A natural for clavicles

From 1823 through 1832, Johann Peter Eckermann often dined with Goethe, 43 years his senior. Many of us have been there. On February 17th, 1831, he brought with him a manuscript he had just finished editing of the poet's from 1807, littered with aperçus "as hasty remarks of the day." Conscious of the prospect of being wrong in what he might say, but fearless, Goethe's manner was never to repudiate in later years a remark he might no longer agree with, and was consistent in giving every age its autonomous due. We know this because he dined with Eckermann. On that evening, Eckermann says he told him this:

People always fancy, that we must become old to be-come wise; but, in truth, as years advance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we were. Man be-comes, indeed, in the different stages of his life, a different being; but he cannot say he is a better one, and in cer-tain matters he is as likely to be right in his twentieth year..

I have just received a package from Santorini. In addition to a letter it contains a bottle of the island's storied signature wine, Assyrtiko, the great treasure of this volcanic Cycladic terroir. Uniquely, the vine is cultiv-ated in a basket weave, as if clawing its nourishment from the barren, windswept slope, hastening ripening.

An Assyrtiko is meant to be drunk young, but this one is designated a Reserve and has evidently been en-dowed with barrel aging. Banish any thought of residual sugar: it con-fesses to an almost New World 15 percent ABV. These qualities elevate its already impetuously acidic sea-food demands to swordfish stratos-pheres, and a cuttlefish paella would not be off the mark. Whisk up your most unctuous aioli, and don't stint on the tapenade for the crostini. 


Racy enough for Eckermann, ironic enough for Goethe. Sender, we should have them to dinner.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Peter Eckermann
Conversations with Eckermann
Margaret Fuller, translation
John Oxenford, editor
1850
North Point Press, 1984©


Paros tiller, Paschalis