Tripe Soup 2

I never write about wine. Although I love the stuff, I can’t describe it well, beyond “wow, smooth,” or some such. I let others say it better. Like this, translated from the Spanish:

“There are five reasons to drink wine: the arrival of a friend, the thirst of the moment, the thirst of the future, the quality of the wine, and any other reason.”

Or this, from my eight-greats grandfather Sir John Harington’s loose translation of an ancient Roman medical poem called The School of Salerno, in which the number five reappears:

“Choose wine you mean shall serve you all the year,
Well-savored tasting well, and colored clear.
Five qualities there are, wine’s praise advancing,
Strong, Beautiful, and Fragrant, Cool and Dancing.

And:

“White, Muscatel, and Candy wine, and Greek,
Do make men’s wits and bodies gross and fat;
Red wine doth make the voice oft-time to seek,
And hath a binding quality to that;
Canary, and Madeira, both are like
To make one lean indeed: (but wot you what)
Who say they make one lean, would make one laugh,
They mean, they make one lean upon a staff.
Wine, Women, Baths, by Art or Nature warm,
Used or abused do men much good or harm.”