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| Sunday, 8 September 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Wine is anything but a ladies' drink by KAREL ROBERTS RATNAWEERA Sri Lankan men are finding out the hard way that wine is not a ladies' drink in the sense that women should be served only wine while men have the strong liquor.
Sri Lanka - even the Ceylon of the colonial past - has no tradition of wine-making, just as it has no tradition of bread or cheese-making. In the spacious days of the British raj, upper-class society dinners in clubs and even in private homes would see the ladies having a modest glass of sherry (sherry is not wine; sherry is sherry), while the men drank their Scotch, brandy,gin or whatever strong liquor they favoured. It was unheard of for a lady in polite society to have a glass of whisky in her hand. On a lesser social scale- that of the English-educated middle classes, especially of the Dutch Burgher community - during social visiting on festive occasions - a drink called milk wine, for which it is said this particular community excelled in making - was served to women visitors while the men would stand round the dining table quaffing their whisky and soda, brandy and ginger ale - the latter a mix invented by the Americans and despised by the French who do not adulterate their brandy - or even arrack and whatever. The so-called milk wine which looks exactly like arrack, is made with milk, being an important ingredient, thus its name. It is, say those who make it even to this day for sale at Christmas Bazaars and even for serving at home, a tedious process and has to be distilled until the milkiness gives way to crystal clarity. It is then bottled in the home pantry and put away for special occasions. These people also make beverages out of fruits and some vegetables such as beetroot which masquerade as wine. Loosely termed, it would not be wrong to call them wines because it is the liqueur or the essence of the particular medium of choice, although the European would scoff these beverages out of existence. Wine, to them, is only made from the grape, whatever the colour or vintage. So that, in a nutshell, is how in Sri Lanka, wine came to be regarded as a ladies' drink-a notion that exists to this day. Of course, in these days of globalisation and liberalised trade when wine is becoming more accessible to those who have no tradition of making or drinking it, increasing numbers of Sri Lankan men are finding out, at their peril, that wine is anything but a ladies' drink when drunk the way they drink arrack! It is becoming an increasingly common sight at hi-fi social gatherings in recent times to see men standing around with glasses of wine in their hands rather than hard liquor. I have even seen some men staring down the barrels of their glasses in what look like attempts to discover how this bewildering beverage is manufactured, bewildering because sipped, it does not intoxicate as hard liquor does, but guzzled, as some men do in frustration to get a quick 'high,'they could find themselves staggering toward the nearest flower pot! Wine culture is unknown to Sri Lanka and until the highly improbable event of finding the technology of cultivating grapes suitable for the manufacture of wine such as in Europe, parts of the Americas, South Africa and Australia,this nectar of the Gods will always remain foreign to this country. In some parts of Jaffna in the days before the war,a modest wine was being made by a certain sect of Spanish Roman Catholic monks and sold to those who stopped at a place called Tholagatty - which gave its name to the wine - on their way further North. This wine was also retailed at a few stores outside Jaffna, even in Colombo,at a very cheap price, and found a market among those who subscribe to the thinking that any wine is better than no wine at all. No one was fussy;the wine was rather crude in texture but it served the desired purpose if consumed in sufficient quantities. These monks and some others also made pure grape juice from these vines which also sold for affordable prices in stores in Colombo and in some North and North Western regions. Wine-tasting is also strange in Sri Lanka, so when last Wednesday such an event was held at the Hotel Lanka Oberoi to launch Sri Lanka's first ever Wine Club,sponsored by Alpha Orient Lanka, a subsidiary of Alpha Airport Group Plc, of the UK, it was worth watching the local men who were playing with fire and didn't know it! The Vintage Evening to 'uncork' 'Labels,' the apt name of the new Wine Club, began during and after the Welcome Address, 'Wine from the Vine,' by Managing Director, Alpha retail, Asia and Middle East, Paul Topping. Stewards brought round trays of glasses filled with only a certain amount of white wine, meant for tasting. Wines from France, California, Australia and Chile were taken round for those brave enough to go through the ritual. Guests were initiated into the art of wine tasting by Paul Topping himself. This art includes, firstly,observing the colour and clarity of the wine, its particular fragrance and then - its bouquet, a process which seems harmless enough to the uninitiated. Placed at intervals were bread rolls and cream cracker biscuits which, it was explained, were there to be eaten in between tasting different wines, to clear one's palate for the next tasting and of course, act as a buffer zone, as it were which would absorb the wine. Food from the four countries from which the wine came was also served at different stations. An Italian guest nursing his glass lamented to this writer that there was no 'Italiano wine' to be seen! Italy is also one of the world's greatest wine-producing countries. Two of the world's greatest aperitifs are manufactured by two of Italy's greatest vermouth houses. It soon became as clear as the wine was being tasted that this ritual cannot be learned in one evening; it is an art that has to be practised and polished until one's palate is seasoned to the point where tasting becomes second nature, as in the case of tea tasters in tea-producing countries like Sri Lanka. Tea is the wine of the tea shrub just as wine is the essence of the grapevine, although it is not that simply explained. Wine is - anything but a ladies' drink but it is socially more acceptable to see a woman holding a glass of wine rather than hard liquor. |
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There has been a completely wrong notion in this country for perhaps
more than a century that wine is a ladies' drink. I suspect that this
misconception has its roots in certain social customs of genteel society
of two or more generations ago.
