GOOD WINE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 16, 9 April 1927, Page 20

GOOD WINE

DRINK IN MANY LANDS HISTORY AND ROMANCE “At the present time, though much good wine is drunk.” writes Mr. Frank Hedges Butler, F.R.G.S., who is well known as a wine expert, as well as a traveller, big game hunter, and pioneer of motoring and aviation, “yet for a variety of reasons, of which smoking is perhaps the chief, the art of drinking it, except among connoisseurs, is neither cultivated nor esteemed as it should be.” Everyone should read “Wine and the Wine Lands of the World” —sane men for pleasure and guidance, and prohibitionists fo»* information, for, as Mr. Butler says: “The moderate use of wine is not hostile to longevity, but rather conduces to it by reason of the enhanced vigour and the evenness of mind which comes from wine. My brother James, who celebrated his 86th birthday in 1926. is head of a family of 15 brothers and sisters, of whom 10 survive, their ages being 86, S 5, S 3, 76, 75, 73, 71, 68. 68, 64, a combined total of 748 years. This family of ours has always been accustomed to drink wine in moderation, and it would hardly seem that the practice had shortened our lives unduly. “Our maternal grandfather, William Hedges, who died at the age of 85, never mixed his wines, but drank every day an imperial pint of port of the celebrated vintages of either 1820, 1834, 1847, or 1863.” FOR CRIMEA WOUNDED Elsewhere Mr. Butler mentions that his firm supplied Miss Florence Nightingale with wines and spirits for the use of our wounded at the Scutari Hospital, and, amid a wealth of Biblical references, he quotes St. Paul: “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” But he also quotes the “quaint discourse” of Cyrus Redding, written about the middle of last century, which includes the warning: “Oftentimes do Englishmen drink themselves into taciturnity below stairs, and, ascending to the drawing-room, sit silent and

solemn as so many Quakers, amomr the fair sex. . . Such are not the true en.ioyers of wine. . . .’ Wine-drinking can be traced back till it is lost, far beyond the beginnings of history. “The matchless civilisations of Greece and Rome were nourished un " wine, and hoary China, in the days of her brilliant achievements in art, science, and philosophy, was a winedrinking country.” CHEATING THE TURK “Missionary and monk kept the torch alight through the Dark Ages, carrying the vine with them wherever they went, planting vineyards, making wine. To them our everlasting gratitude! “In the Middle Ages the Saracen, and later on the Turk, again destroyed many of earth’s fairest vineyards. But the Saracen wilted, and the Turk has, in effect, been driven out of Europe. The vine again holds sway from the Maritza to the Loire, from Tarifa to Tokay.” In this connection Mr. Butler quotes an anecdote of the monks of St. Croix. “The estate of Carbonnieux once belonged to the abbey of St. Croix, of Bordeaux. The holy fathers found large profit in sending their wines to Turkey (for the Church does not despise this world’s lucre), and the profit would have been larger still but for the unfortunate operation of the Mussulman law against intoxicating drink. To mystify Mahomet was a worthy and a holy work for the children of St. Benet. Therefore they exported their white wine (whose limpidity was remarkable) as the ’mineral waters of Carbonnieux.’ and under this entry it pasesd in safety through the custom house of the infidel, and escaped the anathema of the descendant of the Prophet.” Beer, our national drink, was brewed from barley by the Egyptians n 3.000 B.C. “Herodotus,” says Mr. Butler, “ascribes the invention of brewing barley wine to the goddess Isis.” “In London, in 1603, the Vintners’ Company allowed no one to sell less than one full quart of the best beer or ale for a penny, and two quarts of the smaller sort for one penny. “Early English ales contained no hops, which were only introduced from Flanders in the time of Henry VIII. The old-time folk sharpened their ale with a ‘toast’ or a roasted era!) apple. “The word ‘toast,’ used in the drinking of healths, is derived from the bit of toasted bread or biscuit which was at one time put into the tankard, and which still floats in the lovingcup at the universities. “By a natural transference of meaning, the word was also used to signify the drink itself. ‘A toast in a cold morning,’ we read in the old "Tatler,” ‘heightened by nutmeg and sweetened with sugar, has for many ages been given to our disnensers of justice before they enter upon causes, and has been of great politic use to take off the severity of their sentences, but (the writer whimsically adds) has indeed been remark - able for one ill-effect—that it inclines those who use it immoderately to speak Latin, to the admiration rather than information of an audience.’ A TOAST AT BATH. “To toast a person, then, was to drink a toast to his good health. From this, again, it was an early step to get another meaning, namely, the person toasted. And thereby hangs a romantic, if apocryphal story. The authority is the same “Tatler,” the period is that of the merry monarch, Charles 11., and the place the fashionable and celebrated city of Bath: “ ‘lt happened (runs the story) that on a public day a celebrated beauty of those times was in the Cross Bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow, half-fuddled, who offered to jump in, and rwore “tho* he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast.” He was opposed in his resolution, yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour, which is done to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a toast.’ ”

Wants to Be an Angel.—Mrs. W. M. writes: My tie four-year-old girl said to me ..e other day, “Muvver, ! how long is it to my birfday?” “Not very long dear,” I told her. ‘Well,” she asked, “is it time for me to begin being a good girl?”

! Traffic Perils. —Joan: Do you thw* short skirts are dangerous? j John: Yes, I do. Joan: To a girl’s health. , i John: No, to mine. 1 hit two phone poles driving my car in | to-day, while I was watching them.