Wine - Roger Scruton has a cup at midnight
Published 30 January 2006
Midnight wine should be sweet, cold and gentle, like a lover's hand
For many of us wine comes as a reward at the end of the day. We put off the moment, carefully plotting against ourselves as lovers do, inventing tasks, performing domestic rituals. And then comes that serene exhilarating sound, as soothing and uplifting as the gong sounded in the temple, when the cork is pulled from the bottle and the wine sings out from below. Within seconds the day's failures will be drowned, and we can return to the business of living.
So it should be, at any rate. But if the page is still blank then it is necessary to go on into the hours of darkness. Many of us live by an exacting rule: don't wait for inspiration - it is waiting for you. We sit as the supper cools beside us, staring at the page or screen and praying for the word, image or idea that will start us. Then comes the need for refreshment, and the question arises: can one really drink wine in the middle of the night?
The answer is yes. The great 11th-century philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sinna) wrote in his autobiography that "at night I would return home, set the lamp before me, and occupy myself with reading and writing. Whenever I felt drowsy or weakening I would turn aside to drink a cup of wine to regain my strength, and then I would go back to my reading." All praise to Avicenna for defying the absurd Koranic injunctions against wine. The greatest of Islamic philosophers has set an example for our Muslim youth to follow, and the only question is: how?
After careful research I have come to the conclusion that midnight wine should be sweet, cold and gentle, like a lover's hand. It should exhale life like a flower. And, after drinking your cup (actually a sherry glass would be more appropriate), you should leave off for half an hour as it works through the system.
Tonight, for instance. Grappling with the impossible task of saying something about wine that I haven't said before, I pull the cork from a convenient half-bottle of Bockenheimer Grafenstuck Beerenauslese 1998, and am at once reminded of Avicenna. What would he have made of this exquisite concoction, I wonder? Would that I could send back to him, across the centuries, a bottle of sweet German wine, now that you can obtain it for a fraction of its worth (as I obtained this one, two years ago, for £4). The gentle, evocative, melodious potion would surely have reminded him of the floating man whom he describes, aware of nothing save the soul itself, and thereby confronted with his own immortal essence. So there: two glasses and the article is done.
We printed a cost of £120.10 for the Corney & Barrow mixed case in our 16 January issue. Readers will be pleased to know that it should be £72.50. See www.newstatesman.com/nswineclub.htm
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