Get top wine editorial Find out how In Vino Veritas works for your publication. The Author Jonathon Alsop writes his syndicated wine column for almost 100 newspapers. He lives in Boston and is currently writing a book about wine in ancient Rome. January 2000 Ancient Romans used to write disparagingly of their neighbors to the north, the Germans, Gauls, Britons and Belgians whom they conquered from time to time. The Romans found them all essentially crude and vulgar, unfinished and raw as the uncooked bread their complexions suggested.
Wine extends the viability of harvest, so it's a practical solution to harvesting a lot of fruit.
If you had a ton of grapes, you could easily consume it as wine over a couple of years. It would be tough for you and the family to eat the same amount before it all turned to raisins, even if you wanted to. On a sensual level, wine extends summer into winter as well. The juice in the bottle is the very rain that fell that summer, sucked up through the roots of the vine, saved in the grape, and made into wine. A good wine always has the soul of summer in it, and even in winter, it can bring us back a little piece of the green season.