Europes wine zone cuts the Peninsula in two.

Its northernreaches pass along a

line stretching from the Loire, throughChampagne to the Mosel and the
Rhineland, and thenceeastwards to the slopes of the Danube, and on to Moldavia
andCrimea. There are very few wine-growing districts which did notonce belong
to the Roman Empire. Balkan wines in Serbia,Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece,
inhibited by the anti-alcoholicOttomans, are every bit as ancient as those of
Spain, Italy, or France.
The consumption of wine has far-reaching social,psychological, and medical
consequences. It has been invoked asa factor in religious and political groupings,
such as the Protestant-Catholic divide in Germany, and even in the fate of
battles. It waswine and beer that clashed at Waterloo. The red fury
of winerepeatedly washed in vain against the immovable wall of the sons of beer.
Nor has St. Martins homeland lost its vilticultural excellence. The volcanic soil
on the slopes above Tokay, the hot summer air of the Hungarian plain, the
moisture of the Bodrog River, and the mostnobly rotten of Aszu grapes, form a
unique combination. The pungent, velvety, peachlike
essencia
of golden Tokay is not toeveryones taste; and has rarely been well produced in
recentdecades. But it was once laid down for 200 years in the mostexclusive
cellars of Poland, and kept for the death-bed of mon-archs. A bottle of Imperial
Tokay from the days of Francis-Josephis still one of the connoisseurs most prized
ambitions.