Lacryma Christi

Because we are getting ready to go to Sorrento, my dh brought home a bottle of Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio Bianco by Terredora. It was a lovely bottle of white wine with a smooth honeyed citrus taste.
The grapes used include an ancient varietal -- coda di volpe, named by Pliny the Elder -- Cauda vulpium (fox tail) because of the way it grows in clusters.
The grapes are grown in the cinder soil of Vesuvius, and Lacryma Christi is one of the more imitated wines of the region.
The legend is that when God found a little piece of heaven that Lucifer had stolen at the Bay of Naples, God wept with joy and from God's tears sprang the vines.
The Campania region reached the height of its fame back in the Greco-Roman times when Falernian wine grew along the north coast. Even in the 16th century the wines were famous with Pop Paul III raving about the wines of the Kingdom of Naples. However, they began to decline with the fall of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies in 1860.
However, if the bottle of Lacryma Christi we had is anything to go by, they should be rediscovered. Truly nectar.

I leave tomorrow morning for Sorrento, Italy and this blog will get back to normal service on 1 Nov.

Tokay -- the Hungarian elixir

Tokay or Tokaj was the premier wine of the Hapsburg Empire. There was nothing in the world to match it for its sweetness. And it was a wine used to woo monarchs -- from Vienna, Prague and Warsaw to St Petersburg, Paris and London. A legendary luxury.
It is the after dinner drink that Prince Esterhazy would have offered during the Regency. His wife, Princess Esterhazy was one of the Patroness of Almack's and the couple were very involved in the ton.
A variation of the name (but the same wine) is also mentioned at the start of Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights (The Golden Compass). It is the wine that has been poisoned. Thankfully with Hungarian wines once again available in the West, it is possible to find Tokay wine again. However, it is not as cheap as it was in the early 1990s when I first discovered, but it remains a fantastic after dinner wine. It is still possible (just) to get the Tokaj Essence -- it is sold as Aszu Essenczia.
The Essence is made basically in the same fashion that Pliny describes making Falerian wine. So it is quite possible/probable that the fable wine of the Roman Republic tasted like Tokay. There are reasons why the Romans cut their wine with water.
Honey rich with a hint of almonds as far as I can recall. Definitely moreish.
There are many myths surrounding Tokay Essence. The most potent is that the elixir could restore almost any failing power. There are stories of aged men springing from their bed after having a drop or two. And of course, the inevitable stories about men falling into their beds and siring hordes of children.
Anyway, it belongs to great pudding wines of the world.