Urine, while not to everyone's taste, is not uniformly nasty

Drink offers unlimited opportunities for connoisseurship. Beer, wine, tea, coffee, spirits, water - all are subjects of judgement, taste and snobbery, with careers, hopes, relationships and even lives depending on the choice of potion. But there is one liquid that has remained snob-free and uncollectable, and that is urine. Admittedly, it is a body fluid. But so is honey. So, too, is blood which, in the form of black pudding, is the subject of coveted prizes among French charcutiers. Until today, however, humanity has been without guidance in the matter of urine: which kinds are the most palatable, what food enhances the fragrance and so on. The assumption has been that urine is uniformly nasty.

In challenging this assumption I should emphasise that urine is not an everyday drink, and should be kept for those very special occasions, like solitary confinement as a hostage, or shipwreck in an open boat, when the possibilities of liquid refreshment are seriously impaired. Nevertheless, the world is a dangerous place and it is important to be prepared for those awkward moments.

The best way to educate yourself in the matter is by eating kidneys. You will quickly come to appreciate that the taste of urine varies from species to species and diet to diet. Perhaps the most graphic description of an appetising smell in our literature is that contained in the second chapter of Ulysses, when Bloom relishes the sizzling fragrance of the pork kidney that he is about to ruin on account of taking a cup of tea to Molly. And Bloom's taste in the matter is impeccable. Pigs properly fed with grain, milk and vegetables produce the most delicate, lemon-grass-flavoured urine - a sauce that lends genuine refinement to their otherwise rather leathery kidneys. Although lambs have more tender kidneys, wonderfully rich in cholesterol, their uniform diet of grass produces a rancid urine that detracts from the flavour. Ox kidney suffers from the same defect, though the kidney of a calf raised exclusively on milk beats all rivals for both texture and flavour. Like Bloom, you should fry the kidneys in butter, so as to seal in their precious store of liquid, making them burst in the mouth like a chocolate liqueur.

Yes, you say, maybe urine has its merits as a marinade - but what about drinking it? My advice is to go for the more diluted versions, and here I should say that nothing dilutes urine so effectively as wine, whose well-known diuretic effect ensures that the ratio of uric acid to water is as low as possible. And while on the subject of wine, here is what we drank with our pig Singer's delectable kidneys: a Chilean Viognier 2003, from the Devil's casillero, available from Oddbins at £4.99. This had just the right degree of acidity, and a touch of sweetness, so that the aftertaste was washed away.

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