"I wonder if Charlemagne ever drank
A tankard of Assmanschausen. Nay!
If he had, his empire never would rank
As it does with the royalist realms to-day;
For the goddess that laughs within the cup
Had wiled and won him from blood and war,
And shown, as he drained her long draughts up,
There was something better worth living for
Than kingcraft keeping his gruff brow sad.
I wish from my very soul she had."
The deep, dark, swiftly flowing Rhine, its legends, its forests of
silver firs and pines, its mountains crowned with castles, and its
hillsides blushing with the bending vine, the convent's ancient walls,
the glistening spire, the maidens with their plaited hair, and "hands
that offer early flowers," all the bright, beautiful, romantic
landscape, the dancing waves which wash its historic shores, its
donjon keeps and haunted Tenter Rock, its
"Beetling walls with ivy grown,
Frowning heights of mossy stone,"--
all this beauty is placed in the land of the sauer-kraut, the herring
salad, the sweet stewed fruit with pork, pig and prune sauce, carp
stewed in beer, raw goose-flesh or Göttingen sausages, potato
sweetened, and cabbage soured,--in a land, in short, whose kitchen is
an abomination to all other nations.
Not that one does not get an excellent dinner at a German hotel in a
great city. But all the cooks are French. The powerful young emperor
has, however, given his orders that all _menus_ shall hereafter be
written in German; the language of Ude, Soyer, Valet, and Francatelli,
Brillat, Savarin, and Béchamel, is to be replaced by German.
But if the viands are not good, the wines are highly praised by the
_gourmet_; and as these wines are often exported, it is said that one
gets a better German wine in New York than at a second-class hotel at
Bonn or Cologne or Düsseldorf,--on the same principle that fish at
Newport is less fresh than at New York, for it is all bought, sent to
New York, and then sent back to Newport. In other words, the exporters
are careful to keep up the reputation of their exported wines.
Assmanschausen is a red Rhine wine of high degree; some _gourmets_
call it the Burgundy of the Rhine. This poetic beverage is found
within the gorge of the Rhine.
The bend which the noble river assumes at the Rheingau is said to have
the effect of concentrating the sun's rays, reflected from the surface
of the water as from a mirror, upon the vine-clad slopes; and it is to
this circumstance, combined with the favourable nature of the soil,
and to the vineyards being completely sheltered from the north winds
by the Taunus range, that the marked superiority of the wines of the
Rheingau is ordinarily attributed.
"Bacharach has produced another fine wine.
'He never has been to Heaven and back
Who has not drunken of Bacharach.'"