Nature, Natural and symbolic value of wine Villa Vinum in
Villa Foscarini Rossi - Stra (VE) - 02/21/2009
Conversation Giampiero Rorato
I take the liberty to go beyond the usual interpretation of the words nature and natural elements that are the subject of this meeting - the value of which, in reference to food quality, there is no doubt - to try to penetrate, with reference to the wine, the true meaning and the most hidden, grasp the semantic value that is given not only and not so much by references listed in the dictionaries, but the meanings that, over the millennia, humans have given them and at the same time proceeds; meanings that are, ultimately, of the directions of life, so close to the plants - particularly the vine and the vine and wine and even the wheat bread - here we are, we men, indeed, we are people. We, too, as we teach our civilization, we should heed the signs that we can derive the meaning of the words that are the subject of our discussion, as saying that the lives of men and whatever else there is inherent in the design responds to a our nature, a design that goes beyond our being in time and involving the whole of reality, which is what they call the faith's men created, the work of God the Creator ..
Let us therefore, even very briefly, especially on the bread and wine, has always approached in the civilization of the Mediterranean, and let me follow faithfully the precious reasoning Enzo Bianchi, founder and prior of the Community of Bose, one of the most lucid and men of great wisdom that today can boast of our country, an argument expressed in his last work, The Bread of yesterday (Einaudi, 2008).
Bread
"Bread, writes Enzo Bianchi, is a symbol of nature and, together, the 'culture', of man's harmony with nature. 'He takes the bread from the earth' tells strongly evocative Psalm 104, written many centuries before Christ, remember that the bread is there, yet only a man knows 'draw him out', you know to call it to life.
bread, food, real yet symbolic, is able to evoke a reality that goes beyond the food material and raise questions about the meaning of what makes us live. In his
be the fruit of the earth and human, nature and culture - in this double set is the natural quality of bread, which is not only a given physical-chemical or even just a food product because it is also and above all a cultural - the bread expresses the need, what you really need to live. No coincidence that the word 'bread' means essential food and not superfluous: when we say that there is no 'bread', we refer to hunger and famine, as well as the migration is not tragically simple explanation of the evidence that's always hungry run to the bread because the bread does not run where there is hunger.
A race - what we see today, let me add - from the southern to the northern shores of the Mediterranean, following the route taken by the culture of their own bread nearly five years ago. Bread, then, as a figure of our ability to share, our willingness or not to break it because everyone can have bread that, according to the Gospel accounts, enough for all only when it is broken and shared. "
Bread is therefore the result and expression of our civilization, food is essential for human life, but also an element of division of humanity, including those who have and those who did not he and they are still the majority. That is the nature of the bread, beyond its being made from natural elements such as: flour, water, yeast and salt.
Wine And the wine? I mention the bread because the value of wine is similar to that of bread more than the narrow limits of the territory to become a universal value, features, of course, place of birth, its terroir, but this - the terroir - is a kind of accident, the substance is quite different, as is the wine in wine and its quality and its value depends also on its terroir, but it is the terroir.
"Wine, writes the prior of the Bose community, is the fruit of the vine. And as the vine, is rich in gifts and practical at the same time, full of symbolic references. Always, "the days of Noah" in fact, next to the bread of need, the bread that feeds, the daily bread they need to live, man has had the generosity and wine of the feast: a drink is not necessary for survival, but invaluable for the consolation and joy shared, the newfound friendship. "
Let us pause for a moment with the patriarch Noah.
"In the great code of our culture, the Bible, it tells the myth of Noah who first planted and cultivated a vineyard. Survived the great flood that had united humanity and nature in the devastation, Noah first places a gesture of great hope, he contracted a marriage with the earth: plant a tree already, in fact, make a gesture of great hope, but planting a vineyard is even more because it takes years to enjoy the fruit, it must decide to make a covenant with the land, to stop there, to work long in pure loss. We can imagine the amazement of Noah when he finally hands between those clusters long expected, we can almost see charmed and seduced by a mysterious fact: having squeezed these bunches harvested for drinking the juice, he realizes that this ferment, it becomes the must, boils, it rises, like the belly of a pregnant woman, such as 'mixture of water and grain flour. Noah
drink that juice where it sees an unexpected vitality, its gaiety test, you feel comforted by all the sadness felt during the flood. So
wine: drink, drink in solitude, it stuns the bitterness only to accentuate the sadness, but also drink, enjoyed the intimacy of friendship, enhance the flavor and refined pleasure.
demanding drink, too, because requires the drinker to the effort to free themselves from slavery to free energy exasperated to indulge without which life is tasteless; drink that invites you to sing your life, to enter into the awareness of death's will say yes to a life.
Perhaps that is all of these issues - in addition to requiring discernment in knowing yourself, your limits and those of others - it is for this reading in the sign of the existence of free and shared the joy that wine is now in Bible and other spiritual traditions, a symbol of wisdom. Wisdom because it gives "flavor" to life, but also because the wine can dissolve the heart and bring out what really lives it, knows how to transform simple food intake at a banquet, as well as the fermentation has transformed the humble grape juice fermented drink ..
And, next to the wisdom, two elements essential for full human life are symbolized by the wine, love and friendship.
no coincidence that the whole love story told from the Song of Songs winds on the register of vineyards, grapes, wine to be consumed in the "wine cellar". Who does not remember the beginning of this poem, considered the most beautiful love poetry ever written?
kiss me with the kisses of your mouth!
Yes, better than wine is your love.
are your intoxicating perfumes for the fragrance, aroma spreads
is your name.
And so she presents her beloved
My beloved is to me a bunch of Cyprus in the vineyards of Engedi
!
his shadow I want to sit,
its fruit is sweet to my taste.
I introduced in the cell of wine
And his banner over me is love.
And in the fifth poem he sings: Let
to me are your breasts like clusters of grapes
and your breath smell like honey.
Your palate like fine wines,
flowing softly to me
and flows on the lips and teeth! The Song ends
a comparison that strikes me:
Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon:
he let out the vineyard to keepers.
Each was to bring for its fruit
thousand pieces of silver.
My vineyard, my own, in front of me:
keep well, Solomon, the thousand and two hundred pieces of silver
for the keepers of its fruit!
like saying that the most beautiful treasure, the beloved, symbolically indicated in the vineyard, the young lover is angry with himself and not give them up for the silver could give.
other books of the Bible refer to wine, not coincidence that Ben Sira said that "the new friend is as new wine: when you drink it aged ", not by chance at the banquet promised for the end times there will be delicious food and fine wines and not by chance that Jesus will put his first" sign "at the wedding at Cana under the seal of a joy shared by the best wine and leave it to his disciples the new commandment of love around the "sign" of a broken bread and a glass of wine poured that all might have life in abundance.
I wanted to bring the wine next to the bread, "free alongside essential, next to the gift need, joy next to the substance of the bread to live, the wine gives taste to life forces fortify bread, wine gladdens the heart, the bread is the body with work, the wine will soften the hard work. Bread and wine on the table are there to remind us of our greatness and ask our sensitivity: how much effort and how much hope is collected in these two simple food, how many faces appear behind them!
The farmer and the miller, the baker and the winemaker, and then the cooper and merchant, their families and their children, anxieties and hopes of a year, the shouts of the vintage and the silence of the cellars, the sound of grinding and crushing in the vats.
And now I'm there, collected on our table to tell us the quality of our humanization, to question us about who we are and how we wish that our world.
The story, if we have the humility read it with sincerity and care, it speaks of the values \u200b\u200bin these two foods and especially in wine. We saw it. Wisdom, friendship, love, these gifts are priceless, but that we know the inestimable value, are symbolized by a beverage that it is the wisdom of man and his love for the land have been able to find among the gifts first put to him by nature, not simply waiting to be transformed into a culture of life for life. "
This is the true nature of the wine. So it must be lived, so goes the proposal, should be promoted, because wine is the story of our humanity, and he himself is the protagonist of the Mediterranean civilization, is the synthesis of its finest values: friendship, love, wisdom, and solidarity. The production technology is important, as his relationship with the place where born, obvious thing for wine quality, such as its ability to best express their terroir, but this comes later.
If the wine did not have the meanings and values \u200b\u200bmentioned above, is merely one of many drinks, an economic value among many others and betray its truest nature. And if it was limited to being just a beverage, but natural, while expression of the place where the vine is cultivated origin, would have really lost its truest nature, its cultural value and symbolic, and not what characterizes Soon our lives and Western civilization.
The confetti is made, the small springs are in plain sight ... 
