WINE CULTURE WE HONOR BACCHUS FOR THE SATURNALIE

 

 

In vino veritas the truth is at the bottom of the jar where Baco dances the dance of life surrounded by an orchestra of angels and demons. Branches and arch branches, my dear.

  He already said "to water as an ox and to wine as a king". Few meet that standard. Oh blood of Christ, the Spanish soldiers used to say when they returned from the battles of Flanders fighting against heretics and pigs who only drank beer, "I haven't seen you for three years, laus tibi deo."

  The wine fruit of the vine and the work of man has the same etymological root as vita. It's life. I confess that I have lived and drunk.

Bacchus was for my traveling companion in the great battles of my existence, consolation in misfortunes and a cloth of tears in the grief of Venus.

Ah! I remember that cellar of my grandfather, the one belonging to the somo, with the dark portico, pitch-hole, and black door smudged with shadows but which kept the Eucharistic must inside. It was thermostatic. Hot in winter and cool in summer. On the day of the fiesta, the crews spread out and were seen sitting on stone benches and boards at the door of the warehouse.

─Antoñito, son, my grandfather used to say, go to the winery that we have on the way to Tejares, in front of the Roman presses. faucet and you fill it up to the cogüelmo. here's the key

Grandpa would give me a huge key that weighed half a kilo of cast iron

─ Grandfather to command,

My grandfather would send me off, I would lose my ass down the slope of Cruz del Redondillo, shaking the cones and being very careful not to spill that delicious must.

Before returning to the front page, he hit the jug a touch or two because he did the Lazarillo thing with the blind man, so that it wouldn't be noticed, he added a little soda.

  Grandfather Benjamin, when his rheumatic leg ached, would rub a few rubs with that delicious riverside wine. And he used to give me sopillas when I had a cold or a bad stomach ailment. We come from the part of Segovia where the hawthorns give the best Vega Sicilia. It can be said that it is more than wine Gregorian chant. The best of the best. In Fuentesoto since ancient times the advice of Ecclesiastes has been followed: “Vinum bonum laetificat cor hominum” (good wine gladdens the hearts of men in their doubts, afflictions and shocks.) The best medicine, a little drink.

  Unfortunately, some smart-ass drowsiness called oenophiles arrived and when they mixed it with powders they spoiled it. The wine from my grandfather's cellar did not go to his head or make him drunk.

  You could drink an azumbre while you reaped, winnowed, or threshed.

I never saw grandpa drunk. He pissed well. When they added preservatives, the broths gained strength, but they left "nail" and caused bitter awakenings in the paroxysm of hangovers the day after.

Wine, like roses, must be treated delicately, it should not be touched. Don't touch it anymore, that's how the rose is, even though the next day, threatened by death, it withers.

That is why those good wines from my childhood turned into vinegar.

 

To be continue

Tuesday, December 27, 2022