and the atomic age.

The first section is dedicated to Ten Divine Dali Wines, an overview of 10 important wine-growing regions, while the second develops Dali's revolutionary ordering of wine by emotional experience, instead of by geography or variety. Rather than any prescriptive classification, it's a flamboyant, free-flowing manifesto in favor of taste and feeling, as much a multisensory treat as a full-bodied document of Dali's late-stage oeuvre, in which the artist both reflected on formative influences and refined his own cultural legacy.

La Cave by Philippe de Rothschild
Ten Divine Dali Wines - Text by Max Gerard

• The Wine of Ay
• The Wine of Shiraz
• The Wine of King Minos
• Lacrima Christi
• Chateauneuf-du-Pape
• Romanee-Conti
• Chateau d'Yquem
• Sherry
• The Wines of California

Ten Gala Wines - Text by Louis Orizet

• Wines of Joy
• Wines of Purple
• Wines of Aestheticism
• Wines of Dawn
• Wines of Sensuality
• Wines Light
• Wines of Generosity
• Wines of Frivolity
• Wines of Veils
• Wines of the Impossible

Vineyards of the World
Vineyards of France
Advice to the Wine-Loving Gourmet
Guide to the Illustrations
Photograph Credits