Wine has been a subject of philosophy, and also of aesthetics, for a long time. David Hume famously used a thought experiment involving a cask of wine to illustrate his thesis that delicacy of taste is essential to good judgement.

But in recent years the debate has turned to wine's own ontological, metaphysical, epistemological and aesthetic status: what kind of object is wine and why is philosophy interested in it? Is tasting an aesthetic experience? Is it legitimate to consider wine as a work of art, and if it is what meaning of art is here at play? Is the world of making and producing also involved in the philosophical enquiry about wine? This special issue of the journal Rivista di Estetica is dedicated to these and many other questions, with the aim to offer a new contribution to the international debate on this topic.