Texte von Bud Maddock
Le Vin De Loire
Wine can be separated into two categories; that which we never drink but on the rack as a collectible; and that which we enjoy with the full development of our characteristics tastes.
Let me begin in 1889 when the wines of France were slightly sweet and touched with Ethyl ether (C2H5OC2H5) to "dry" them, a crime reported in "Popular Science"(1) at the time. This and many other "crimes" in the production of "honest"(2) wines make the whole subject more colorful. Today such adulteration can be methodically detected through the use of fairly advanced, often computerized Gas Chromatographic instrumentation. An older, more qualitatively accurate, and less expensive method while resulting in less precise quantitative data is my personal preference and I believe that of the entire industry. We just taste it.
1889 also saw the editor change at two of the more famous US magazines for women. Each had a marked effect on circulation, John Brisben Walker joined "Cosmopolitan" and Edward W. Bok the "Ladies Home Journal". Bok presented an interesting face, writing a letter response based column under the pen name Ruth Ashmore. The column was named "Side Talks With Girls" and brought in 158.000 letters over the next 16 years. Morality and sentimentality had been replaced by practical solutions and good taste.
Perhaps as you sit back and share a bottle of 1899 Château Lafitte you will discuss such questionable behavior by an American as that of Bok. More likely the topic will be the pre-phylloxera wines and the Damn Yankees. Phylloxera, a tiny yellow relative of the aphid, the milk cow of the ant, enjoys the roots of the finest French wines above all others. It came to Europe in 1860 and by 1890 had decimated the wine acreage leading some growers to plant a live toad under each wine but to no avail. Much as the cure for Malaria came from the swamp, the cure for Phylloxera came from North America. By the end 1890 almost every vineyard in France contained nativevine cuttings grafted to American Roots.
The Loire river flows North from the Rhône-Alpes to Orléans where it turns to the West. Being unaware that any river save the Nile flowed due north I was caught quite off guard by a question from Marcus. Which is the north star, he asked, pointing to the Big Dipper. I had rarely used the north star for navigation but it's such an obvious star being 7 time the distance from the two "pointing stars" in the cup of the dipper and having a 3 star arrow pointing toward it from the just above the constellation Orion that I confidently pointed it out to him but then... Only the Nile flows north and that is exactly where Polaris was found. Had I forgotten that much about navigation, I looked about the sky a bit wildly for Orion, missed it, finding only the pointing triangle and answered with some reserve and hesitation that is was there and we were going north on the river. Heike seeing my plight, corrected my vagrant knowledge of rivers and sleep soon overtook us.
Below us was Marseille.....
(1) Popular Science in 1889 was more like Scientific American Magazine of today than like its current namesake.
(2) George Rainbird in "The Wine Handbook" Evans Brothers Limited 1963 seems to be the origin of the word "honest" with respect to wine. Prior to that adulteration was legal or illegal.