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قراءة كتاب The Art of Drinking A Historical Sketch
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The Art of Drinking A Historical Sketch
conditions as are represented by the Germans and Persians of ancient times can really show the virtues of truth and faithfulness, and in the most public concerns could hear the voice that always speaks in wine; and, in those days, no one needed to fear that wine would impel him to speak truth too freely. Only nations of really active nature, who called manliness and war-power by the name of virtue, could do full honor to wine, and it could only be a Greek who asked, as did Aristophanes:—
Among the Germans, too, it has long been customary to settle all business with a drink, and there was no betrothal, no bargain, and no compact that was not accompanied by the purchase of wine. All German history is filled with the love of wine. When the German border-line was first drawn, the Germans insisted on keeping the left bank of the Rhine, on account of its richness in grapes. They wrote books about the national disposition to drink; they divided their history according to drinking periods, and old proverbs call the love of drink the German national vice, as theft is that of the Spaniards, deceit that of the Italians, and vanity that of the French. Nowhere exist wines so capable of purity as the German wines, and no real German will ever compare with their genuine wine-qualities those of the tricky southern wines; and nowhere have mixtures been so carefully avoided, as well as the purity of the art of drinking, and the old drinking customs so scrupulously preserved, as in Germany. Only in Germany could be conceived the idea of a history of the art of drinking. Perhaps the fates have ordained me to be the historian of wine, in the very meaning of my name—ger-wîn, not gêr-wîn. And perhaps some readers may be found for it in Germany who do not consider it too indelicate to speak or to read of the natural needs of man. Let man never, in foolish pride, think himself above his own natural wishes and enjoyments, for it is the reasonable care given to these which keeps him close to human nature. As long as a people cannot live on newspaper reading and on staring about in public places, as do Frenchmen and Italians, it keeps its hands busy, its powers actively employed, and its eyes open, and wherever active powers are astir, no nation is in so very bad a condition. I should be well content if I could bring before active and manly minds a cheerful picture of those manly enjoyments, and induce them to taste of this somewhat coarser fare, in addition to the delicate dishes of our literature.
I.
The Fatherland of Wine.
I would only here and there touch upon the botanical and industrial culture of the grape, as many very valuable works on the subject already exist (among others, Henderson’s “History of Ancient and Modern Wines”), which make almost a complete literature of wine. I shall also speak of the home of the grape only for the sake of preserving the natural order of things, and shall touch later upon the mythical origin of wine, or the preparation of wine. If we look for the original country of the grape, we shall find that here, too, as in almost every other branch of culture, the western highlands of Asia are pointed out to us, whether we follow the fable of Father Noah, the Nysæan Bacchus, or the researches of the naturalists. The latter teach us that on the Canary Isles and in America the grape grows not so much wild as in a degenerate condition; but in the southwest of Europe, for instance the Italian woods, it is here and there found growing really wild; that in the southeast this is still more common, and in Asia ever on the increase. It is singular that at the Ararat, to which Jewish tradition also points, Tournefort, in his “Journey to the Levant,” discovered a regular workshop of the European plant, and on the borders of transcaucasian Georgia he saw the land covered with wild grape-vines and fruit-trees. In the Caucasus, Marshall found the grape flourishing independently in the forest and covering whole trees, and we see in the rough and indifferent manner in which the inhabitants of these countries harvest and treat the grape that they consider it a very common product. The manner in which they preserve the wine, and the quantity they daily consume, prove the same, and this entirely agrees with what Xenophon tells of the preservation of the wine in cisterns. Elphinstone, in his report on Cabul, relates that the Sultan presented him with grapes that grew without cultivation in his country. And not only the quantities of the wild grapes in those countries induce us to regard them as their native soil, it is also the excellent quality of the cultivated grape in Persia. The quantity and quality of the Persian wine opposed in this respect an effective barrier to the laws of the Koran, which enjoined against the enjoyment of the beverage, even in the Orient, which is so set in its religious rites and ceremonies. Olivier preferred the grapes about Ispahan to all he had tasted in Greece, on the islands of the Mediterranean, and in Syria. None, he says, equals the Kismish, which bears a berry of middling size, without seeds and with a thin skin. Shiraz, rich in poets, is celebrated on account of the excellence and plenty of its wine and its fine air, and Morier, in his “Journey through Persia,” places the wine of Kazwin even above that of Shiraz, and the former city is so beautifully situated in so mild a climate that the Persians have given it the name of “Paradise.” In regard to the fruitfulness of the vine, Strabo tells us that in Hyrcania one vine was apt to yield about thirty-three quarts of wine. In Margiana were said to be vines measuring at the base of the stem two fathoms in circumference and bearing grapes two yards long. In Asia the fruitfulness is said to be still greater, and there the wine keeps, in unpitched vessels, through three generations.
II.
Wine is not Domesticated Among the Negroes.
The course from east to west, marked by the higher culture of the human race, has been also closely followed by the culture of the grape. Other regions, north and south from the boundary marked out, may have had a certain share in that civilization; but it seems now to be proved that the negro races, the original inhabitants of Africa, have not in any way been connected with it. In those regions of Africa always inhabited by these races, no grape-culture is, up to the present day, to be found; and, both in ancient and modern times, the grape has been a stranger in Africa, and a stranger scarcely to be called naturalized anywhere. To that king of the long-lived Ethiopians in Herodotus, to whom Cambyses sent his gifts, wine, therefore, seemed the only desirable thing they possessed, and to it he ascribed the brief old age which, in the best case, it was given the Persians to attain. His negroes, therefore, were not acquainted with wine, and in this they were like all uncivilized people, as we shall frequently see; nor did they ever accept it, any more than they accepted any other part of civilization; they never advanced any further than to their Towak, the palm-wine made of