Wineland

BIBLICAL BINGE DRINKING

2006-10-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

The very first news offer us pretty scattered info about vine cultivation and wine consumption, mixing history with myth.

We start situating ourselves in the cradle of civilization, that land among Tigris and Euphrates rivers. From Ur, land of ziggurats, comes a sign (2500 B.C.) preserved at the British Museum, where you can see several princes and the king drinking in cups, presumably wine; according to the social circumstances several cups were used, or a single one to close agreements.

500 years later Gilgamesh (king of Uruk) deeds are written, narrating the way he sought immortality in the kingdom of Sun and found a vineyard being taken care by goddesses, drinking the juice of the grapes.

Concentrating ourselves on more objective info we can confirm wine was served at feasts in Babylon; the charge of “big cupper” existed, maybe the first sommelier, who carried out delicate handling with wine in order to serve it, with no outrageous rise of price that is, since he was a government employee.

In the town of Mari, in order to guarantee the loyalty of his Bedouin guards, the king would supply wine for their pleasure.

The kings from Neoasiric Age (VI century B.C.) enjoyed wine too, Asurbanipal celebrated feasts under the grapevines and his successor offered one for almost 70000 guests, putting thousands of wineskins and pitchers of beer at their disposal.

To sum up, we can emphasize that wine, initially an offer to gods, extends itself to feasts of social relevancy.

Other civilizations such as Persian have their own legends, king Djemchid saw how plants grew from seeds left at his feet by a bird and later gave fruit; his lover drank its fermented juice and after having some rest she felt healthy and happy, their descendants planted vineyards in Shiraz, near Persepolis, mythical origin of this variety.

More to the east, in China, there are few details, but there are references to punishments to mixing rice wine with grape wine, we don’t know which part was the one considered as adulterant. What about the Bible giving this article it’s title?; three comments, the first one to point out the quotations referring to grapes, fresh ones, dry ones and most of them destined to wine.

The second one, Genesis 9, 20-27, to stress the significance of what happens to Noah. When he gets back to normality, abandoning the Ark and being responsible of the restoration of life on Earth, he plants a vineyard, and when it gives its fruits, without the need to go to any tabern, just right there in the middle of the countryside, he gets drunk in such way that his sons have to pick him up from the vineyard.

He deserves being declared patron saint of all of the binge drinking (that has so little to do with the culture of wine) being absurdly carried out all over Spain.

Last but not least, Holy Bible has also a banning temptation, Moses puts it under suspicion, he’s afraid of excesses while traversing the desert, after checking “how dudes had a huge hangover at the binge drinking” celebrated while he was receiving the Ten Commandments, and forbids it before and during the cult, hopefully the Book of Psalms counteracts this and supports our beloved drink, as it states it “cheers up men’s heart”.

Luís Menchén - March 2006

TUTANKAMON PREFERED WHITE WINE

2006-10-01T23:17:00.000-07:00

On the previous article, “in vino veritas” , I went over info about wine in the classic world and dug up my predilection for history, which has always accompanied me.

Some days ago I came across an article about the job of a research equip in Barcelona University, directed by Rosa Lamuela Raventós. We know its first conclusions since 2004 and it was recently published in the British magazine New Scientist.

It told about the contents of six wine amphorae found inside Tutankamon’s tomb (a XVIII dynasty pharaoh, 1346-1337 B.C., short reign, not much merits, who gave the power back to polytheistic priests, but whose name has achieved great popularization since the year 1922 when British Howard Carter and Lord Carnavon found his tomb; it wasn’t desecrated and this meant a great achievement for Egyptology).

In 2004 it was made known that one of the amphorae had remains of siringic acid, derived from an antocianidine, malvidine, that can be found in the peel of red grapes, that is responsible for it’s color.

But there’s another outcome, all six amphorae contained tartaric acid, characteristic of grapes of any kind, so the logical deduction falls on its own weight, five out of six amphorae contained white wine, the merry eighteen year old pharaoh had a preference for white wine to cool down the sands of the desert.

Wine was a part of the pharaoh’s baggage to make his existence in the afterlife more bearable.

Well, this piece of work was the spark that I was missing to cheer myself up and take a tour through history of wine and mankind, I hope you share my interest and enjoy the series of articles that have begun today with the topic of wine and history.

We must start this walk admitting (even being wine our unique drink) that on the beginning of sedentary life of man, beer battled and even won wine in spiritual and social aspects.

The starting point that can be stated, without a doubt, for the use of fermented drinks situates us in the middle East somewhere around 5500 B.C., and two revolutions were needed, a first one, with the start of agriculture and the sedentarism in the Neolithic that modified the way of life, and later on a second alimentary one, that brought the use of terracotta vases with it, which allowed the making and preservation of fermented drinks. These drinks were not for daily use, they were reserved for festivities and of course rituals, these two being bond together many times. We will go on, unless someone carries a popular protest against it, flying over the ephemeral existence of man and wine in this planet.

Luís Menchén - Feb 2006

IN VINO VERITAS

2006-10-01T23:08:00.000-07:00

Frequently, we hear about wine, or wine’s components’ healthy properties, many times without the much needed explanations concerning the scientific rigor of such statement,even with some enthusiasm to claim the good habit of drinking moderately the blood of our land, often resulting in some incongruous speech with no true nutritional relevancy.

Referring ourselves to studies that surpass the minimum demandable significance, we can remind all the already published ones about tannins with different opinions and controversy about white or black wine, the later studies about beneficial properties to fight against lung, cardiovascular illness, even alarm causing diseases such as Alzheimer and cancer, many of them being based in resveratrol, a poliphenol present in practically every part of the vine of which its antioxidant properties, and thus cell life extending, are demonstrated.

But these studies aren’t the target of this article, rather than something that researches carried out on 4400 people by Duke College (North Carolina) in 2002, and published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, pointed out.

Not the wine itself, but the habits and lifestyle of its consumers seem to explain their better health.

This year’s January 23 Jano On-line makes reference to another research published at the British Medical Journal, carried out in Denmark (unfortunately famous right now because of fanaticism), where it can be concluded that wine drinkers tend to take a more healthy diet than the beer drinkers, and, careful! Imagine which drink makes you think more about a Danish, we can discard the chauvinism worries later.

It seems that it’s being confirmed with some scientific value, it is not necessary to split wine in a thousand particles to find it’s hidden goodness, it’s the very essence of choosing it as a pleasure partner, therefore doing so in it’s exact measurement, the one that makes the person get far from fanaticisms, either ideological or nutritional.

Almost everything has been thought out, and the classics did great part of the job, on the year 630 B.C. Greek poet Alceo, of whom some fragments of his works have been preserved, stated: “Dear son, wine is truth”, more recently, just on the first century on our calendar, Plinio the Old, a notable Roman, that, by the way, gives his name to the fictional literary character by Garcia Pavon, points out in his opera magna “Natural History”: “According to people, truth has been attributed to wine”.

Let’s do as much as possible then so that our land, La Mancha, can be the spring of health and our wines, together with the ones of other parts of Spain, get with no complex to all the corners of our planet and make man be hearty, tolerant and joyful.

We have jumped from history to the present day, with substance enough to claim a land with no boundaries, the Land of Wine.

Luís Menchén - Jan 2006