Black wine contradiction

Black wine contradiction?

"Actually," I said to Elizabeth, "this is very rare. Thentis does not trade the beans for black wine. I have heard of a cup of black wine in Ar, some years ago, selling for a silver eighty-piece. Even in Thentis black wine is used commonly only in High Caste homes."
Assassin

The black wine "contradiction"
An essay

- Blackwine is only grown in Thentis and they don't sell it or trade it, so how come we see everybody and his brother drinking it?

Just reading random quotes about black wine on a web site, one could easily conclude "everyone and his brother" drank black wine.

To me, though, this is an example of JN weaving in the small details and using them to tell us something about the people and situation he is presenting at the moment. More on that in a minute.

We DO see black wine being served in the Tahari, Port Kar, Victoria, and more. So first let us deal with how it got there. Thentis does not trade the beans. How else might they find their way across Gor then?

Smuggling

I grinned, and washed down the eggs with a swig of hot black wine, prepared from the beans grown upon the slopes of the Thentis mountains. This black wine is quite expensive. Men have been slain on Gor for attempting to smuggle the beans out of the Thentian territories.
-Beasts

Men have been slain for attempting ot smuggle the beans out - so we see here it has been attempted. We also are not told that ALL men who have tried to smuggle the beans out have been slain ~s~

In Thentis, for example, sleen are used to smell out contraband, in the form of the unauthorized egress of the beans for black wine from the Thentian territories.
-Slave Girl

Apparently smuggling is common enough that some sleen in Thentis are specially trained to smell the beans and stop them from being taken out of the area.

Back to the beginning, we are introduced to black wine on Gor in book 5, in the house of Cernus. Cernus owns the largest slaver house in the city of Ar, having 4,000 to 6,000 slaves in it at any given time. Cernus also has some political ambition as we later discover. However, at that point we are introduced to black wine and told these facts about it -

This (being served black wine) is rare

Thentis does not trade the beans

Even in Thentis (where it is grown) it is commonly only drunk in high caste homes.

We know right away there is something different, special, about the House of Cernus. His kitchens, at least on this one particular morning, have black wine available to his men. Black wine that is not traded outside Thentis and hard to come by.

JN appears to me to carry that theme through the books, presenting us with scenes of black wine in the house of Samos. Just a small casual detail he slips in showing Bosk or Samos drinking it. But having already placed in our minds the understanding that this is a rare thing, it tells us something about the wealth or power of the people we are viewing in a scene.

We travel to the Tahari and in meeting the Pasha we also see black wine served. This appears to me to again be the use of details that JN has previously established, to quickly tell us something about the persons and situation involved in a scene.

In Victoria, in Rogue, we find it mentioned as well. Jason had purchased some. While i do not find Jason to be on the level of a Pasha or Samos or Cernus, JN does not simply casually place the black wine in the scene with Jason either. In this case, he makes certain to mention it was a delicacy that had been purchased several days before and had not yet been served. Something rare.

"You may serve the black wine now, in small cups, Lola," said Miss Henderson. "Yes Mistress," whispered Lola.
This was a delicacy. I had purchased, some days ago, but we had not yet served it. In a few Ehn Lola returned with the tray, with the vessel of steaming liquid, the creams and sugars, the tiny cups and the small spoons for mixing and measuring.
-Rogue

...and that concludes my thoughts on The Black wine "contradiction'

PS - it is black wine, folks. Not blackwine and certainly not blackwyne ~s~

Back to The Main Page of The Library of Gorean Knowledge
gorean_librarian@yahoo.com