Wine & Moons

In the sunny public square of Marino, a medieval town high in the Roman Hills, good-natured carabinieri in soaking wet uniforms last week kept a riotous crowd back from the public fountain. One by one they let villagers and visitors approach. One spout flowed rich red wine, the other white, and it was free for all but those hoggish enough to try to use buckets. It was the annual vintage festival, celebrated in Marino for over a thousand years.

On the dusty plains of Hungary white ox teams came in from the vineyards with colored ribbons around their horns, while peasants danced under rafters decorated with heavy bunches of ripe grapes. Switzerland, Germany and Spain prepared for a whole series of harvest festivals with bands, floats, dancing girls and red fire.

In France the peasants stacked up their heavy baskets, shook the powdery blue-green Bordeaux mixture from their smocks and thanked le bon Dieu that what showed every prospect of being the greatest vintage since unforgettable 1893 had come to an end. Chemists and agricultural experts bore them out. All over France, in the Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy districts, weather has been ideal for the vine this summer. There was little hail, and the drought that burned up wheat crops only made deep-rooted grapes the sweeter. Analyses of the green wine have already sent prices soaring, but production all over Europe will be huge. Bordeaux expects to produce 500,000,000 litres of 1934 compared with 337,000,000 litres of 1933. Champagne of 1934 will be not only infinitely better than that of 1933 but there will be millions more gallons of it. French authorities are encouraged by the fact that after years of propaganda, domestic consumption of wine is definitely increasing.

Superstitious peasants expected all this good fortune before the first buds broke on the carefully pruned canes last spring. It is ancient legend that wines will be great in any year in which there are two full moons in a given calendar month. Nineteen-Thirty-Four was doubly blessed. Full moons shone Jan. 1 and 30, again March 1 and 31.

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