What is the purpose of the capsule on a bottle of wine?

Why does the host taste the wine first?

Why is the glass raised when making a toast?

These and many other interesting, and perhaps little known, facts about wine were disclosed by Paul Wagner of Balzac Communications during a recent meeting of WineSpirit, a Napa-based organization that brings people together to celebrate life’s precious moments.

In days past, rats would nibble on the corks on bottles of wine stored in cellars, so by wrapping some lead around the top of the bottle, ancient vintners hoped the rats would eat that and die of lead poisoning. But, said Wagner, who also teaches wine classes at Napa Valley College, the idea didn’t work very well because the rats didn’t die right away.

Although rats eating corks is not a problem today, and health concerns have dictated that lead is no longer used, capsules are still found on most wine bottles. But the primary reason today is to provide proof that the wine has not been tampered with, Wagner said.

The first sip

 In the days of Catherine de Medici, queen of France in the 1500s, hosts at dinners drank the first sip of wine from a bottle to show guests that the wine was not poisoned. Apparently that was a concern at dinner parties then. Even earlier, the wine, along with all food, was tasted by an official taster, again to prove that the host was not trying to poison the guests.

Raising the glass during a toast is believed to have come from a desire to lift the wine closer to God. It’s asking a blessing, whether it’s in the form of “Cheers,” or Salud” or whatever is spoken, Wagner said. And the term “toast” came from the ancient Roman practice of dropping a piece of burned bread into the wine to offset the bad tastes found in many of the wines, and reduce the acidity to make the wines more palatable.

Do you sense some brettanomyces in wine? Grating some goat cheese will cause the brett to disappear, although Wagner didn’t advocate that. He merely said that it was done in ancient days, along with adding salt water to wine to reduce high tannins.

The Romans boiled their wine to take out the alcohol and concentrate the flavor, and the process made it easier to ship wine to Roman outposts around the world.

Burying a wine cup

A custom of the ancient Hittites was to bury a wine cup in the yard when a child was born. Then when he became an adult, the cup was given to him as a sign of growing up. It was similar to the concept of the hope chest for a girl today, Wagner said.

At the Greek Symposia (the word stems from the Greek word “sympotein” which means “to drink together”), only one glass was used by everyone at the table. “The one who held the glass did the talking, and there was no such thing as dialog” Wagner said, adding that when a person’s turn came, he realized what he said had to be important.

Wagner suggested that members of the audience try that at a dinner party, except pass a cork around among the guests, rather than making them use only one glass.

He described the Roman Empire economy as being built around the concept of villas, with each villa becoming an individual agricultural unit, growing its own crops, raising its own cattle and becoming totally self-sustaining. When the Empire collapsed and others took over, they took the best villas, which became feudal estates.

Special beverages

Often the estates with the best vineyards were given to the Catholic Church, which had the best winemakers. Today, he said, some wineries and vineyards are named for people of the church, such as St. Clement. Every order made its own special beverage which was named for the order, including Benedictine and Frangelico.

“What Dom Perignon thought was the best wine he’d ever tasted in his life, we would consider undrinkable today,” he said. Those wines were quite sweet. “We’ve been conditioned to think that dry wines are the best thing to drink.”

The czars of Russia loved Champagne, he said, but they loved it sweet. The normal Champagne would have 30 to 40 grams of sugar per liter, but the Czars liked it with 250 to 350 grams of sugar. “One-third of the bottle was sugar,” he added.

The next WineSpirit seminar will be Dec. 7 at Clos Pegase Winery in Calistoga. Speaker will be Burke Owens, associate director of wine for Copia, who will speak on “Charles Dickens and Celebratory Beverages.”

For information, go to www.winespirit.org or call 261-8714.