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Amount (in U.S. dollars) Cesare and Rosa Mondavi (parents of Robert and Peter Mondavi) paid for the Charles Krug winery in the Napa Valley when they bought it in 1943. The large winery came with 100 acres of vineyard plus a stunning 2-story carriage house. Charles Krug continues to be owned by the sons and grandchildren of Peter Mondavi.

What wine region once prohibited swearing in the vineyards?

A. Burgundy, France

B. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Tuscany, Italy

C. Rheingau, Germany

D. Tokaj-Hegyalja, Hungary

From the 1600s through the early part of the 1700s, the vineyards of Tokaj-Hegyalja in northeastern Hungary were considered so sacred that anyone caught swearing could be fined, and the fine was often doubled if the swearer was a nobleman. At the time, the rare sweet wine Tokaji Aszú was one of the most celebrated wines in the world. Considered a gift from God and a wine that possessed miraculous healing properties, Tokaji Aszú was thought to be the one elixir that could revive someone on his/her deathbed.

“Every season is likeable . . . red wine and white; company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions—a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard—can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.”

—Virginia Woolf, “Montaigne” in The Common Reader.

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