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poisonous, and thus had the jar labeled “poison.” The lady in question was bedeviled with migraine headaches that caused her terrible pain and had lost the will to live, so she drank deeply of the “poison.” Sinking to the floor, she slept without dreams and without pain, and when she finally awoke, she felt refreshed as she had not felt for weeks without number. She returned to the jar and finished its contents. She was found out, however, and was forced to tell the king what she had done. Curious, he had a quantity of the wine made, and when it was finished, it was drunk with pleasure by the king and all his court. This Persian legend has some plausibility. By the use of micro-chemical techniques on archaeological residues found at Hajji Firuz Tepe, it has become clear that wine was being produced in the highlands of northeastern Persia in the Neolithic Period (c. 5400 BC).

The primary competitor is the Transcaucasus, particularly in what is now Georgia. Strictly speaking, however, it was ancient Armenia, which in classical times included much of eastern Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The vine was indigenous to the Armenian valleys, having established itself there over a million years ago, and petrified grape pips have been found at several Neolithic sites in the Caucasus on the Black Sea side. Other archaeological evidence from later periods includes irrigation channels, wine chambers with processing equipment, and large clay jugs. In Georgia itself, wine has been a dominant part of the culture for over five thousand years. Certainly there is ample archaeological evidence of this, with special knives for pruning dating back to between 3000 and 2000 BC and vessels from Neolithic sites dating to at least 7000 BC. A conclusion might be that, although the discovery of wine and then the making of wine occurred in a number of different places, at this point Georgia seems to be the winner, in terms of both the longevity and the pervasiveness of its wine culture: when Christianity arrived in Georgia in the fourth century, the first cross was made of vines.

Will you be needing grapes for that?

CONSIDERING Dr. Johnson’s definition of wine—the fermented juice of the grape—and in contrast with the EU diktat, we might pause to ask ourselves what else wine can legitimately, though possibly ill-advisedly, be made of other than grapes. Mead—which will crop up again later—springs to mind, though it’s a bit of a stretch to consider honey a vegetable. But the truth is that it’s hard to find anything that grows that hasn’t at some time or another been made into something that might be described as wine.

We have before us as we write detailed instructions for the making of carrot wine, “corn squeezins,” cucumber wine, wine from Jerusalem artichokes, onion wine, pea wine, peapod wine, parsnip wine, wine from pumpkins, wine from zucchini, sweet potato wine, sugarcane wine, and tomato wine. Most alarming of all, here is a recipe that begins:

Put water on to boil. Shred Brussels sprouts and place in primary. Chop raisins and add to primary. When water boils, pour over cabbage and raisins. Add sugar, stirring to dissolve. Let sit overnight.

Brussels sprout wine. But sprouts are famously among the three things—the others being eggs and asparagus—that do not go with wine. All we require now is asparagus wine and wine made from eggs, and we will have the top three self-canceling wines imaginable. Admittedly, the supplier of this recipe, Roxanne’s Wine Cellar, begins with a disclaimer:

I developed this recipe by request. A search of the Internet for a Brussels Sprout Wine recipe only yielded a note on a website that there are no recipes on the Web for Brussels sprout wine!

But who would request such a thing? And surely the exclamation mark at the end, suggesting surprise at the absence of such a recipe on the Internet, is completely inexplicable.

However, de gustibus non est disputandum—a Latin phrase meaning “there’s no accounting for taste,” useful to deploy when someone turns up for dinner bearing a bottle of homemade Brussels