A Perfect Date Night?!

• Posted on 5 February 2025
• Posted in argentina, California, france, Malbec, merlot, mouvedre, spain, tannat, uruguay
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Is it February that just brings out the crazy need to feel somewhat romantic with your spouse? Maybe it’s just the time of year. Christmas was two months ago, and we all spent way too much and regretted it. All through January, most of us hibernated because it was just too dark outside to get out after work. But here is February. The depths of what should be winter, and we realize that actually spending time with people again is a good thing.

So, there it is—Hallmark gives us Valentine’s Day. Marketing leading up to this day tells us we should be looking forward, with glorious hopes, to our loved one giving us some kind of sappy card and delicious chocolate that comes in a heart-shaped box. If that doesn’t get him out of the doghouse for you ladies, he might also bring home a bottle of wine, flowers, and a chick flick. How did we get here?

The origins of Valentine’s Day are far from clear. Of course, the internet is 100 percent accurate in my short search on the subject. It likely started as a pagan Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia, somewhere in the 6th century BC, where the gift giver (man) offered a lovely whipping to the receiver (woman) in hopes of fertility. Men and women would be coupled up by chance for a year to see if anything came of it. As any good pagan holiday would have it, the Christians got involved and retooled it. The legendary third-century Saint Valentine was imprisoned for converting men and women to Christianity and secretly marrying these couples. Roman emperor Claudius II had Saint Valentine executed on February 14th. Later, in 496 AD, Pope Gelasius commemorated the martyred saint.

Floriography, the language of flowers and cryptic communications through specific arrangements or symbols, has long been part of Valentine’s traditions. Floral symbolism is particularly threaded through the Bible, including the smutty book of The Song of Solomon. Flowers make a statement. You can go the easy route—roses send a message of love, romance, beauty, and perfection. Or you can be more exacting: peonies symbolize romance, prosperity, and bashfulness; gardenias convey significant joy and a deeply old-fashioned love; lavender represents long life; red chrysanthemums stand for romantic passion; and, of course, a white rose signals purity, while a red rose embodies beauty and perfection.

Around 1837, Queen Victoria taught the world what it meant to be lavished upon. Not only did she embrace the giving of flowers, but when you have money and influence like she did, the gifts come in many more kinds of packages. She played a key role in turning Valentine’s Day into a commercialized frenzy. Thanks to her influence, prudish Victorians adored showering each other with Valentine’s gifts.

What of the other Valentine’s Day staple? In the early 1800s, J.S. Fry & Sons took the Aztec cocoa drink and figured out how to produce the first modern bar of chocolate, though only on a small scale. Enter Richard Cadbury. In 1847, the British chocolate maker recognized a great marketing opportunity and started selling chocolates in beautifully decorated boxes of his own design. These boxes had the added purpose of storing love letters after the chocolate was gone. So it can be said that Cadbury connected chocolate to Valentine’s Day. Of course, innovation did not stop there—Hershey laid out chocolate kisses in 1907, and Clara Stover, of Colorado, started wrapping her “Bungalow Candies” in 1923.

Flowers? Check. Chocolate? Check. What about the connection to movies and wine? Hollywood has certainly played a role in shaping Valentine’s traditions. There are plenty of noteworthy romantic movie moments, but here are two favorites. The first happened in 1933 with Jean Harlow’s performance in the film Dinner at Eight, where she lounges in bed, seductively nibbling her way through a box of chocolates. What a life! The second is in the Disney classic Lady and the Tramp. Kids are taught early that to have a romantic dinner date, complete with spaghetti between your paws, and you must have a fiasco of Chianti to wash it all down. Honestly, there is no shortage of romantic movies from which to choose.

Now, onto our adventure of planning the perfect romantic date night …