Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [67]
How did wine affect American civil rights across 2,250 years?
WINE CAN HAVE a long reach—in this case, well over two thousand years. In 1917, the case of Buchanan v. Warley reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that a Louisville, Kentucky, ordinance demanding racial segregation was un -constitutional. Specifically, it was in breach of the Fourteenth Amendment, which required states to provide equal protection to all people—not just citizens—under their jurisdiction; in this case, the issue was the protection of the right to own and to dispose of property. It was one of the many landmark cases in the last century’s dismantling of embedded racism, and the first to declare that this kind of ordinance was in breach of the constitution.
Commentators on the case have recalled the words of Judge David Brewer. Writing in 1893, twenty-five years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, Brewer argued that constitutions
represent the deliberate judgment of the people as to the provisions and restraints which, firmly and fully enforced, will secure to each citizen the greatest liberty and utmost protection. They are rules proscribed [sic] by Philip sober to control Philip drunk.
But who was Philip, and why drunk, and why sober?
The Philip in question was King Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. Philip, who reigned from 356 to 336 BC, was the final judge of appeal in Macedonia. He also acquired a fine military education while held hostage in Thebes as a child, and whether he learned it there or of his own accord, he was notoriously fond of wine. The story goes that one old woman appealed to him against a court judgment. Slurring somewhat, he rejected her appeal, at which point she shouted, “I appeal.”
The king, slightly bemused, inquired precisely whom she was appealing to.
“I appeal,” she replied, “from Philip drunk to Philip sober.”
The king agreed to reconsider her appeal at a later date, and her words passed into history.
But not everywhere. It is, for example, technically impossible for a British member of Parliament to be drunk in the debating chamber since 1945, when the cry of “Not sober!” was banned. Not that it affected Alan Clark, the notable wine bibber and serial adulterer who was told off by Clare Short, MP, for speaking in the chamber “in this condition.” Clark’s diaries reveal precisely what condition he was in and how he got there: “A Palmer ’61, then a ’75 for comparison, before switching back to ’61, a delicious Pichon Longueville.”
Philip drunk would have approved. Philip sober, however …
Should wine be decanted?
IS DECANTING WINE a necessity, a ritual, or one-upmanship? Are you decanting to improve or to impress? Some wines, especially vintage port, have a lot of deposit. Serving guests directly from the bottle is unsatisfactory, because the wine inevitably gets agitated as it is taken around the table, with the result that the guests get altogether too much deposit in their glasses. The traditional solution to the problem is decanting. First of all, the bottle is stood up for some hours—ideally, at least twenty-four—to enable the sediment to drop gently to the bottom of the bottle; then a steady hand pours the wine gently but in a single go into another vessel (a fine antique decanter or a simple jug function equally well). A light beneath the neck—traditionally a candle—shows when the deposit is about to pass over from the bottle, and the decanting is stopped. (This raises the question of what to do with what is left in the bottle. Passing it through a filter paper such as is used for coffee making seems to be fine, although it is preferable to use the unbleached brown-colored ones.)
So far, so uncontentious. The controversial question is whether decanting benefits those wines that lack a significant deposit. Decanting