I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine by Roger Scruton

I’m slowing devouring this between other books, taking in a chapter or so at a time. Describing itself as a good-humoured antidote to the pretentious clap-trap that is written about wine today it’s a brilliant meditation on the philosophical pleasures attendant to wine. Provided you’re drinking the right stuff, of course.

Scruton appears to be a stickler for terroir. From very early on in his wine drinking career, he took it upon himself to investigate wine through the hallowed names that adorn the labels. All French, of course:

I learned thereafter to love the wines of France, village by village, vineyard by vineyard, while retaining only the vaguest idea of the grapes used to make them, and with no standard of comparison that would tell me whether those grapes, planted in-other soils and blessed with other place-names, would produce a similar effect. From the moment of my fall, I was a terroiriste, for whom the principal ingredient in any bottle is the soil.

The problem is that as wine has become more available, the consumer has become a little less demanding:

But the concept of terroir has now become highly controversial, as more and more people follow the path to perdition that I trod those forty-five years ago. Poetry, history, the calendar of saints, the suffering of martyrs – such things are less important to the newly flush generation of winos than they were to us lower-middle class pioneers. Today’s pagan drinkers are in search of the uniform, the reliable and the easily remembered. As for where the wine comes from, what does it matter, so long as it tastes OK? Hence the tendency to classify wines in terms of the brand and the grape varietal, either ignoring the soil entirely, or including it under some geological category like chalk, clay, marl or gravel. In short, the new experience of wine is that of drinking the fermented juice of a grape.

Oh dear, guilty as charged at 120 Units. Scruton is emphatic about the importance of terroir:

There in the glass was the soil of a place, and in that soil was a soul.

He illustrates his point by quoting Napoleon:

“Nothing makes the future so rosy,” Napoleon remarked, “as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin”, and we instantly respond to the sentiment. But suppose he had said, “nothing makes the future so rosy, as to contemplate it through a glass of Pinot Noir”? The word ‘contemplate’ would have lost its resonance, and the remark, no longer associating the greatest risk-taker of his day with a tranquil plot of earth in Burgundy, would have been flushed clean of its pathos and its spiritual truth.

And for all my dalliances and flirtations with Chilean Merlot and Bulgarian Cab Sauv, I have to admit that he’s right.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

David Mitchell’s doorstoppers seem to be the staple of book groups in recent years. I read The Cloud Atlas for one, and have now read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet for a second. Both books are sprawling and overwritten, funny and profound, dazzling in places and just plain confusing in others, but I haven’t regretted picking up either of them.

The Thousand Years of Jacob de Zoet follows the eponymous Zeeland clerk who has come to the Dutch concession port of Dejima in Japan to win his fortune. The port is a manmade island in Nagasaki bay; entry into Japan is strictly forbidden for most foreigners and the country itself is closed. Christianity is outlawed, even for visiting traders from Europe. In one of the books wonderful vignettes, the Dutch pretend that they’re celebrating New Year when in fact they’re having a Christmas meal:

It is understood by the ranked interpreters that ‘Dutch New Year’ on the Twenty-fifth Day of December coincides with the birth of Jesus Christ, but this is never acknowledged in case an ambitious spy one day accuses them of endorsing Christian worship. Christmas, Uzaemon has noticed, affects the Dutch in strange ways. They can become intolerably homesick, even abusive, merry and maudlin, often all at once. By the time Arie Grote brings up the plum pudding, Chief van Cleef, Deputy Fischer, Ouwehand, Baert and the youth Oost are somewhere between quite drunk and very drunk. Only the soberer Marinus, de Zoet and Twomey converse with any of the Japanese banqueters.

De Zoet and Uzaemon have become rivals in love for a beautiful Japanese lady, whereabouts by this point unknown. Still, that’s the last of Uzaemon’s worries. The toasts are about to begin:

Cupido the slave distributes a bottle to each of the two dozen diners... The Malay servant Philander follows, uncorking each bottle. Van Cleef stands and chimes a spoon against a glass until he has the table’s attention. “Those of you who honoured the Dutch New Year Banquet under Chiefs Hemmij and Snitker shall know of the Hydra-headed toast...” Arashiyama whispers to Uzaemon, “What’s a hydra?” Uzaemon knows but shrugs, unwilling to lose more of van Cleef’s sentences. “We make a toast, one by one,” says Goto Shinpachi, “and –” “– and get drunker and drunker, belches Sekita, “Minute by minute.” “...whereby our joint desires,” van Cleef sways, “Forge a – a – brighter future.” As custom dictates, each diner fills his neighbour’s glass.

Interpreter Uzaemon has already witnessed a rather gruesome lithotomy, and is feeling a little queasy before the wine: Mitchell drily points out:

Uzaemon notices how unwell he is feeling.

The toasts continue around the table:

Jacob de Zoet swirls his wine. “To all our loved ones, near or far.” The Dutchman happens to catch Uzaemon’s eye, and they both avert their gaze whilst the toast is chorused. The interpreter is still turning his napkin ring moodily when Goto clears his throat. “Ogawa-san?” Uzaemon looks up to find the entire company looking at him. “Pardon, gentlemen, the wine stole my tongue.” Goblin laughter sloshes around the room. The diners’ faces swell and recede. Lips do not correspond to blurred words. Uzaemon wonders, as consciousness drains away, Am I dying?

Luckily for him, not now...

The Satyricon by Petronius

I suppose it would be nice to say that this week’s choice was the product of a Classical education, but the prosaic truth is that I picked up The Satyricon after references to Trimalchio in The Great Gatsby (q.v.) and thought it would worth investigating further.

A quick précis of the plot: Encolpius, a former gladiator is travelling with Ascyltos, a former lover, and Giton, Ascyltos’s slave, whom Encolpius has a crush on. Their journey takes them through various ribald adventures, including the famous Cena Trimalchionis (Diner at Trimalchio’s). Trimalchio himself is a freedman now immensely rich. The epitome of crass wealth and moneyed vulgarity, he holds spectacular dinners, serving extravagant food and (allegedly) expensive wines:

At that moment glass winejars, carefully sealed with gypsum, were brought in. On their necks were fastened labels, with the inscription: ‘Farlernian wine of Opimian vintage. One hundred years old.’ As we scrutinized the labels, Trimalchio clapped his hands exclaimed: “So wine, sad to say, enjoys longer life than poor humans! So let us drink and be merry. Wine is life-enhancing. This is a genuine Opimian that I’m serving. Yesterday the wine I provided was not so good, though the company at dinner was much more respectable.” So we got started on the wine, taking the greatest pains to express our wonder at all the elegance.

Trimalchio disappears for a comfort break, and while he’s in the toilet, the rabble he’s invited round the supper wax lyrical about the warming effects of wine:

So Dama spoke up first. After demanding larger winecups, he said: “Daylight’s just non-existent. Turn round and it’s nightfall. So there’s no better order of the day than to get out of bed and to make straight for the dining-room. What a sharp spell of frosty weather we’ve had! Even after my bath I’ve hardly warmed up. But a hot drink’s as good as a topcoat. I’ve had a basinful, and I’m absolutely pissed. The wine’s gone to my head.”

The response is this nugget of wisdom from a man by the name of Seleucus:

“Myself, I don’t take a bath every day. Taking a bath is as bad as being sent to the cleaner’s; the water’s got teeth. My blood gets thinner every day. But once I get a jug of mead inside me, I can tell the cold to bugger off.”

Trimalchio returns from the khazi and the feast continues, or as the great man puts it himself:

“Out with the water, down with the wine!”

Quite...

Notwithstanding by Louis de Bernières

This is an absolute treat. I came by it after reading a review in the Graun that made reference to the Surrey Tyrol where the book is set, which was enough to send me off to the library for a copy. It’s set in that hilly part of the county between Godalming and Haslemere; not close enough to where I grew up to be my stamping ground proper, but near enough for me to recognise the terrain. That said, this book’s appeal is universal. Louis de Bernières has put the whole human comedy onto the pages in a series of interwoven short stories about the inhabitants of the village Notwithstanding.

In Obadiah Oak, Mrs Griffiths and the Carol Singers, the titular Mrs Griffiths is a misanthropic widow who has a disdainful outlook on most things in life, especially young people and the gnarled old countryman Obadiah ‘Jack’ Oak, who hangs around Notwithstanding in a fug of six decades of neglected hygiene.

It’s coming up to Christmas and Mrs Griffiths is preparing to send her cards to the respectable folk in the village. However, a sense of emptiness has come into her life since her husband died, so she’s also decided that this year she will make mince pies and punch for the village carol singers, instead of turning off the lights and pretending she’s not in as she usually does:

Mrs Griffiths covers herself and her kitchen in dusting sugar, she deals with the frustration of pastry that sticks to the table and the rolling pin, she conquers the meanness that nearly prevents her from pouring a whole bottle of red wine into the punch, and then she waits, sitting on the wooden chair in the kitchen, warmed by the rich smells of baking pastry and hot wine, and lemon, and rum.

The carol singers eventually appear, but at her garden gate she hears them discussing whether to bother singing at her door. Coming to the conclusion that she’s an old skinflint who will only hide when they start singing, they miss her out. Angry and frustrated to the point that she cries for the first time since she was a child, Mrs Griffiths starts on her Christmas cards instead. The job requires fortification:

She gets up from her chair and, without really thinking about it, eats a mince pie and takes a glass of punch. She had forgotten how good they can be, and she feels the punch igniting her insides. The sensuality of it shocks and seduces her, and she takes another glass... A rebellious whim creeps up on her. She glances around as if to check that she is truly alone in the house, and then she stands up and shouts, “Bloody bloody bloody bloody bloody bloody.” She adds, “Bloody children, bloody bloody.” She attempts “bollocks” but merely embarrasses herself and tries “bugger” instead. She drinks more punch and says, “Bloody bugger.”

Sloshed on punch, Mrs Griffiths is spurred into uncharacteristic charity. She writes cards to everyone in the village, even to the people who own the pub and vote Labour. She boxes up the remaining mince pies and puts them on the doorstep of Obadiah Oak’s house. After that she comes home and completes what she’s started:

When she returns she finishes off the punch, and then heaves herself upstairs with the aid of the banisters. She is beginning to feel distinctly ill, and heads for her bed with the unconscious but unswerving instinct of a homing pigeon. She reminds herself to draw the curtains so that no one will be able to pry and spy, and then she undresses with difficulty, and throws her clothes on the floor with all the perverse but justified devilment of one who has been brought up not to, and has never tried it before. She extinguishes the light and crawls into bed, but every time that she closes her eyes she begins to feel seasick.

As well she might...