I was interested in California wine. Indeed, I am interested in all wines, and
have been all my life, from the raisin-wine
that a school-fellow kept secreted in his play-box up to my last discovery,
those notable Valtellines, that once shone upon the board of Cæsar.
Some of us, kind old Pagans,
watch with dread the shadows falling on
the age: how the inconquerable worm invades the sunny terraces of France, and Bordeaux is no more, and the Rhône a mere Arabia Petræa. Château Neuf is dead, and I have never tasted it; Hermitage—a hermitage indeed
from all life’s sorrows—lies expiring by the
river. And the place of these imperial elixirs,
beautiful to every sense, gem-hued,
flower-scented, dream-compellers:--behold upon the quays at Cette and the chemicals arrayed; behold
the analyst at Marseilles, raising hands in obsecration, attesting god Lycæus, and the vats staved in, and the dishonest wines poured forth among
the sea. It is not Pan only; Bacchus too is dead.
If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly, and storing reminiscences—for a bottle of good wine, like a good act shines forever in the retrospect—if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old
Jack! Now we begin to have compunctions,
and look back at the brave bottles
squandered upon dinner-parties,
where the guests drank grossly,
discussing politics the while, and even
the schoolboy “took his
whack,” like liquorice-water. And at the same time we look timidly forward, with a spark of
hope, the where the new lands, already weary of producing gold, begin to green with vineyards. A nice point in human history falls to be decided by Californian and Australian wines.
Text : Robert Louis Stevenson, "Napa Wine"
(excerpt), from "The Silverado
Squatters", 1883.
