ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a story is about two Frenchmen who have a chance meeting on the road to Schloss Johannisberg in the autumn of 1846. Both are wine lovers on their way to survey the harvest of Germany's Rheingau region. They travel on horseback through the vineyards of Rheingau, arriving well into the evening at a modest inn. Merry Hippel and Ludwig try to forget the dream at daybreak by setting off into the vineyards. The symbolic and revelatory power of a popular story like 'Le bourgmestre en bouteille' made it a basic building block of the French national imagination. Temperance organizations never took a stand for total abstinence, in keeping with this general French view that wine drinking was an essential component of good hygiene. Good wine and good taste, as Hippel and Ludwig teach their readers, was characteristic of France. Hippel and Ludwig know that French wines could serve as symbols of social stratification.
