Meanwhile, That Tuesday

The world of August 28, 1956, as it stood when Sue arrived

CHICAGO, Ill. — The Democratic National Convention has just wrapped in this correspondent’s fair city, nominating Adlai Stevenson to face President Eisenhower in November. Chicago delivers a future winemaker the same month. Historians will agree only one of these Augusts mattered.

MUSIC — A young man named Elvis Presley holds the No. 1 spot with “Don’t Be Cruel” / “Hound Dog,” and will make his first Ed Sullivan appearance twelve days from now. Two American icons, debuting within a fortnight of each other. Coincidence has not been ruled out.

WASHINGTON — “In God We Trust” became the official national motto four weeks ago. The Interstate Highway System has just been signed into law, ensuring that one day it will be possible to drive from Chicago to Lodi, California — though no one yet knows why anyone would.

WORLD — The Suez Crisis dominates the front pages. The first Eurovision Song Contest aired this spring. Marilyn Monroe has married Arthur Miller. It is, by all accounts, an eventful year to join.

AT HOME — New on television: “The Price Is Right” and “As the World Turns.” The children are watching Captain Kangaroo and Lassie, and demanding a curious new substance called Play-Doh. Also new in stores: Teflon pans and the disposable diaper — the last of which arrives not a moment too soon for one Chicago household.

Also born this day: no one else of consequence. — Ed.

The Wine Report

What America is drinking, August 1956

NEW YORK — The nation’s cellars report that so-called dessert wines — port, sherry, muscatel, and angelica — outsell table wines roughly three to one, at 50 to 75 cents the bottle. Connoisseurship is expected any decade now.

CALIFORNIA — The state’s wine board continues to sell its bottlings under borrowed European names — “Burgundy,” “Sauterne,” “Chablis” — none of which come from Burgundy, Sauternes, or Chablis. The most fashionable bottle in the land is Almadén’s Grenache Rosé — “easily one of the most popular” wines in America, so exotic that advertisements must teach the public to pronounce it (“Gren-ash Rose-A”). This paper predicts the Grenache family has a future in California. This paper does not yet know the half of it.

LODI, Calif. — This farm town proudly bills itself as the “Home of the Flame Tokay Grape” — the Tokay Capital of the World — a table grape, with the surplus crushed by cooperatives into sweet wine and brandy. Asked whether the region might one day produce estate-grown white Rhône wines of international acclaim, residents respond: “White what?”

COMING NEXT YEAR — A lemon-flavored fortified wine called Thunderbird will debut in 1957 and sell 32 million gallons in its first year. The industry has decided this is the future. The industry will be corrected — by, among others, a baby girl born in Chicago this very week. She’ll take about fifty years. Worth the wait.