Strong drink has a long association with immorality. There is an engraving of “Gin Lane” in 18th century London by William Hogarth (the artist also responsible for “The Rake’s Progress”) showing a sign: “Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, clean straw for nothing.” From the same period is “The Beggar’s Opera,” in which assorted villains, cutthroats, footpads, highwaymen, and desperadoes (not to mention pimps and trollops) gather at a pub in one of the British capital’s less fashionable quarters to sing crude drinking songs. You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses. I suppose it’s obvious why so many people have made gin rhyme with sin. But intelligent wine-bibbing, it can be argued, actually increases moral refinement. It promotes honest introspection, accuracy and rationality; it promotes moderation.
Think about it. Of all the five senses, taste is the most intimate. Taste is also the sense with the smallest vocabulary. No wonder wine writers are so often driven to peculiar metaphor and periphrasm. My favorite is the observation of Thurber on serving the cooking wine to guests. “A naïve little domestic burgundy; I think you will be surprised at its presumption.” But it is desperation with the inadequacy of the English language that drives us to say that a white wine “smells like wet dog,” or has “a hint of burnt matches in the nose.”
This means that the first quality a serious drinker needs to have is honesty. If he does not note with care what is happening to his palate during the ingestion process, he has not got an earthly chance of describing it accurately. What is more, a mouthful of wine changes its taste all the time from first sip to final swallow (and aftertaste). So a second moral benefit induced by good wine is introspection. The unexamined life is not worth living and the unexamined wine is not worth drinking.
Finally, these other fine qualities will not develop in the mouth or the mind of someone who has had more to drink than is good for them. Shakespeare’s Porter may be right in saying that drink is an equivocator with lechery (“it taketh a man up and it putteth a man down”). In excess, it is an outright enemy of intelligent discrimination, and if we do not discriminate we might as well be swilling White Lightning from a paper bag.
These rather portentous thoughts sprouted on the first decent day of sunshine this extraordinary Spring. Sunshine seemed to indicate Chardonnay, so I fetched out a bottle of Chateau St. Jean Sonoma County Chardonnay (easily available locally for less than $15) and found immediate joy. Let me just say this: The promise of the nose was confirmed by the first bite into the wine, reminiscent of sinking the teeth into a crisp apple, fresh from the tree. I was inspired to open one of those bags of instant salad and grill a small steak. The wine made a pleasing counterpoint to the spinach and rocket, and masked the deadly dullness of iceberg lettuce. The common argot of wine-drinking says you should pair red wines with red meats, but that’s for the simpleminded. This chardonnay’s fruity flavor stood up really well to the meat. If we get any more sensible sunshine this summer (as opposed to burning heat followed by thunderstorms and snow) I will be opening additional bottles. You should too.
Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.
Leave a Reply Cancel reply