Dry January, after a moist Christmas, has its merits; dry February would be misguided. As every bird in the garden knows, reproductive overtures are suddenly urgent. They dart for twigs, moss and cobweb; we reach for wine. Agreed, it’s the courtship ritual itself that counts, but a little alcohol helps kindle and enable. Pints of IPA? Vodka martinis? I’m sure there are lifetime unions that took wing with both, but most of us prefer wine. Why?
Antecedence has created trust. Circe’s plot to detain Odysseus “in her beautiful bed” for a year called on Pramnian wine (The Odyssey); Horace tempted Phyllis, “my last love – for here I reach the end/Of loving, and no woman shall excite me/Ever again”, with the promise of a festal dinner chased down by a nine-year-old jar of Alban wine (The Odes of Horace, translated by James Michie). Two thousand years later, the same combination of food and choice, often time-softened wine has yet to be bettered as a seduction aid.
The origin of the wine matters less than the skill with which it’s deployed, but for what it’s worth I do have two recommendations. In both cases, it’s because there seems to be something about these wines that exerts a visceral appeal, almost as if pheromones were swirling in the glass. The first is red Pomerol from Bordeaux, from a ripe vintage with as much or more age as Horace’s Alban (2009 should be tender and melting now). These wines are based on the much-maligned Merlot variety and a couple of other Merlot-based wines can come close, including St Émilion and Merlot from Tuscany’s Bolgheri. (Merlot grown elsewhere, sadly, merits maligning.)
The other is Sauternes, also from Bordeaux: golden and lavish, its scents mingling honey and lanolin, its tongue-coating textures viscous, its flavours gratifyingly and sweetly succulent. It manages to entice and sate simultaneously: so naughty.
Enough of Eros; what about agape? Those who enjoy and collect wine invariably describe themselves as “wine lovers”, and “a passion for wine” often has life-changing consequences. Well-paid and comfortable careers are thrown over in mid-life for back-straining vineyard work among cold, wet vines in winter, and mounds of stock to sell to an unappreciative world. Love, surprisingly, can survive all this. Those born to wine, by contrast, learn that they are not doing what they do “for love” alone. Indeed, growing up with a kitchen-table view of wine work usually leads to a career debut elsewhere. And yet the children come back. Again, why?
Remuneration is finally trumped by fulfilment. There are few other activities where you can work with nature, soils and seasons to grow an annual crop, and also craft that crop into an emotionally arousing product whose appreciation is global and aesthetically framed. And there’s more. A wine’s quality is predicated above all on origin, meaning that every wine’s place is, in some sense, precious. Crafting wine from a site whose preciousness you are seeking to express forges loving bonds with that place, though like all true love it has its moments of anguish and despair.
Given all of this, it’s surprising that wine-growers speak so rarely of love in their work, and of the love that’s figured in its use and enjoyment. I’ve known just one that did – from Pomerol, as it happens. “Terroir [the sense of place in wine] is important,” he once told me, “but love is more important. I’ve been taking care of this vineyard for 40 years; I know every vine – they’re like us, they’re individuals. The problem is that people don’t love the land any more. The day that we destroy love, we lose everything.”
Technicalities aside, I asked him, what is it you want to do in your work? “I want to put love in my wine. Every wine brings a message of happiness for people.”
[See also: A diamond ring is one of the worst investments you can make]
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This article appears in the 19 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Europe Alone