Noah, First Man, Father of Humanity, father of vine and wine.
Fruit of the earth and the labor of human hands, wine occupies an important place in the Bible. More than 440 passages feature the winegrower, the vine and wine.
You’ve all heard of the flood, this story of how God decided to submerge the earth in water to eradicate corruption and human cruelty. Noah, warned by God of the punishment he was preparing, built an ark. “You will enter the ark, and with you, your three sons, your wife and your sons’ wives. Of all that lives, all that is flesh, you will bring a male and a female into the ark, so that they may remain alive with you.” And the waters fell upon the earth. And everything was drowned.
And she returned, holding an olive twig in her beak, signifying that the waters had receded. Noah could go ashore and free the animals he had saved to repopulate Earth.
Mosaic from the Palatine Chapel in Palermo, Sicilia, Italy. 12th century.
As soon as he left the Ark, on the still wet and soft earth, Noah plants the first vine, harvests its fruit and gets drunk. Why does he do this?
Such eagerness is not by chance. The vine is the expression of his joy in coming back to life. A sign of peace and harmony in a bond with the earth, based on work, humility and simple joys.
According to the Bible, the vine is thus the first plant planted by human hands. Until this passage of chapter IX of Genesis, plants, like all the rest of the created, were the work of God. The vine inaugurates the entry of man into the world, his first creative act.
This just and peaceful man, by whom the whole human race has been renewed, becomes the father of the winegrowers. At the same time that it symbolically founds its rebirth into the world, the vine becomes consubstantial to the New Man.
Both an essential component of its essence and a faithful companion that seals a divine Alliance.
Wine will play the same role as incense, establishing contact between Man and his Creator. A role of intercessor.
Sculpture located the facade of the Doge’s Palace of Venice.
Is it for this reason that Noah is, still today, in France, a prohibited grape variety to winemaking, on the pretext that it drives people mad?