WINE&LITERATURE ASIP WILL GIVE YOUASTORY

JO EVANS OF TANNERS EXPLORES THE IMPORTANCE OF WINE WITHIN LITERATURE THROUGHOUT HISTORY, REVEALING WHY AGLASS OF VINO AND AGOOD BOOK SHOULD VERY OFTEN BE ENJOYED IN ONE ANOTHER’S COMPANY

Many consider that aglassof wine gets the creative juices flowing, as Hemingway is attributed to saying, ‘Write drunk, edit sober’, poignantly highlighting that both wine and literature are intrinsic to one another

When you consider that wine has always been of importance in religious ceremonies, weddings, births and deaths, it is no wonder that we find it written about in literatureasfar back as the ancient Greeks.

Epic poems for example have an abundance of references to wine, the most well-known being Homer’s The Odyssey, with its description of the ‘wine-dark sea’ and the ‘fiery bowls’ of wine used to knock out the Cyclops. Aristophanes was another Greek writer often seen using drunkenness for comedic effect in his plays, for example, in The Knights,Nicias asks if aman can ever devise auseful plan when drunk to which Demosthenes answers “When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly,bring me abeaker of wine, so that Imay wet my mind and say something clever.”

Moving forwards to early British classic literature, we can again find evidence of wine within pages, unsurprising when it was such aprolific drink in those times. Geoffrey Chaucer for example talks of Bordeaux and Mead in The CanterburyTales “Strong was the wine and pleasant to each guest”, whilst Shakespeare’s works are peppered with references to both the joyful and unpleasant effects of the drink. In Othello,he writes “Good wine is a good familiar creature, if used well” and “O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou has no name to be known by,let us call thee devil”.

When observing Charles Dickens’ writings, they refer not only to wine but to the punches that were popular in Victorian Britain,such as aSmoking Bishop (red wine and Ruby Port), Sherry Punch (Port, Sherry and Brandy) and Wassail (dry Sherry,Cider and Brandy). He uses wine for great humour,particularly in The Pickwick Papers when “the good lady began by protesting that she couldn’t touch adrop –then took asmall drop –then alarge drop –and then agreatmany drops”. He also uses red wine as ametaphor for the blood that will run in the streets of Paris in ATale of TwoCities,describing the frenzy that ensues when acaskofwine is spilled, “men and women dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths.”

Dickens’ final, unfinished novel, The MysteryofEdwin Drood,beautifully conveys an image of wine, “The host had gone below to the cellar,and had brought up bottles of ruby,strawcoloured, and golden drinks, which hadripened long ago in lands where no fogs are, and had since lain slumbering in the shade. Sparkling and tingling after so long a nap, they pushed at their corks to help the corkscrew (like prisoners helping rioters to force their gates) and danced out gaily.”

As we look to the 20th century, somanywriters considered literary geniuses of this time were alcoholics, and drink unsurprisingly plays alarge part in their works. Jean Rhys’ Good Morning Midnight and Steinbeck’s Tortilla

Flat portray the brutal truth of what wine can do. ..but don’t be put off! There is arichness in these superb novels which transport thereader to 1930s Paris or Californian shanty towns.

Of course, who could read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby without being immersed in champagne-soaked parties?! “In hisblue gardens men and girls came and went like moths amongthe whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

Even Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited sets you firmly down in the England of the upper classes, talking of specificwines which illustrate the wealth of the protagonists, “I’ve got amotor-car and a basket of strawberries and abottle of Château Peyraguey –which isn’t awine you’ve ever tasted so don’t pretend.” The wines mentioned in this novel almost feel like characters in themselves, for example, “I rejoiced in the Burgundy.Itseemed a reminder that the world was an older and better place… By chance Imet this same wine again, lunchingwith my wine merchant in St. James’s Street, in the first autumn of the war; it had softened and faded in the intervening years, but it still spoke in the pure, authentic accent of its prime, the same words of hope.”

Today,there are many modern novels featuring wine, including the wonderful A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towse which features abottle of Châteauneufdu-pape and an elderly Count whose wealthy lifestyle is disappearing in communist Russia. After an amusing encounter with a waiter,the Count discovers wine labels have been removed from all the bottles in acellar and upon tasting asample he remarks “Whichever wine was within, it was decidedly not identical to its neighbours. On the contrary,the contents of thebottle in his hand was the product of ahistory as unique and complex as that of anation, or aman… In asip, it would evoke the timing of that winter’s thaw,the extent of that summer’s rain, the prevailingwinds, and the frequency of clouds. Yes, abottle of wine was the ultimate distillation of time and place; apoetic expression of individuality itself.” Quite.

By no means is this an exhaustive list of novels in which wine plays apart, to list them all would be impossible and, of course, everyone has their favourites, just like wine.

Iwishtoleave you with one final quote from Hemingway that Ifeel is particularly appropriate, “I drank abottle of wine for company.Itwas Château Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. Abottle of wine was good company.” As is agood book, most will agree.