The Wine Made Me Do It — Beverages

THE WINE MADE ME DO IT

YOUR VALENTINE’S DAY APHRODISIAC

BY GAETANO MARANGELLI

The maenads were the female followers of the Greek god of wine, Dionysus. (In Roman religion, the god was called Bacchus, his female followers, bacchantes.) They roved the mountains and forests worshiping their god ritualistically. They danced ecstatically. They had orgies. They were drunk.

The first thing to know about wine—before you know the names of its great appellations and the years of their best vintages, before you know the way its growers cultivate and crush their wine grapes, and before you know the way its makers ferment, vinify, and age their grape juice—the very first thing to know about wine is its mythical power to metamorphose you. The American educator and author Edith Hamilton tells us “the influence” of Dionysus could make his worshippers—those Greeks who drank his wine—do what they didn’t think they could do. Or would do. “All this happy freedom and confidence passed away, of course, as they either grew sober or got drunk,” writes Hamilton, “but while it lasted, it was like being possessed by a power greater than themselves.”

Since the Greek age which conjured myths of maenads roving mountains and forests, we’ve told ourselves a story about how wine can animate and fortify the energy of our sexuality—its libido, its potency, its pleasure. The story says wine has the power to change our hearts. It says wine has the power to seduce us.

Can wine pharmacologically make us want more sex? Can it improve us sexually?

No, it cannot.

Do we have a body of ritual and experience which says it can?

Yes, we do.

Which of us doesn’t plan a dinner for a Valentine without a

bottle of wine or two? Which of us doesn’t tell our own story of

a night when we and a Valentine—with wine in our blood and on our lips—did what we didn’t think we could do? Or would do?

We can’t prove wine is an aphrodisiac, but we act as if it is. In the past 15 years, we’ve asked science to prove the stories we tell ourselves about wine. But it hasn’t yet. Not neurologically. What we know is that the alcohol in wine, beer, and spirits is called ethanol, which stimulates a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which is as small as an almond. What we know is the hypothalamus governs our body temperature and physiological cycles, our appetites and emotions, our hormones and our libidos.

But the spell of wine’s mythology is powerful, isn’t it? And you’d kind of like your Valentine’s wine to act like an aphrodisiac, wouldn’t you?

First, discover the styles of wine your Valentine likes. (If you don’t know, ask.) Then look for a bottle or two of those styles using these three criteria:

LOW ALCOHOL

One of the pleasures of wine is drinking it. But that pleasure is fugitive. If you’re drinking high alcohol wine, you’re compromising the kind of passion that wine may inspire.

AS NATURAL AS POSSIBLE

Since wine was first made until the middle of the last century, wine was made naturally. A natural wine—a wine a grower cultivates and vinifies without chemicals or additives—allows the raw earth the wine is from to speak to us. Just as it spoke to the maenads of Dionysus.

NOT SO EXPENSIVE YOU CAN’T HAVE MORE THAN ONE BOTTLE

You want to savor the act of drinking wine with your Valentine for as long as you can. Even if you and your Valentine want to savor that act from Valentine’s night until the small hours of the new morning.

Gaetano Marangelli is a sommelier and playwright. He was the managing director of a wine import and distribution company in New York and beverage director for restaurants and retailers in New York and Chicago before moving to Wauwatosa.