Free Europe: A History by Norman Davies Page B

through the Moravian Gap to the Danube, and over the Brenner Pass to the Adriatic. Obsidian and lapis lazuli were also in great demand. Copper and tin were the staples. Copper came first from Cyprus— whence its name—later from the Dolomites, and above all from the Carpathians. Carpathian copper found its way northwards at an early date to Scandinavia, and was later sent south to the Aegean. Tin, which was not always distinguished by the ancients from lead, was brought from distant Cornwall. The search for copper and tin seems to have stimulated transcontinental contacts more effectively than the subsequent search for iron, which was found much more readily.
    VINO
    W INE is no ordinary beverage. It has always been associated with lòve and religion. Its name, like that of Venus, is derived from the Sanskrit vêna , ‘beloved’. Coming from the Caucasus, it featured in both the daily diet and the religious ceremonies of the ancient world. First cultivated by Noah {Genesis ix. 20), it inspired not only pagan bacchanalia but also the communion cup of Christianity. 1
    Saint Martin of Tours, born at Sabaria (modern Szombathely) near the Danube, was the first patron saint of wine-drinkers. St Urban and St Vincent (whose name offers a play on ‘reeking of wine’), became the principal patrons of wine-growers and vintners.
    Commercial wine-growing in medieval Europe was pioneered by the Benedictines at Château-Prieuré in the Bordeaux region, and at locations such as the Clos Vougeot on the Cote de Beaune in Burgundy. The Cluniacs on the Côte d’Or near Macon, and the Cistercians at Nuits St Georges, extended the tradition. According to Froissart, England’s possession of Bordeaux demanded a fleet of 300 vessels to carry the vintage home. Bénédictine (1534) from the Abbey of Fécamp, and Chartreuse (1604) from the Charterhouse in Dauphiné, pioneered the art of fortified wine.
    Europe’s wine zone cuts the Peninsula in two. Its northern reaches pass along a line stretching from the Loire, through Champagne to the Mosel and the Rhineland, and thence eastwards to the slopes of the Danube, and on to Moldavia and Crimea. There are very few wine-growing districts which did not once belong to the Roman Empire. Balkan wines in Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, inhibited by the anti-alcoholic Ottomans, are every bit as ancient as those of Spain, Italy, or France.
    The consumption of wine has far-reaching social, psychological, and medical consequences. It has been invoked as a factor in religious and political groupings, such as the Protestant-Catholic divide in Germany, and even in the fate of battles. ‘It was wine and beer that clashed at Waterloo. The red fury of wine repeatedly washed in vain against the immovable wall of the sons of beer…’ 2
    Nor has St Martin’s homeland lost its viticultural excellence. The volcanic soil on the slopes above Tokay, the hot summer air of the Hungarian plain, the moisture of the Bodrog River, and the most nobly rotten of ‘Aszu’ grapes, form a unique combination. The pungent, velvety, peachlike essencia of golden Tokay is not to everyone’s taste; and has rarely been well produced in recent decades. But it was once laid down for 200 years in the most exclusive cellars of Poland, and kept for the death-bed of mon-archs. A bottle of ‘Imperial Tokay’ from the days of Francis-Joseph is still one of the connoisseur’s most prized ambitions. 3
    ĠGANTIJA
    T HE islands of Malta present two historic puzzles—their language and their megaliths. The former is Semitic, of mediaeval Arab provenance. It is the only Semitic tongue to be written in the Latin script. (Romantic philologists once linked it with ancient Phoenician.) The megaliths are far older. The principal sites at the temple of Ggantija on Gozo Island, and at the unique subterranean hypogeum or ‘collective burial chamber’ at Hal Saflieni, dating from c.2400 BC. The earliest rock-cut monuments were constructed a