Wine – 101 Truths, Myths and Legends

A famous Italian wine called Est! Est!! Est!!! got its name from a well- known legend. In medieval times, a Catholic bishop was on his way to Rome, and decided to send his servant ahead of him to find inns that had particularly good wine for the bishop to enjoy. He told his servant to mark the doors of inns with good wine with the word ‘Est!’ meaning ‘It is’ or ‘This is it’. When he got to a village called Montefiascone near Lake Bolsena, north of Rome, the servant was so impressed with the local wine being served at an inn there that he enthusiastically marked on the door ‘Est! Est!! Est!!!

No one really knows when wine was first discovered, but one story is that over 8,000 years ago a woman in the harem of a Persian king tried to commit suicide by consuming fermented grape juice which, at the time, was believed to be poisonous. When she subsequently felt more alive and effervescent than she did before, wine was born!

The metal labels only recorded the type of wines and the five most popular were - Claret, Hock, Sack, Port, and Madeira - which summed up the drinking habits of the British upper classes

Benjamin Franklin on contemplating his vineyard said, “We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.”

Robert Mondavi was always serious but eloquent about wine; he summed up his feelings as, “Wine to me is passion. It’s family and friends, it’s warmth of heart and generosity of spirit. Wine is art, it’s culture, it’s the essence of civilization and the art of living.”

.C. Fields the great comedian could not stand a day without wine. Here are some of his sayings, “I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.”; “What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?”; “I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink; that’s the one thing I’m indebted to her for,” and “Once, in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.”

‘Sex’ is a sparkling rosé from Larry Mawby, a Californian winemaker, and is a top seller in the USA.

His Niebaum-Coppola wine, with ‘Rubicon’

While the actor Johnny Depp was engaged to be married to the actress Winona Ryder, he had his arm tattooed with the words ‘Winona Forever’. However, when they subsequently split up he had the tattoo altered to read ‘Wino Forever’.

Companies in the USA often tried to find ways around Prohibition. For example, some grape juice producers added a label to their product which read ‘CAUTION! Do not add this grape juice to five gallons of water and five pounds of sugar, with yeast, or it will ferment into wine, which is illegal’.