On Issuing From This Forest
We Perceived On An Eminence Before Us, At A Short Distance, The Town Of
Montefiascone.
We stopped there as almost all travellers do to taste the
famous Montefiascone wine or Est wine, as it is frequently called.
This
wine is fine flavored, petillant and wonderfully exhilarating. It is
renowned for having occasioned the death of a German prelate in the
sixteenth century, who was travelling in Italy and who was remarkably fond
of good wine. The story is as follows. He was accustomed to send on his
servant to the different towns thro' which he was to pass with directions,
to taste and report on the quality of the different wines to be found
there, and if they were good to mark the word Est on the casks from which
he tasted them. The servant, on arrival at Montefiascone, was highly
pleased with the flavour of the wine, of which there were three casks at
the inn where they put up. He accordingly wrote the word Est on each of
the casks. The Bishop arrived soon after and took such a liking to this
wine that he died in a few days of a fever brought on by continual
intoxication. He was buried in one of the churches at Montefiascone and the
monks of the Convent there, themselves bons-vivans, determined to give
him a suitable epitaph. They accordingly caused to be engraved on his tomb
the following Latin inscription commemorative of the event: Est, Est, Est,
propter nimium Est, Dominus Episcopus mortuus EST.
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