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| Wine, for some, is sacred. Ancient Greek Dionysian cultic practice centered around drinking wine from the calyx. Catholics require wine for the sacrament of the communion and were responsible for establishing the first European grapevines in the new world so that priests would have sufficient quantities for their ritual needs. And Jews also require wine for their weekly sabbath ritual, as well as the seder on the important holiday of Passover, where they spill a drop of wine to memorialize each of the plagues that God wrought upon their oppressors. And even for the irreligious, wine may be sacred, too. The inveterate drunk looks upon a bottle of Wild Irish Rose as a sacrament. (Once, when I attempted and failed to roust a drunk, nearly comatose stumblebum from the sidewalk in front of my old restaurant, out of desperation I reached for his half-empty bottle of MD 20-20, and he snarled, “no one gets between me and my wine!” as he slowly, unsteadily stood up and moved to sit in front of the laundromat next door). Thomas Jefferson famously quipped that for him, wine was a necessity of life. Wine, for me, is profane, as it is how I make a living, but I chose to try my hand at making a living through selling wine because it had become something sacred to me. My grandfather was an ordained orthodox rabbi but made his living as a tailor, selling suits to farm boys in a small town in South Dakota. Suits were not sacred to my grandfather. His son, my father, sold carpeting, but my father was not a design-obsessed carpet maven; carpet was merely a means to an end, and I cannot recall having a single conversation about carpet with him. I come from a long line of shopkeeps to whom the products they sold were merely an expedient. I feel privileged to handle a product that is sacred to me. The wine that my grandfather grew up drinking in the old country was raisin wine. Kosher grape wine was not widely available to most folks in Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. Only the wealthy could afford it, so everyone else had to suffice with wine made from raisins, or if there were no raisins, any fruit you could get your hands on. I have not tried to make wine from raisins, but as I contemplate doing so, I wondered what sort of raisins these could be—they certainly were not made from the modern Thompson seedless grape, but most likely raisins made from the corinto grape, grown in Greece or Turkey and exported north. Tonight, we are tasting a wine made from corinto, a grape grown both for raisins and wine, and which may or may not be the same corinto grown in Greece and Turkey. Thank you for listening.
Hauner Salina Bianco Sicily 2017 |