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By Root 440 0

throughout history. The Rotarians or Freemasons indulging in their ceremonial “taking of wine” join hands across the centuries with the guests at the Greek symposia, gathered round the krater with its formalized wine-and-water admixture; the breaking of a wine bottle on the prow of a new ship echoes the pagan libations poured out to the gods. Wherever we turn, there is wine. There it is, in the flasks of Roman soldiers, far from home, to flavor and sterilize the alien waters (and they grew vines, too, in the north of England and—you can still see the vineyard terraces—in the Cotswolds). Here it is in Shakespeare: Falstaff calling for more sack, the Duke of Clarence drowned in a malmsey butt. Here is Cleopatra, famed (but did she? Could she have?) for dissolving a pearl in her wine to impress her wealth and power upon Mark Antony. Here are at least three notable wine connoisseurs among the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, while over there sits great Dionysos, the god of wine, of fertility and collective joy, in whose name the classical Athenians held their festival of tragedy, the tragoedia, or “goat-songs” of the City Dionysia, attended by all citizens.

However, the discoveries of Louis Pasteur—that wine was a living thing, made by living things, those benevolent yeasts—may have affected winemaking; however it may have become more predictable, perhaps in some cases more industrialized, wine itself will never be a truly industrial product like vodka or mass-produced beers. Nobody will ever wonder about the story locked in a glass of Bud Lite or the hidden narrative of a rum and Coke, but there are few wines that do not (if one is in a fanciful mood) murmur up from the glass, speaking to the attentive drinker of land and fruit and hope and human labor. Wine, more than any other food or drink, is a storyteller, and it is some of its more offbeat stories that we hope to tell in this book: stories of emperors and gods, of bugs and rituals, of organ pipes and astronomy and raisins and forgetfulness.

The habit of looking for the story in a glass of wine is one easily acquired and never forgotten. It pleases the mind and amuses one’s friends. It changes, for the beginner, the nature of wine from a thorny path, a nest of vipers, a sort of obstacle course of snobberies and faux pas, into an affable and sympathetic narrative for every taste and disposition. We smell our wine; we taste it, and examine its color and clarity. We should also, perhaps, listen to what it has to say about itself.

And, of course, drink it. There was a Greek restaurant in London’s Camden Town, now long gone, that served ordinary Greek wines in ordinary drinking tumblers, without ceremony. It stood in contrast to its more chic counterparts in the posher parts of town, where sommeliers, dignified as bishops, hovered over the nervous diner performing arcane rituals with corkscrew and tastevin, cork and napkin. On its menus was printed a motto: A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. Alas, in London then, both were the rule rather than the exception. But we learned. Since then, country after country has developed, improved, and exported its wines. Cases, bottles, barrels now crisscross the oceans in a benevolent globalization. We drink more wine than ever before, whether the doctors say that (this week) it will leave us demented or (next week) that it is the secret of spry longevity. The fruit of the vine and the skill of the wine-maker have between them the secret of an immemorial magic. But, like magic, it’s not enough just to read about it. It is necessary to experience it, in moderation but often.

To accompany this little book, we suggest a premier cru Pauillac, or possibly a crisp young vinho verde. Or maybe a flinty Greco di Tufo or a vintage champagne, or a South American Tannat or a Klein Constantia or something from a Provençal co-op, dispensed from a petrol-pump nozzle into your waiting jerry can, or … or … or whatever you like. Draw the cork, open the book, and bon appetit.

We will leave the last word to the poet Peter