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29 January 2025

The season of discounted port is over

And with that, my mood is as empty as my glass.

By Nicholas Lezard

I write this a few days after Blue Monday, the third Monday of January, a marketing wheeze which says it is the most miserable day of the year. The thinking behind it is: any residual cheer from the Christmas/New Year festivities has dried up, no one has any money left, it’s a Monday for crying out loud, and the weather is still lousy. So you might as well have a drink – unless you’re doing Dry January, in which case the time of year has absolutely nothing going for it whatsoever. As marketing wheezes go, this does have a certain plausibility (unlike, say, Black Friday, the thinking behind which makes me despair).

This year things have been even bleaker than usual. First, there was the spewing of executive orders from President Trump, specifically designed, it would seem, to depress readers of this magazine. But I won’t dwell on them – others better qualified are doing so in these pages, I’m sure. On a personal note, as opposed to a geopolitical one, my nadir was reached on the Tuesday rather than the Monday, when Waitrose dropped, like a hot potato, all its special offers on alcohol.

During the run-up to Christmas, and for some time afterwards, the seasoned bargain-hunter is greeted by dozens of happy festive red discount signs on the booze shelves. I make a beeline for the port: it goes very well with Yuletide and the cold and the dark (on some days this winter, it hasn’t even been worth opening the curtains), and with a hefty markdown it becomes as economically viable as drinking wine.

God, can I put the stuff away. One brand – Graham’s, I think – has a rubric on the back of its Late Bottled Vintage which makes me smile with its innocence: “Once opened, consume within six weeks.” Six weeks? It takes all my self-control to keep it on the go for six hours. So every year becomes a face-off between me and gout, or type 2 diabetes, as I drink bottle after bottle of this nectar in order to keep the darkness at bay. Touch wood, I have suffered neither of these conditions so far; I think I would have by now if I were prone to them. Doubtless a doctor reading these words will be able to read me the Riot Act and tell me to save myself before it’s too late. But while I still have my health, it’s heigh-ho for the special offers while they’re still up there.

Until they aren’t. On the Tuesday all those red labels had gone from the shelves: instead, a sea of wintry white. I cannot recall the last time I bought a full-price bottle of booze from Waitrose: without the discounts, the expense is brutal. Feeling wretched, I buy a solitary bottle of Wolf Blass for nine quid. Having become accustomed to cheap port since the first week of December, the wine tastes thin and sour. The only good thing about this is that it is a struggle to drink, which must be healthy for me.

All this neatly dovetails with a reverting to the status quo ante regarding my finances. Remember a few weeks ago when I said I was unbroke? You know, able to look certain purchases in the eye without terror? Well, that ended predictably. I did all sorts of reckless things, like paying back money I owed, or subsidising the family’s booze over Christmas, or getting the eldest a very expensive bottle of whisky for their birthday. (It was a special birthday, but, boy, does whisky get exponentially more expensive the older it is. I asked for a 30-year-old Scotch at the Whisky Shop in Brighton to mark the occasion and I was told I could have a Talisker that old for something around £800. I can’t remember the exact price because I fainted. My last words before I hit the floor: “I’m afraid that’s a little out of my price range.”)

So here we are. The weather is worse than rubbish, the world is about to go down the toilet, and my days of relative extravagance are over until I get paid some more of the money I’m owed. I suppose there is some instinct in me to make sure that I have precisely no funds left at the end of each month: it’s a talent, like being able to fill up your car with an exact number of pounds, rounded off to the penny.

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It wouldn’t be so bad if it were summer. The military dictator of the Central African Republic Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who was even more despotic and depraved than is strictly necessary for a military dictator, was sentenced to death in absentia while exiled in Paris. He lasted barely six years before flying back to Africa. The reason he gave: he couldn’t face another north European winter. According to Wikipedia, he returned from exile on 24 October 1986: in other words, just as the weather was about to turn grim. I can imagine him, drumming his fingers on the desk while he looks out at a leaden sky. Winter in a Parisian suburb or death by firing squad? Tough call, but you only have to face the firing squad once. (As it turned out, the jammy bastard had his sentence commuted.)

Meanwhile, we have at least another six weeks of this, assuming that World War Three hasn’t started and the nuclear winter kicked in. I eye up Waitrose’s own-brand ruby and wonder if it’s drinkable. Well, you know what they say. Any port in a storm.

[See also: I’m all for a plasterer who shows off his loadsamoney]

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This article appears in the 29 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Class War