Drink
Decadent is the season. Jewels and furs and little black dresses are shimmering down every dark street. Fairy lights adorn every tree. In every corner of London champagne bottles jostle on tables laden with opulent feasts. But I am alone, curled up on the sofa like a party-less Cinderella in a red slip frock, kitten heels kicked to the floor. Riven by a rare, almost alien, bolt of disgust for such squandering of riches, I am suddenly too gloomy to join the marauding party-goers.
And there is no alcohol in the house. The most intoxicating substance is the sharp, foresty smell of the needles of the Christmas tree. I fall to examining the presents at its foot and - with delight - almost immediately unearth my quarry: a feebly disguised bottle shape. Rather small, but it will do.
Now I am nestling on the sofa, antique crystal glass in one hand, elegant bottle of lucent amber in the other. How kind of my latest love to provide for me with this smart little dessert wine - a delicate Soave from one of Italy's most respected producers. It's a 1995 Capitelli from Roberto Anselmi, a real treat.
For several years I couldn't touch dessert wine. I blame my now deceased grandmother, who once served beakerfuls of it to her unsuspecting family to go with our greasy fish and chip dinner. We all nearly choked. But I have now successfully adjusted my horrified palate.
Since dessert wine is always better than dessert, I don't feel inclined to eat anything with it. There's no need. Were it a Sauternes, however, I would feel devastated not to be able to produce some succulent morsel of foie gras as accompaniment. Perhaps another package will reveal a Sauternes and, I can but hope, another still the necessary victuals.
The Soave smells of autumn orchards, trees weighed down with almost rotten-ripe apples and pears. In fact, dessert wine is made from rotten grapes - "nobly rotten" - and has been since the middle ages, though peasants cunningly hid this from the church, which would not have been pleased to find the sacramental wine being made from what it would have considered diseased grapes.
Syrupy yet not too sweet, this is the perfect tincture to restore me to guiltless form. But a glassful and I have had enough. By great good fortune, there are indeed two more bottles under the tree, also dessert wines. One is the Brown Brothers' late-harvested Orange Muscat & Flora 1997. Pale and delicious, it floats out of the glass in a tumble of neroli, all blossom and honey, as soothing as it is possible to be. I do hope my latest love doesn't come staggering in for a while. I should hate anyone to disturb me in this sumptuous activity. What a mistake it is to drink these wines after dinner when one is too full, and the tastebuds are too ravaged (after the assault of venison and juniper, rich fruits and candied peel) to appreciate them.
It may be Advent but in my head I am languishing in a Mediterranean garden with spring flowers releasing their scent as they bruise against my skin. Time to light some bundles of tapers, I think, and so sit in hallowed twilight as I enjoy the third bottle. How much better it would have been for Mary and Joseph if the Wise Men had brought three exquisite bottles of Muscat rather than gold, frankincense and myrrh.
My third parcel is a black muscat from Australia (Campbell's Liqueur Muscat): dark and rich. It tastes of molasses and black treacle; there's certainly no need to eat sticky puddings with this one. After a glassful, I find I am ready to return to the first.
And it is in a state of luxuriously blissful inebriation that my latest love finds me when he eventually returns.
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