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| The dinners that used to call for long wine lists are also “out.” If you were to serve hors d’oeuvres, oysters, soup, fish, entree, salad, roast, sorbet, game, compote, cheese, pudding, fruit and nuts, each course with the appropriate accompaniment, how many of your guests would eat it all? In these days of dieting, nobody! We have simplified eating. The truly sophisticated long ago simplified drinking, also. |
Some Thoughts on the New Rules After Prohibition
Don't believe all they tell you about the etiquette of serving a large variety of wines at the same meal. That was already “out” long before prohibition. In fact, the dinners themselves that used to call for long wine lists are also “out.” If you were to serve hors d’oeuvres, oysters, soup, fish, entree, salad, roast, sorbet, game, compote, cheese, pudding, fruit and nuts, each course with the appropriate accompaniment, how many of your guests would eat it all? In these days of dieting, nobody! We have simplified eating. The truly sophisticated long ago simplified drinking, also.
Instructors in alleged etiquette are urging you now not to serve more than two cocktails before dinner. Why two? If the purpose is an appetizer and a preliminary ceremonial, one will serve that better than two. If the purpose is to “tank up” why do that at a civilized meal in a civilized friend's house? That crudity should be relegated to the memories of the bootleg era. There are rougher places to do it, where you will offend nobody but yourself.
Also, since wine is now legal and legitimate, and California has a monopoly of the production of true wine in America, why not civilize our wine business, and teach the American people the civilized consumption of our wines. That means first producing some superfine wines, and popularizing them. No country can have more than a relatively small fraction of wines of the highest grade, but it is on these that the reputation of the rest depends. French wines stand high, not because all of them are good – most of them are ordinary, but because the best are the finest in the world. California can, and does produce some fine wines, also. Let us make them known.
And let us rid the American people of the inferiority complex, which makes us think the only wines to serve with pride are foreign ones. Germans prefer to serve German wines; French, French ones, and Italians, Spaniards, Greeks and South Africans their own wines. It is from England, where all the wines have to be imported, that we copy the idea of using only imported wine America, so long as California is in it, does not need to depend on the outside world. French wines, like French perfumes and French silks, have their luxury place. But let the wines of America hold the place in America which the wines of Italy have always held in Italy.
Let there, too, be a larger production of well-aged standard wine not the commercialized quick turnover, for the cheapest market, but something which, without being a luxury in price, can take its place as a standard article of American consumption, in whose quality and reputation we may take a just pride. And let there be places, all over the country, where good California wines are sold as such, and lists on every first-class hotel menu of the finer California wines. If Americans are going to drink, let them drink our product.
Finally, let the vulgarity be eliminated from American manners of thinking that “buying wine” is the way to splurge, and that “wine,” for that purpose, means champagne. Champagne has its place, to be sure though, to the sophisticated wine drinker it is a secondary one but wine, as the most civilized of alcoholic beverages, and the one whose chief function is social, is made neither for intoxication nor for display. If you must get drunk, do it on booze but not in a civilized house. If you must splurge, buy orchids. If you would make a good dinner better, do it with the Scriptural “a little wine, for thy stomach's sake” and make it “little.” This is all about drink. Since nearly all the other columns in all the papers are full of it, why not this one? - Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Dec. 7, 1933
Instructors in alleged etiquette are urging you now not to serve more than two cocktails before dinner. Why two? If the purpose is an appetizer and a preliminary ceremonial, one will serve that better than two. If the purpose is to “tank up” why do that at a civilized meal in a civilized friend's house? That crudity should be relegated to the memories of the bootleg era. There are rougher places to do it, where you will offend nobody but yourself.
Also, since wine is now legal and legitimate, and California has a monopoly of the production of true wine in America, why not civilize our wine business, and teach the American people the civilized consumption of our wines. That means first producing some superfine wines, and popularizing them. No country can have more than a relatively small fraction of wines of the highest grade, but it is on these that the reputation of the rest depends. French wines stand high, not because all of them are good – most of them are ordinary, but because the best are the finest in the world. California can, and does produce some fine wines, also. Let us make them known.
And let us rid the American people of the inferiority complex, which makes us think the only wines to serve with pride are foreign ones. Germans prefer to serve German wines; French, French ones, and Italians, Spaniards, Greeks and South Africans their own wines. It is from England, where all the wines have to be imported, that we copy the idea of using only imported wine America, so long as California is in it, does not need to depend on the outside world. French wines, like French perfumes and French silks, have their luxury place. But let the wines of America hold the place in America which the wines of Italy have always held in Italy.
Let there, too, be a larger production of well-aged standard wine not the commercialized quick turnover, for the cheapest market, but something which, without being a luxury in price, can take its place as a standard article of American consumption, in whose quality and reputation we may take a just pride. And let there be places, all over the country, where good California wines are sold as such, and lists on every first-class hotel menu of the finer California wines. If Americans are going to drink, let them drink our product.
Finally, let the vulgarity be eliminated from American manners of thinking that “buying wine” is the way to splurge, and that “wine,” for that purpose, means champagne. Champagne has its place, to be sure though, to the sophisticated wine drinker it is a secondary one but wine, as the most civilized of alcoholic beverages, and the one whose chief function is social, is made neither for intoxication nor for display. If you must get drunk, do it on booze but not in a civilized house. If you must splurge, buy orchids. If you would make a good dinner better, do it with the Scriptural “a little wine, for thy stomach's sake” and make it “little.” This is all about drink. Since nearly all the other columns in all the papers are full of it, why not this one? - Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Dec. 7, 1933
Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia
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