Ilija Trojanow is not just a literary collector of worlds but also a trained sommelier. His close friendship with a leading maker of Riesling serves as inspiration for this love letter to wine. What does wine-drinking mean for our culture? Wine-drinking is a dialogue, says Trojanow. With many interlocutors. With time. With the soil. With a wine-grower. With the self and the unplumbed mysteries of individual taste. The enjoyment of wine is a highly individual experience. For Ilija Trojanow, wine is compensation for being driven out of paradise. Trojanow reflects on time, terroir, nature and culture, on capital, taste, dégustation and drunkenness. A poetic musing on the secret of wine.

Someone who neither consumes nor produces is redundant - according to the cutthroat logics of late capitalism. International elites claim that overpopulation is our greatest problem. If the population needs to be reduced, who will have to disappear asks Trojanow in his humanist essay that argues against the redundancy of humankind. In his forceful analysis he covers points such as devastation caused by climate change, ruthless neo-liberal politics on the labor market and the apocalypses presented in mass media that we, the seeming winners, fervently consume. One thing we have failed to realize is that these issues also concern us. They concern everyone and everything.