Midweek - either Tuesday or Wednesday - I will often have a glass of wine. Only one glass, but quite a large one. It’s a wasteful activity as the rest of the bottle doesn’t get used (I’m determined not to reprise the excesses of my youth). For a time I bought half-bottles, or, closer to my ideal portion size, 25cl ones: but grew frustrated at the limited choice available in those sizes. One has a few more widely-available options in the quarter-bottle format (18.7cl ) but for me that’s too unsatisfyingly small a serving. Perhaps I ought to try the offerings of half-bottle specialists The Little Fine Wine Company, who I’ve only just learned about.
Or perhaps I should just make an effort to find someone else to share the bottles with. Hypotheticals aside, most of my recent wine-buying has been from the shelves of Aldi and Lidl. Last week, for example, I greatly enjoyed the latter’s 2019 Torre de Ferro Reserva from the Dão region of Portugal; while later this evening I’ll be sampling the former’s Chassaux Et Fils Specially Selected Pézenas, from the Languedoc region of France, also a ‘19 vintage. Apparently (though neither the bottle, nor Aldi’s website says as much), it’s a blend of 40% Syrah, 30% Grenache and 20% Mourvèdre - a combination which bodes well - with the balance presumably made up of the likes of Carignan and/or Cinsaut.
There follow a couple of poems mentioning wine:
Your time of wine and roses
Your time of wine and roses
has gone away
when your beautiful beloved
leaves you.
When he leaves you
the rose is so lonely,
the wine, like a sculpture in the glass.
—Sirkka Turkka (translated by Kirsi Simonsuuri).
I imagine the wine (and the roses) to be red in the above, white wine to my mind seeming less sculptural.
Red Ice
The year 1812 in Russia
while the soldiers retreated
among cadavers
of men and horses
the wine froze hard
so the sapper’s axe
had to share out
for everyone likewise the dying
the stout block of wine
in the shape of a cask
no museum
could ever have preserved.
—Jean Follain (translated by Christpopher Middleton).