Praxis

So we begin. Take a crystal of memory. There is no need to measure it against the feather of Ma'at, for all memories are of things past and carry no burden of their own without the matrix in which they reside.

Place it gently in the alembic wherein you added water of Lethe. There is no need to agitate, for memories instantly dissolve in such waters. That is why the Greeks call truth 'Aletheia' — that which is not forgotten.

You now have the solution for your cares, for if memory is gone, and yet remains in the water — if memory is gone, and cannot be regained — why, then your cares will be as gone, and your sins as colourless as the universal solvent.

But here I sit, and the wine I drink is dark, and it is the colour of molasses, and of blood as it wells from a pricked finger, and of the memory that does not go away. And the taste thereof is slightly bitter, and slightly sweet, and above all... it is scented with the redolence of ancient grapes, growing shrivelled on a hillside one long, long autumn's day in a land that is long, long lost.

Drinking Midnight Wine

This is of course the title of one of Simon R Green's quirky books, thematically related to his slightly creepier novel Shadows Fall. But it's also akin to the sensation one gets when sipping Hungarian wines, accentuated when you look across the cellar and see some Romanian wines which you are sure shouldn't have anything to do with Romanian consular staff, hit-and-run accidents, and mysterious goings-on in civilised side roads.

You wonder about the Magyars. You wonder about why Romanian sounds (and looks) so much like Catalan. You would like to blame miscellaneous Turks and Macedonians and Roman auxiliaries. You sip. And the wine sips you.

There is something about amber sweetness that recalls summers long gone or imaginary in nature. The bracing fruit of the midnight red (well, it's really purple) is something else altogether. You sip. And the wine sips you.

Suddenly, you wonder about that Romanian wine again, and the madness of moments that takes life from the silent streets. You wonder about justice and life and death and venality and incompetence. You sip. And the wine sips you.

Summer, In Winter

I sit here with the better part of a bottle of 2005 Moscato and a very small glass. This allows me to successfully absorb the late and dying heat of an Italian summer which I have never experienced, turned into a flowery bouquet and the aftertaste of fruit which I am now experiencing.

At the same time, I am reading Dave Gibbons's Watching the Watchmen, the behind-the-scenes exposé of how the Hugo Award-winning graphic novel came to be. I read of John Higgins's hand-calibrated colouring, using the limited print technology of the 1980s to produce murky, bleached, hues which were somehow suitable for the noir atmosphere of the final product, but yet not good enough. I read of the quirky Alan Moore yet again, that most extraordinary gentleman with the Moorcock-era New Wave creative streak a mile wide.

And I remember what it was like, being a lad in the Army and reading issues of Watchmen as they came out — and reflecting on how different on a psychological scale the rushing about with M16S1s and modified ex-Israeli armour was, compared to the threat of nuclear armageddon. I reflect that since then I have enjoyed many a summer, and the swan has not yet sung.

Tomorrow, I am certain that some people will get up on some podiums somewhere, arrange their notes on some lectern and read some blithering nonsense. And some part of the world will cringe before each of them. But others will speak words that seem given by a higher authority, not merely a higher power. These latter words will shape the world through the hearts and minds of their listeners.

"Who watches the watchmen?" goes the old Latin saying. "Watchman, what of the night?" is found in the book of Isaiah the prophet. We watch the watchmen; they watch the night. And if nobody watches the night, and if nobody watches the watchmen, then Chaos and Old Night and all the other powers of the Fall will steal the last breath of summer forever.

But here I sit, my half-bottle of Moscato and I. We read together the story that Moore and Gibbons told so long ago. We remember an even older tale, involving watchmen in a field, angels, sheep and new beginnings. There is the promise we hold close; out of every winter comes summer, and summer can be bottled for darker days.

Game Over – Wine Alert: Four Emus 2004 Shiraz

I will miss the young men that they used to be, the ones that hated their boring teacher, the ones that loved the entertainment but hated the subject; the pragmatic, idealist, insane, unusual, peculiar and distracted ones. I will miss the ones that somehow grew to enjoy the thinking, the sudden apprehension of nothingness, the extreme 'duhhhhh' moments, the photographic starkness of the meaning that eluded us all.

I have kept, as I always have, the name lists. I look at them, knowing exactly who was diffident, irritable, hostile, keen, engaged, epileptic, happy. I will remember the First and their precursors, the guinea-pig batch of Pribs. And while part of me is sad that I will now never see them lining the grey corridors again, most of me is glad that they have found their wings to a multitude of various places both near and far.

And I suppose I will not forget the young ladies who came along later in the course, who proved fearsomely competent and refused to be overshadowed by testosterone and blight. I will not forget their brittle strength which firmed into deep and enduring power. Yes, many lacked certainty, but so did we all; many were apprehensive, but so were we. And they were of a kind we have not yet seen again.

Tonight we are mellow. We look at wine which is somehow appropriate. The label says, "Four Emus. Deranged and intelligent. 2004 Shiraz, South Australia." It is exactly what I would drink to remember that batch, 2004-2007, the centre of my life although they never knew it. The wine is wonderful. It starts slightly raw, just a shade mellower than new. Then it unearths odd textures of fruit – the aroma of berries. And it ends in a blazing finish that stays with you.

I hereby name that wine, Four Emus 2004 Shiraz, the official wine of the First. Haha! I am so happy now.

Wine Alert: Firestick 2005 Cabernet Merlot

I didn't know what to expect when I saw the white lightning in a purple sky. Singing in the purple rain, perhaps. But I was pleasantly surprised at this deep purple painkiller solvent.

The light currant/berry Cabernet flavour is much enriched in dark and mysterious ways by the Merlot mystique. As the wine warms in your mouth, you will taste something a lot like chocolate; it becomes a bit like drinking dark-chocolate-coated raisins dissolved in alcohol – a kind of tincture of comfort-food.

The wine can't be left out too long; these flavours seem volatile and rapidly degenerate to a sour cheap Cabernet if allowed to stand at room temperature. This was discovered by tragic accident.

Oh yes, I've been experimenting with screw-capped wines, and I must say that the Wolf Blass 2006 ones are pretty good too.

Wine Alert: Castelnau de Suduiraut (Sauternes) 1995

I sit here in the cool darkness of a 2007 summer night of uncertain vintage and odd provenance. It is almost a full twelve years since the making of this bottle. To open, or not? That is the question. The wines of the Suduiraut estate are known to be better in odd years, and my well-preserved bottle of this second-level wine is certainly from one of the better years.

I open it. It is a golden liquid with a secretive air to it, like many of its compatriots. I have only ever tasted the Chateau d'Yquem once, and it was worth the blinding sense of loss thereafter. But that wine is the superior vintage of the entire region, and poor fellows such as I must content ourselves with something a lot less expensive.

A chill runs through my head. Acacia honey, and perhaps the taste of a forgotten summer 12 years ago. The scent of a forgotten lady. A forgotten tune, a forgotten remedy for the ills of man, a forgotten book lying on a forgotten seat. What is it that I scent, what the taste upon my hind-tongue?

Is this wine old before its time, or still too young? I cannot tell. It is something which intrigues me. Did these grapes fall victim to the sudden scourge of chaos? There is metal here, a mineral backbone to the flowers and the fruit. I see the last grape fall, I see a distant garden in far Bordeaux. The metal is gold. So is the wine.

Sunset comes, and yet it was moonrise when I first set knife to bottle. What have I been drinking? Which pagan esprit de terroir awoke and smirked and turned back over into sleep? I do not know. I will drink it again on another night.

Wine Alert: Seppelt Moyston Late Harvest Muscat 1999

I never thought I would go into the wine-blog madness, but sometimes you get reflective; and after all, I have blogged about absinthe before.

The flesh is tired, and the mind withdrawn. Think then of happiness, mature and bottled up!

Tonight I am sipping the pale golden fluid which is a late-harvest wine. These wines are made by letting grapes mature in long firm heat until their sugars reach mythopoeic (aha, take that, my friend Hierophant!) levels. The resultant wine contains a veritable cornucopia (some say pharmacopoeia) of complex non-sugar organics and odd sugars.

There are 31 of them, and the world cannot label them at all...

This particular late-harvest wine comes from the village of Moyston, where the sunlight is intense but strangely blunted as if by the gentle hand of a goddess who conspires to allow the grape to mature without scorching.

Look at it! See how it catches the light! There are dragons dancing in the depths.

I taste fruit. Bruised peaches with their odd bitterness; berries from a forgotten summer; a delicate and evanescent fragrance, as if of pears; a bold note at the bottom, as if the grape had honeydew accomplices. And the lychees are blooming in my mouth...

She of Moyston, lady most austral, conspires to bless. Praise be to the Highest who allows such conspiracies!

I taste the fruit of a hard day's labour, and it is all worth it. Each drop is gold, the oil of surcease from pain. Good night.

In Taberna

I have been a fan of Carl Orff since I first heard his grand cycle of mediaeval Latin drinking songs set to music, Carmina Burana. This dramatic musical production is named after an eponymous collection of mediaeval drinking songs (about 200 of them!) which was put together over the years by the amoral scholars of central and western Europe as they wandered from town to town. Some are still familiar tunes. Who can forget the opening and closing song in Orff's version, O Fortuna, for example?

But why did this come to mind on a balmy Saturday night? Well, because Saturday to me is both the Old Testament Sabbath as well as a night for gastronomy, astronomy and oenology. And when a night is all these things and more, one suddenly notices unusual connections. As they say, "In vino, veritas." In wine, (there is) truth. Yes, indeed. I was looking up from a 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon when it hit me. (No, not the wine, the thought.)

The word 'tabernacle' and the word 'tavern' are directly related. In fact, 'tabernacle' means 'a small tavern' in Latin. I knew these things all along, but the two words had never juxtaposed themselves in my mind for all the years of my life. How... odd. As is the case with such incidents, you "see with blinding sight" as old Dylan used to say, and you ask yourself (should you be of religious persuasion) why on earth God is showing you such a thing.

So that "blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay" [note: I'm sure he meant 'extravagantly cheerful' here], I think. Sometimes, wrapped in the concerns of the world, the flesh and the Devil, we fail to remember that the general will of God is seldom shown explicitly (i.e. in the form, "this is the will of God...") in the Good Book. And one very explicit statement of that will is found here – it tells us to "be joyful always".

And perhaps, that is why I sit here, looking into a small glass of pale yellow fluid, and think, "This too is the fruit of the vine."