Since I already wrote about this topic two weeks ago, I'll be brief here. If you would like to read more, click here.
A couple notes on the article:
- The role of alcohol in the development of society tends to get some serious side-eye from historians; however, this article argues (far more eloquently than I did two weeks ago) that it is important to look at alcohol consumption in order to understand its role in the development of "man" as well as contextualize our current drinking forms.
- Wines of all sorts - not just grapes - have been around for ages (most of this also in our text book):
- A combination of rice, milk, and honey was fermented into wine in China ~9,000 years ago
- The first grapes were domesticated in the Zagros Mountains (Iran) and were made into wine ~7,400 years ago
- There is quite a bit on Celtic wine in this article, but as I've already written about it, I wont repeat myself. The only fact that bears additional mention is the following:
- "Roman vintners, whose elite Roman clients preferred white wines, tended vast plantations of red wine grapes for the Celtic market; traders moved the wine across the Mediterranean, in ships [...] then sent it north on small river barges. By the time it reached Corent months later, its value had multiplied a hundredfold. One contemporary claimed the thirsty Celts would trade a slave for a single jar" (National Geographic, February 2017, p. 52).
- Sound familiar? How many cases have we had this quarter on producers facing the prospect of either cultivating the "preferred," high-class grapes, or selling lower quality grapes to a bigger market? Profit or prestige? I love that no matter how new we think our problems are today, there is almost always an echo in the past.
- Also, a helpful map for those interested in the timeline (visually) can be found here
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