To the ancient Greeks, it was a mysterious, potent force that inspired the Dionysian rites and their artistic offspring, Attic drama. To Christians, it represents the blood of their Saviour. To the secular connoisseur, it is the most profound of liquids -- at its finest, poetry in a glass.
| The beverage, of course, is wine, which is the subject of a convivial yet scholarly 13-part series that appears on public television this month. In lesser hands, such a project could have been a mind-numbing compendium of trivia about Brix levels and Appellations Controlees. As written and narrated by Hugh Johnson,...