Drink
Among the Bible's most valuable lessons is the wedding guest's dictum that the good wine should not be kept until last. It is a basic principle of alcohol no self-respecting drinker should ever ignore. I can only imagine that Jesus, having decided to perform his water-into-wine miracle only once the original skins of wine had been drained, thought he may as well sort everyone out with a cracking vintage (the equivalent of a 1977 Chateau Musar from the Lebanon, perhaps) as opposed to a vinegary old stableyard brew.
But there is one exception to the rule, and that is when mulled wine comes into play. Not that you should use anything you would actually wince to swallow when sober, but mulled wine can taste wonderful with a robust but unexceptional Cabernet Sauvignon, for example.
Today is definitely a mulled wine day. It is also the day of my friend Helen's wedding. The air sighs with an insidious English chill that creeps between the clothes and skin like a lecherous old man sliding his hand inside a pretty girl's camisole.
I applaud Helen's decision to depart from the tradition of icy white and to marry in sumptuous brown velvet instead. All through the service I mouth the words to the hymns like the good, tuneless heathen I am. Vows are made. Wedding bells chime. We freeze in the courtyard as photographs are taken. And then we head out of Oxford to an oak-beamed pub, the Talk House, in a tiny village where we are rescued from the cold with steaming glasses of mulled wine.
I am a little shocked to see the bride knocking back the non-alcoholic orange punch but at least it means there's more alcoholic stuff for me. The spicy smell slinks warmly out of the glass in mists of evaporated red wine, all clove and cinnamon. So intoxicating. Of course, mulled wine should be served in a pewter tankard and heated with a white hot poker, but I can see that this might create mayhem as the guests got drunker and began brandishing each other's pokers, so I am happy to settle for generous beakerfuls.
Mulled wine is made in the same way as mulled ale, whose name is thought to derive from the Middle English "mold-ale" meaning "funeral feast". So the warm spiced ale or wine was perhaps served to heat the blood of the living while the bodies of the dead were laid in the cold earth.
The Talk House has made its mulled wine with lots of apples and, I think, some apple juice (which works tremendously well). My own favourite recipe is considerably headier.
Gently heat a bottle of red wine (of just acceptable quality) with a glass of either port, brandy or orange liqueur (as cheap as you like). Add one cinnamon stick, five thick slices of orange each spiked with a clove and muscovado sugar to taste. Simmer gently for quarter of an hour and drink. Never even look at the joyless sawdust teabags beloved of high-street chains peddling old-fashioned charm. You might as well drink lighter fuel with a clove stuck up your nose.
In the good old days, I imagine a few tankards of spicy, fruity punch usually resulted in a good bout of wenching. But sadly there's not much chance of that today. This is a wedding attended, mainly, by the wedded. As spirit levels rise, they gaze in dewy-eyed adoration of each other in the candlelight and simper over the canapes. Well, some of them do, anyway. And as I am here without my latest love I cannot join in. Though the barman has quite a way with the optics and a wicked glint in his eye . . .
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