L. Havelock Jackson swirls the red wine around in his glass before savoring the aroma. Only then does he sip the Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau.

For the 72-year-old Jackson, wine is wonderful. He toasts its merits at every opportunity.

Jackson, who looks much younger than his age, only half jokingly says wine has kept him young.

The Cape Girardeau man is a virtual ambassador of wine, a walking encyclopedia on the wonders of the fruit of the vine.

He operates Havelock International Consultants in Cape Girardeau. He holds wine tastings and works as an interpreter from time to time.

Jackson was born in Panama. He and his family moved to Philadelphia when he was 8 years old.

He graduated from high school in 1944 and immediately joined the Air Force.

He served a short stint in the Air Force before leaving to pursue a college education.

He majored in French, graduating from a Philadelphia college in 1949. He stayed on to teach French and Spanish at the school for a few years.

He re-enlisted in the Air Force in 1952. He served for another 20 years. As a pilot, he flew combat missions during the Korean Conflict and later the Vietnam War.

After retiring from the military in 1972, he spent the next two decades living in Europe. Much of that time he lived in Spain.

He worked as an interpreter for the United Nations and the European Economic Community, now the European Union.

He is fluent in French, Italian and Spanish. He also speaks German and Portuguese.

He studied French at the Sorbonne in Paris for one academic year, 1956-1957. He later taught French at the Air Force Academy in Colorado.

He learned Italian after volunteering for an Air Force job with the U.S. Embassy in Italy.

Jackson grew to appreciate wine during his years in Europe where the alcoholic beverage is part of the culture.

Wine is just a part of the meal in the same way that ice tea or soft drinks are a part of American meals, he says.

Jackson moved to Cape Girardeau in 1992 because his wife is from here.

He was 70 years old when he decided to start a new career in the wine business.

He signed up for a one-week, wine-tasting course in New York. The course ran for eight hours a day for five days.

"We drank 70 different wines. The whole thing was wine tasting," said Jackson, who returned home with a wine-tasting certificate.

Since settling in Cape Girardeau, Jackson has sought to educate the public about wines.

He writes a wine column for the TBY monthly magazine.

"A glass should never be more than half full," he pointed out while savoring wine at a local restaurant. That way, a person can swirl the wine in the glass to better smell its aroma.

Jackson always holds his wine glass by the stem so his hand doesn't affect the temperature of the wine in the glass.

Jackson can talk at length about "the nose" of the wine, which is the aroma and bouquet.

The aroma is the odor of the particular grape used in a wine. The bouquet is the secondary aroma that develops with the aging of wine, said Jackson.

"You do not chug-a-lug wine. Wine goes with food and is to be sipped and savored," he said.

Red wines are typically dry while white wines are on the sweeter side.

White wines use just the juice of the grapes. Red wines include the seeds and skin of the grapes in the fermentation process, along with the juice. That is what accounts for the red color, said Jackson.

The French word, "brut," on a bottle means that the wine is very dry.

Wine is either bottled immediately or aged in wooden barrels or stainless steel tanks.

"Most white wines are bottled immediately and most red wines are aged a little," said Jackson.

Wine should be served chilled, not frozen.

The temperature should vary, depending on the wine. A fine white wine might be chilled to 40 degrees while a heavy red wine might be cooled to 60 degrees.

Jackson acknowledged that his praise for wine goes against some people's views.

"We have a general, anti-alcohol culture," he said. "We have this fear of everybody getting drunk."

But wine has long been a part of human civilization, Jackson said.

The earliest references to wine date back some 5,000 years to civilizations in ancient Egypt and Babylon, now part of Iraq.

Egyptian picture writing shows people harvesting and crushing grapes and storing wine in clay vessels. The Bible tells of wine making in Canaan.

The ancient Greeks and Romans dealt extensively with wine in their paintings and writings.

Jackson has his own favorites when it comes to varieties of wine. But he admits that his selections wouldn't suit everyone.

"It is a matter of personal taste," said Jackson.

THE ART OF TASTING WINE

STEP 1: The first step in the wine tasting process is to look at the color of the wine.

STEP 2: The second step of wine tasting is to check the wine's aroma also called the wine's nose.

STEP 3: The third step of wine tasting involves rolling the wine around in the mouth to taste for the proper balance of acidity, tannin and fruit flavor.

STEP 4: The last step in the wine tasting process is called the finish. The wine's finish is determined by how long the sensation of the wine's taste lasts in the mouth.