Skip to main content

Wine and civilization: more reasons to drink wine

87. Ernest Hemingway wrote that "wine is one of the most civilized things in the world." I say that not only is that true, but wine may have made civilization as we know it possible. When hunter-gatherer societies first congregated into villages and cities, the notion of septic systems hadn't been worked out so water supplies became of questionable safety. The practice of adding wine to water made it safer to drink, as Louis Pasteur observed a few thousand years later.
88. Wine became further entrenched in civilization during the golden age of Greece. Plato, who articulated so many of the tenets on which modern societies are organized, brought great thinkers together in what were called "symposia" which derives from the words "to drink together." Many of our most cherished institutions were conceived during these drinking sessions.
89. The notion of moderation is also an ancient one. The Roman orator Pliny the Elder noted "Nothing is more useful than wine for strengthening the body, and also more detrimental to our pleasure if moderation is lacking." Wine was firmly entrenched in Roman society, and in fact the expansion of the Roman Empire was possible because of the fact that the Romans has worked out the necessity of wine added to water to ensure potability.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Revisiting resveratrol: new findings rekindle anti-aging debate

Just when we thought the bloom was off the rosé for resveratrol, the anti-oxidant polyphenol from red wine with multiple anti-aging properties, along comes new research giving life to the debate. But first a bit of background: As I detailed in my book Age Gets Better with Wine , it is well-documented that wine drinkers live longer and have lower rates of many diseases of aging. Much or the credit for this has been given to resveratrol, though there isn’t nearly enough of it in wine to explain the effects. Nevertheless, I dubbed it the “miracle molecule” and when it was reported to activate a unique life-extension phenomenon via a genetic trigger called SIRT, an industry was born, led by Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, quickly acquired by pharma giant Glaxo. The hope was that resveratrol science could lead to compounds enabling people to live up to 150 years and with a good quality of life. But alas, researchers from other labs could not duplicate the results, and clinical studies disa...
7 comments
Read more

Wine, Charity, and Thanksgiving

Last month’s Wine Bloggers Conference in Walla Walla coincided with a charitable event called the Walla Walla Wine Walk Weekend, and it got me thinking again about the role that wineries play in charity and gratitude. I enjoyed all of the sessions at the WBC (now renamed the Wine Media Conference), but decided to a bit of a different tack and check out the charity auction event instead of the Friday evening WBC winery dinners. (Plus they had dancing!) My wife and I helped kick off the weekend’s festivities, which ended up raising over $40,000 for the Walla Walla Alliance for Homelessness. On Saturday wine blogger conference participants were joined by over 300 people at tasting rooms around downtown, sampling wines from 17 participating wineries all donating to the cause. But Walla Walla wineries aren’t unique in their generosity; with their participation and others across Washington State, this year’s Auction of Washington Wines in August raised more than $4 million to benefit Sea...
3 comments
Read more