Cyprus, as I Saw It in 1879Baker, Samuel White, Sir
History
Cyprus, as I Saw It in 1879
Baker, Samuel White, Sir
Cyprus -- Description and travel
The difficulty of introducing a new wine is well known to English
wine-merchants, and the mysteries of the trade would somewhat astonish
the innocent would-be connoisseur. There can be no doubt that the palate
must be educated to enjoy fine dry wines, precisely as the ear must be
instructed before it can appreciate classical music. There is a harmony
in the senses of hearing, smell, and taste which is the result of
civilised life; this may be right or wrong physically, as the nerves
become more delicate and sensitive, which may affect the brain more or
less directly. There can be no doubt that it affects the stomach.
Certain civilised persons prefer game in a state approaching to
decomposition; I have seen savages who enjoy flesh when actually putrid,
and above all horrors, fish when stinking! Such food would disgust the
civilised man who prefers his game "high," and would perhaps kill other
civilised people whose palates and stomachs have been educated to avoid
impurities. In the same manner the palate must be educated for wines or
other drinks. I gave an old priest a bottle of Bass's pale India ale; he
could not drink half a glassful but rejected it as picro (bitter); the
same old man enjoyed his penny-a-bottle black Cyprus wine, reeking of
tar and half-rotten goat-skins, in which it had been brought to
market--a stuff that I could not have swallowed! It must therefore be
borne in mind when judging of Cyprian wines, that "English taste does
not govern the world." Although the British market would be closed to
the coarse and ill-made wines of Cyprus, there are other markets which
accept them gladly, and would absorb them to a high degree, were they
improved by superior cultivation and manufacture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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