Emile Zola’s 1873 novel Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris) opens with a pre-dawn parade of horse-drawn carts laden with produce making their way into the city’s public food market. Although the story is set in the 1800’s, the scene would have been familiar to a Parisian of the 17th or even the 12th century. In fact, the daily train of foodstuffs arriving from the countryside is as old as the city itself – as old even as the idea of the city. And what is that idea? That a critical mass of persons might concentrate themselves in a single high-density community with a view to pursuing a variety of occupations not directly linked to agriculture.
Ur, Babylon and Nineveh drained the vineyards of the Caucasus and Zagros mountains far to their north as grape wine emerged as an important marker of wealth and status. In the same way,Paris became a sponge for the wines of Champagne,Burgundy and the Loire Valley centuries before Zola immortalized the denizens of Les Halles. By the 13th c. Bordeaux was growing rich slaking the thirst of London’s royals, nobles, and wealthy bourgeois with its marvelous claret (the metropolitan centers of the Low Countries and north Germany were important secondary markets). Vienna, Milan, Madrid, and Naples all sucked wine from their respective surrounds.
Cities don’t make wine, but they attract it, absorb it, consume it – and eventually make it over in their own image.
It was in cities that cafés and wine shops flourished — and in cities that restaurants, once they had invented themselves, invented the wine list. As wines competed for attention in these urban hubs, a critical consuming public for wine gradually took shape. The first wine writers were urbane, and so were their readers. Since comparisons can only be made where abundance and diversity are present, it follows that connoisseurship is itself a uniquely urban phenomenon. How else does one become an expert except via long experience comparing many examples of similar things drawn not just from an isolated region, but from all over?
Everything we know about the history of the wine trade suggests that gains in the stability, quality and verifiable authenticity of wine would not have been possible without an urban consumer base that not only demanded better and more durable wines, but was willing to foot the bill for the centuries of R&D that made such wines possible. We’re overdue in recognizing its contribution.
This week in the wine corner . . .
THURSDAY AUGUST 2, 3-6 PM – SO SOON AUGUST
2017 Cellario Langhe Favorita, $16.95
2016 Domaine de la Louvétrie, Muscadet “Amphibolite,” $19.95
2017 Château de la Selve, Vin de Pays des Coteaux de l’Ardèche “Petit Selve” $15.95
FRIDAY AUGUST 3, 3-6PM – DOG DAYS UPON US
2017 Kurt Angerer “Kies” Gruner Veltliner, $19.95
2015 Valli Unite, “Gaitu” Barbera, $22.95
Monte Bernardi “Italia, Ti Amo” Vino da Tavola, $18.95 (Liter)
-Stephen Meuse
