Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [11]
“My dear,” said she, entering, “I have just recollected that I have some of the finest old Constantia wine in the house that ever was tasted, so I have brought a glass of it for your sister. My poor husband! how fond he was of it! Whenever he had a touch of his old colicky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the world. Do take it to your sister.”
The notion that what’s good for gout is good for heartbreak is pretty counterintuitive, and so it strikes Elinor. Pointing out that her sister Marianne is asleep, she offers to drink the wine herself, reflecting that “though its effects on a colicky gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its healing powers on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself as on her sister.”
The bottle we found in the unappealing grog shop popped up at a time neither of gout nor heartache, but one could imagine it ameliorating most of life’s problems: a honey-colored ambrosia, taken cool (but never cold) from its dark, soothingly eighteenth-century bottle, simultaneously muscular and suave … but is it the original? Is this Klein Constantia, this wine of kings and emperors, the same that cheered Jane Austen, that perhaps inspired Frederick the Great to present J. S. Bach with the theme for the Musical Offering, that succored Napoleon himself, that Baudelaire in Les Fleurs du Mal compared (as he so often compared things) to sex?
Well … yes and no. The terroir is the same, overlooking False Bay behind Cape Town, South Africa. But the grapes, and the wines, have seen changes since its foundation in the late seventeenth century. The wine of Constantia, or vin de Constance, was brought to its first peak of fame in the late eighteenth century by one Hendrik Cloete; his was a blend of Muscat de Frontignan (aka Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains), red and white Muscatel, Pontac and a touch of Chenin Blanc. On his death in 1818, the land was divided, the higher part becoming Klein Constantia and the lower Groot Constantia. But by the end of the century, it had all gone wrong. Phylloxera had wreaked havoc in South Africa, as elsewhere, and the show was over. The wine that had soothed kings, emperors, disappointed hearts, and the colicky gout—not Klein Constantia, nor Groot Constantia, but simply Constantia—was no more.
But the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. In 1980, the Klein Constantia estate was bought by Duggie Jooste, who now makes (though in alarmingly small quantities) a new vin de Constance from Muscat de Frontignan but minus the other varietals. We have no way of telling what Baudelaire would have thought, but if you listen closely as you draw the cork, it is not too fanciful to imagine the faint echo of Miss Austen’s sharp-eyed laughter.
Ceremonial: did you say “Haman” or “Mordecai”?
WINE, as we can frequently see throughout this book, is the ceremonial drink—at least in those countries where the grape can flourish. And nowhere more so than in Judaism, where every Sabbath dinner begins with the lighting of the candles, followed by a ritual blessing and sharing of wine, bread, and salt. The halakha, or formal Jewish laws, declare that the bread be blessed first, but the honor of reciting the prayer over the wine—the kiddush—is considered the greater, which explains a custom that seems odd to non-Jews: the linen cloth that covers the challah, or Sabbath bread.
The reason is a good example of the intricacy of human ritual thinking: by being covered, the bread is not officially there on the table. And if it’s not there, how can it be blessed? So the head of the house hold, naturally enough, turns to the next thing on the table—the wine—and recites the kiddush. Thus both honor and law are satisfied.
The Jews, like the ancient Greeks, have a tradition of moderation, particularly where wine is concerned. You will seldom see a Jew rise from the Sabbath table—or any other table—the worse for wear, although almost invariably he or she will be un petit peu élevé.
Though there is one formal exception: the feast of Purim. This commemorates the