''Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is;/All the air is thy diocese . . ." So wrote John Donne in 1613, memorably capturing the spirit of a religious festival devoted to the mating urge. Donne's "Epithalamion" expresses the change of air that occurs when sex receives the endorsement of religion. The sacred tabus are briefly unlocked, instinct invades reason's space, and all creation emerges from its chrysalis. Aristophanes evokes a similar effect in his Thesmophoriazusae; we also find it in the "Epithalamion" of Spenser. But no poet could write of St Valentine's Day now and expect his readers to believe that he really believes what we should all believe but don't: namely, that mating is a rite of passage, which depends on religious ritual for its sense.
The only way to re-sacralise sex is not to do it but to drink to it, so reuniting the real with the ideal. Of course, marriage is also a good idea, and marriage between dipsomaniacs the best idea of all. By way of encouraging us down this path, Corney & Barrow sent samples of its Valentine's Day offer just one day before my deadline. We dropped everything for duty's sake, and sat down with glasses, salami, tins of anchovies and industrial cheese. First down the oesophagus was the Chardonnay from the Cotes Catalanes. Languedoc Chardonnay has a depressing tendency to be produced by Australians, in their plump, oaken style, but with an aftertaste of cat's piss. This wine from the co-operative at Rivesaltes is clean, crisp and unpretentious, more malic than lactic in flavour.
Crisper still is the Chablis from the firm of Lamblin & Fils, which has been in the same family since 1690. This mineral-flavoured, hay-coloured wine stood up manfully to the anchovies, and completed its victory with Parthian puffs of apple as it vanished down the tube. To our astonishment, Sam the Horse preferred the cup of tea that Sophie was carrying in her other hand.
Ch Macquin St Georges is well known to us from the 1994 vintage, offered as a bin-end by C&B at the start of this year. The 1999 is deeper, richer, madder, better: and that means very good indeed. The grapes are mostly Merlot, tempered by Malbec and Cabernet Franc, in a combination that suits the iron-rich soil of the terroir and gives a full, cheerful complexion to the wine. It changed industrial Cheddar to Camembert.
The Ch Laberne goes one step further towards the ideal: made by J-P Moueix, this wine from a great vintage is as good as C&B's advert claims. Annoying that Sophie, putting down her glass after our solemn toast to St Valentine, knocked the bottle over. Still, in Donne's words, ". . . did not antiquity assign/A night, as well as day, to thee, old Valentine?" So all was forgiven, at last.
