Read by Matilda Longbottom
One year, the pergola over our terrace in Italy was particularly heavy with grapes and I decided to try my hand at winemaking. Since we had no bathroom, we did most of our bathing in a large plastic tub, which I filled with the harvested grapes and then the children and I took off our shoes and socks and began tramping.
Tramping the grapes has long been the source of romantic myth and legend, and I can certainly see why. There is an indescribable sensuality in the feel of the grapes bursting between one’s toes—I am sure an enterprising masseuse could make millions out of the sensation.
In the old days, when the grapes were trampled in huge vats, the tramplers had to be roped and hauled up every now and again when they passed out. I used to think that was from ecstasy or even the fumes of alcohol, but discovered that it was in fact because the fermenting grapes used up the supply of oxygen in the vats and the workers passed out for lack of it. In our case, it was only a plastic tub and there was plenty of crisp Autumn air to sustain us. We jumped up and down, singing, the little boys in grape juice up to their thighs, relishing our little ritual of harvest and wine.
No one knows how ancient wine culture is, but it is almost worldwide and dates from prehistory. We are told in Genesis that Noah planted a vineyard and he “drank of the wine and was drunken.” The Egyptians called wine the “beverage of Horus,” and the Assyrians reputedly poured grateful libations of it over lions killed in the hunt or their beheaded enemies. Wine, while mentioned repeatedly in the Old Testament, became a focus in the New Testament with the Last Supper and the celebration of communion. The Romans had been great wine drinkers and spread vineyards wherever they settled. After their Empire fell and their vineyards had been abandoned, the Christian Church took up viticulture to provide communion wine. Medieval monastic communities were famous for their wines and liqueurs, some of which still bear their names. The Monks of Carbonnieux even managed to market wine to Turkey (where the use of “Al’Kohl” had been forbidden by Mohammed) under the label “Mineral Water of Carbonnieux.” In India, China and Japan, too, alcohol and wines were used from prehistory.
But not in the New World—winemaking was not practiced by the Native American Indians, although grapes were abundant. Europeans introduced the art of making wine, along with measles and small pox. Almost 500 years before Columbus, a party of Norsemen landed on Martha’s Vineyard, made the wild grapes into wine, and became drunk. They sailed home with a shipload of grapes and called the land they had discovered “Vineland.”
When the first European settlers came over, they, too, rejoiced in the abundance of grapes. By this time the water supply in Europe had become so polluted that water was rarely used as a beverage. William Wood, who wrote an ecstatic description of the New World, said that the water was so “fatte” and “sweet” that “any man will choose it before bad Beere, Wheay, or Buttermilk.” Still, he allowed, “dare I not prefer it before good Beere, as some have done … ”
Even with good water to drink, American settlers wanted wine and soon began planting vineyards. In 1616, the Assembly of Virginia passed an act compelling every householder to plant 10 grape cuttings or forfeit a barrel of corn for each default. These would have been cuttings of European grapes because the American grapes were found to make inferior wine. Unfortunately, settlers soon realized that European grapes would not grow in the new land, however skillfully cultivated. They were not resistant to the Phylloxera louse, which had evolved along with American grapes. European vines succumbed at once (except on the West Coast where there was no phylloxera), and all the vineyards died. William Penn and Thomas Jefferson, both brilliant men and fine gardeners, suggested that native species might be more satisfactory than “the same kind that doth not naturally grow there” (Penn) and that “foreign grapes … will take centuries to adapt to our soil and climate” (Jefferson).
Wild grapes are dioecious, that is to say that male and female flowers grow on different plants. Way back in prehistory mutant hermaphrodite vines must have been selected for vineyards and propagated from cuttings until cultivated grapes would always bear a crop. In the Book of Isaiah, the vineyard which should have brought forth good grapes but “brought forth wild grapes” might not only be a parable of disappointing human behavior but also an observation of the uneven production of wild, dioecious grapes.
When American rootstocks were taken to Europe, they very nearly destroyed viticulture by introducing phylloxera and also downy mildew. The mildew was controlled by the development of Bordeaux Mix, a combination of copper sulphate and lime. Interestingly, Bordeaux Mix had long been used by some European grape farmers to prevent grapes being stolen, as it stains grapes (and those who touch them) bright blue. Pierre Millardet, a French chemist, noticed that the blue-sprayed grapes did not get mildew, and in 1882, he named the spray after his hometown of Bordeaux. As it had been in America, the problem of phylloxera was solved by grafting European vines onto American rootstocks.
Bordeaux Mix is still used widely in Italy: The first time my neighbor in Italy appeared in his spraying kit, I thought for an instant that an alien being had arrived on my doorstep. He was bright blue from boots to wide-brimmed hat. Only his white teeth gleamed out of an azure mask. He assured me that the spray was harmless and that we should drink wine only from those grapes sprayed with copper and avoid all “foreign poisons” which modern farmers used.
At harvest time everybody took days off work and turned out to collect the grapes. They would press them and put them in large casks with a layer of oil on the top to allow the gasses from fermentation to escape but prevent air reaching the wine. The use of bottles and corks was introduced late in the nineteenth century and with it came the ability to store wine for long periods of time, which revolutionized the industry. Old wines, from extra good vintages, could then be collected by the rich and discriminating. But my Italian neighbors were oldfashioned and kept their wine under oil until the new crop was harvested, which meant they drank it up within a year.
The vendemmia, or grape harvest, was a grand time. At every house we passed, we would be invited to taste the “vino proprio,” their own wine, which was better than anyone else’s and “did one good,” as well.
That last belief is not recent: from ancient times wine has been used both to cleanse wounds and as a tonic. In America, in 1798, John James Dufour founded “The Kentucky Vineyard Society,” which aimed to grow grapes to reduce drunkenness. He was appalled at the amount of whiskey, rum, peach brandy, and applejack being consumed and believed that wine-drinking would be a healthy solution to the problem. The Italians where we lived also believed firmly in the therapeutic properties of wine, at least of their homegrown vintage. In Italy, people used to offer my children wine when they were babies even when we went to dinner with the doctor. It was a pity, from my sons’ point of view, that we settled in America when they were teenagers. They would have appreciated the Italian philosophy.
When the boys and I had finished tramping our bathtub of grapes, I bottled the juice, put oil on top, and waited for several months, like my neighbors. I don’t know if it was our feet, the plastic tub, or what, but the wine was undrinkable. Since we had already had almost every sensation from our wine that was possible to experience, drinking it seemed quite unnecessary. Still, I was glad when my neighbor appeared at Christmas time with a large bottle of “vino proprio.” It was deep red, clear and heady, and he stayed with us to finish it. While we drank, he told us about the lively wine festivals of his youth, the dances, the girls slipping away from their mothers, the walk home over the mountain in early dawn. Every now and again, he would give one of the little boys a sip from his glass, assuring us that his wine was different. His wine would only make them grow and prosper and become “fine men.” Late in the night he left, blessing us all. I knew then, and forever more, that wine is more than a drink, for our neighbor had given us a bit of his Italian past, which stayed with us always, glowing in our hearts. ❖
