Wine I: Forbidden

Good morning. Today begins the first décade of Vendémiaire, Year CCXXXII. It's the month of winemaking. Our theme this time is forbidden fruit.

Rabbi Meir, one of the prominent Jewish thinkers from the century prior to the birth of Christ, always asserted that the forbidden fruit at the center of the Bible's first blockbuster episode (after the opening credits sequence of God creating Earth) was not an apple, but grapes. Of course, lots of fruits have been named (I'm in the quince school myself), but I can see the idea behind grapes, given their later connection to religious ceremony and their prominence in the Christian narrative of undoing the original sin with bread and ... not apple juice. So let's use the grape day of grape month to talk a little about the forbidden fruits of life, and what really happens when we eat them.