Wine - Roger Scruton gets his just desserts

The Koran inveighs against wine as "a Satanic device" (for example, see 5:91). But in paradise, we are told (47:16), there are rivers of wine, "a delight to those who drink". Although unversed in Koranic apologetics, I would reconcile those statements in the following way. Wine is not an entitlement, but a reward. To drink wine without deserving it is therefore a sin; but once the question of merit has been settled in your favour, you can drink your fill. Sure, for the pious, this question is settled only after death. But most of us cannot wait that long. I prefer to do the reckoning at the end of each day, and generally come down in my own favour. The question then becomes one of economics. "Rivers of wine" suggests a lot of it; "delight" suggests quality. And if each day is a day of judgement, the reward must be consistent. Hence the need for a house wine, to be served with the evening meal on proof of merit, but cheap enough for the proof to be given each day.

Corney & Barrow is offering such a wine through the Wine Club. La Croix Barton is a generic Bordeaux, its blending overseen by Anthony Barton of Chateau Leoville-Barton and Esme Johnstone of Chateau de Sours. I don't suppose those gentlemen actually stand by the vats as the musts are poured, still less that they stir the mixture with their wooden spoons. But they have lent their distinguished names to the product, and rightly. This is a ripe, fruity claret, with tannin to last, and character to overcome the dreariest of English suppers - in our case, cheese on toast with a fry-up of yesterday's cabbage. You could drink this every day and be improved, though make sure first that you have been shriven of your sins.

The other red is the second wine of Mont du Toit, a sun-drenched granite slope outside Wellington in the Western Cape of South Africa - though how long Wellington will go on bearing that name is anyone's guess. The owners of the slope have taken a step towards the inevitable rebranding of their country by naming this wine after the Hawequas mountains, themselves named from a clan of Bushmen. A blend of Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz, with a touch of Cabernet Franc, Hawequas 2000 has a treacly consistency and a rich, oily, sub-tropical taste. The Koran tells us that, in paradise, "the pious shall drink of a cup tempered with camphor" (76:6). I suspect that this is the earthly equivalent of that heavenly beverage: a reward for Allah's African servants that is the perfect accompaniment for that incomparable sausage called boerewors.

The two whites are Sauvignons. That from the Domaine des Salices is one of those unclassified vins de pays from the Languedoc, the winemaker's laboratory. Jacques and Francois Lurton travel all over the world to make their wines. I don't approve of this, any more than I approve of motorways, aeroplanes and polythene. But the Lurton brothers, in their favour, have an interest in local products, and they have done their best to endow this young wine with a distinctive Languedoc gout du terroir. The gooseberry sharpness of the Sauvignon grape combines with a thick, earthy meridionale texture to produce a wine that is both charming and rude, like a local patriot getting drunk in a bar full of tourists.

As I have often insisted in this column, it is no sin to turn up your nose at Australasian wine, or to regard it as a "Satanic device". But you should not turn up your nose at the best New Zealand Sauvignon - which has the clean radiance of Sancerre, with a youthful perfume and exotic fruitiness that are altogether distinctive. Last year was a great one for NZ Sauvignon, and here, at an entirely reasonable price, is the proof of it. Lofthouse Sauvignon Blanc calls to mind the "vessels of silver and goblets, sparkling like crystal, exquisitely fashioned", in which Allah's servants are to drink a "cup tempered with ginger" (76:17-19). And in this scintillating wine, there is indeed a delightful hint of ginger.

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