Greece sets the stage for wine

By Ed Schwartz

“Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.”

— Aristophanes

Professor Peter Charanis was Greek to his very soul and an eminent Greek historian. He was not happy having to teach us freshmen a broadly ranging Western Civilization course, but he made the best of it. He began his first lecture thus: “In this course we will cover the history of western man in 30 weeks; here is how we will do it. The first two weeks we will cover Cro-Magnon man to the beginning of Greek civilization. The next 26 weeks we will cover the rise of the great Greek civilization to its fall. The last two weeks we will cover the rise of the Roman Empire to the end of World War II. We will do it this way because the Greeks were very interesting people.”  

We knew what we were in for. Also, as a matter of national pride, Dr. Charanis refused to lose his Greek accent. “Greek,” came out “Grrrick,”rolling the “r” and rhyming with click. “People” became “pipple.”

Dr. Charanis was extremely proud of his heritage. He believed that the height of the Greek civilization (450 BC to 320 BC or so) was the high point in human history. And, by Zeus, he convinced us. Even the Greeks of that time knew they had something great going — in art, philosophy, architecture, mathematics, geometry, logic, science, literature, medicine and, did I forget wine? Oh, yes. Wine. The wine culture that we enjoy today was developed by those over-achieving Greeks, not by the city state of Napa as some of us think.

Even in the Homeric era, when King Nestor realized that Ulysses’ son, Telemachus, has come to visit him, he ordered the servants to bring forth “the good wine, the wine aged for 11 years.” The hospitable Nestor will not question his guest until he has finished this good wine and food. Wine is mentioned as well in Homer’s references to “the wine dark sea.” Homer also notes that Ulysses had a cellar of old, sweet tasting wines packed in neat rows in his castle.  

Competition then, as now, encouraged the Greeks to reach ever higher. Through open discussion and the art of refined argument, politics led to democracy; games turned into the Olympics; rational theories turned into science, and the love of wine turned into an advanced wine culture that led to symposia, international wine trade and wine snobbery.

Wine was often enjoyed at special gatherings called symposia where men would assemble in a special room where food was served with wine (oh, no, not wine and food pairings). The master of the evening made sure that the wine was diluted correctly and that wine drinking didn’t get out of hand. Drinking in moderation was very important to the Greeks, for if you drank too much, or drank undiluted wine, you were a barbarian. Barbarians drank wine and beer but not in the sophisticated manner of the Greeks. So in addition to all the good things the Greeks invented, wine snobbery was another and it has come down to haunt us today.

The Greeks even had a special god for their wine. Dionysus, who, according to legend, fled Mesopotamia, where most of the people drank merely beer, to establish himself and his vine culture in Greece, where the “Big D” was really appreciated.

The Greek islands and mainland were ideal for growing different kinds of wine grapes. Wine was enjoyed by many. There was a great surplus of wine so that wine became a very important factor in Greek international trade. Adventuresome Greek merchants shipped wine to all points of the known world. Greek vintners began planting vines in neat rows instead of on trees. Wines were made in a wide variety of different styles and put in different style amphorae so that wine consumers would be sure that they were buying the right wine from the right region. Marketing and labeling wines were also Greek inventions.

Special wines from Macedonia, Thrace and the islands of Lobos, Chaos and Thaos were highly regarded by wine lovers. From the Greek colony in what is now Marseille, the Greeks shipped the equivalent of a million cases of wine a year just to the Celts in Gaul. In a single ship wreck, divers found 10,000 amphorae, the equivalent to 333,000 wine bottles.

The Greeks even invented sealing an imporant agreement with wine, often drunk from a shield. They were, indeed, very interesting people.

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