In the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes where many Decanter readers live, late December means damp cold and blanketing darkness. The Christian narrative lends this moment a spiritual charge for believers – but the winter solstice was of signal significance in pre-Christian times, too, as light drained and ‘The world’s whole sap is sunk’ (John Donne’s phrase from his magnificent Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day). Go to Maeshowe on Scotland’s Orkney, a 5,000-year-old burial tomb, and you’ll find its entrance passage designed to align with the last rays of the sun at the midwinter solstice, as if to beseech light to return. For all our comfort and plenty, we still need that reassurance.
Deep red wine is our readiest symbol of summer sunlight and warmth, stowed safely away inside a bottle: the resumé of an entire growing season. Unconsciously, perhaps, the return of that light – and a little nourishing rest in the interim – is what we’re hoping for when we drink our treasured bottles at Christmas.
The wine world, though, spins far out beyond northern Europe. If you’re a wine enthusiast in Singapore, late December is as stickily hot as any other time of the year; if you’re a wine enthusiast in Adelaide or Cape Town, it’s time to lounge on the beach, clamber into a boat or fire up the barbecue. Christmas wines in these climes mean refreshment, cool limpidity. Wine, in both cases, is an antidote to the trials of the season and a token that promises change.
