Dark days / January is the time to drink |
Of all the months to choose for abstinence, January seems the strangest. May is intoxicating by itself; winter, when life feels threatened by the silent ministry of frost, needs cheer. Christmas and New Year are past, the birds are already singing loudly in the early mornings, snowdrops push up their green fuses, hellebores grow fresh leaves, and the magnolia buds swell. They will bloom on sunny but cold days and look perfect for a moment, before frost burns their scarlet and white edges to brown. Spring is coming, but winter retains its hold. January is the time to drink port.
Dickens understood this. He mentioned drinks of all kinds a great deal, and port more than any other wine. In Bleak House, Tulkinghorn ‘pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes.’
British winters need that sort of lift, that reminder that summer has always returned. Port’s strength encourages over-consumption, particularly when it arrives at the end of a meal, and it has undeservedly acquired an air of........