A Layman Explores Wine 16

by William Powell

And it was a good plan ... at least at its core. I had been thinking a little about the shared history that humanity and wine have accumulated together by now ... I wonder whether they were introduced to each other back then? “Humanity – wine, wine – humanity.

Try to get along. God out” ... Anyway, one thing is clear: for a very long time, wine was mainly the drink of the nobility and the wealthy portion of humanity. The rabble had beer, or at least something that called itself beer. Even the German Beer Purity Law, at 500 years old, is comparatively young, and the swill brewed before that had about as much in common with a freshly poured pilsner as a spicy number 17 has with authentic Cantonese cuisine. But the wine of bygone days was perfectly drinkable, if historians are to be believed.

Brewmasters as Dilettantes

The Greeks probably overdid the resin a bit, and the Egyptians tipped in honey, but you can surely think of a few dozen modern-day wine sins to rival those.

So were the brewmasters of earlier times simply incredible dilettantes, while we must regard the winegrowers as artists touched by genius? Probably not. Most likely, demand determined the product even back then.

What most consumers expected of beer was that it should quench their thirst reasonably well and pack a punch. It was a mass-market product that also had to be inexpensive to make.

A Cupbearer of My Own

Wine was a very different matter – there was a small, highly specialised group who knew their requirements, articulated them and enforced them: the cupbearers! Most nobles, kings and the super-rich probably differed little from the rest of the dim-witted masses when it came to exquisite wine – they hadn’t a clue.

But they could pay someone who did. And by all accounts, cupbearers and food tasters earned decent money. Okay – there was the minor detail of being poisoned instead of the grand vizier, but still.

Many cupbearers rose to high positions, and from the Middle Ages onwards the role is documented as a hereditary title. 
That, then, was the centrepiece of my plan: I would try to get myself a cupbearer of my own.

Let him work out which wine I like. Am I more of a white-wine type, or would I be better off sticking to reds (he’d better not suggest Portugieser rosé – there’ll be trouble)? What wine price bracket do I feel comfortable in, and why is Nicolas Cage still allowed to make films?

Bohemian Beer for Me

Questions upon questions, then, that I would have for the cupbearer, and whose answers would lead me a little further out of the oh-so-familiar territory of ignorance. As luck would have it (or was it providence), a medieval festival was taking place in our area, where you could also take part in an “authentic medieval feast”.

There was no way I was going to miss this historical/culinary/oenological treat. And I wasn’t disappointed – at least not immediately, because there really was a cupbearer scurrying around, and he was pouring quite decent beer, too. It was an easy-drinking, dark Bohemian beer that was perhaps a tiny bit too sweet, but still.

Red Wine in the End

Then I asked the lackey for a red wine, and what I was served brought tears of indignation to my eyes ... perhaps it was disgust, too, mixed with anger and the desire to spit the slop in his face ... in any case, it wasn’t pretty. Naturally, I confronted the specialist, and after some hemming and hawing he admitted that he really hadn’t a clue about wine and much preferred drinking beer anyway.

Ignoring my utterly baffled and rather dim-looking expression, he gave a slightly embarrassed grin and shrugged: “I don’t even know whether I could really tell wine and apple wine apart!” I was on the verge of hitting the fraudulent bastard when my daughter joined the expert discussion: “I know – apple wine is wine with apple juice!” What can you possibly say to that?