The Poetry of Wine

Lots of half-written but not quite finished blog posts kicking around my drafts folder at the moment.  This is (was) one of them.

I bought some wine this last week. I'm on a self-imposed wine buying hiatus at the moment, after an unfortunate episode involving a wine fair and my credit card and some very drunken maths, the details of which are too painful to recount.  But after trying this particular wine  last week  a few weekends ago, I had to make an exception.  It's lovely.  All smoky and earthy and full of depth; the kind of wine which wraps itself around you like a warm cardigan and makes everything right with the world.  I spent ages yesterday some indeterminate number of days after I bought the stuff (I'm really starting to wish I hadn't started this business with the temporal corrections now) trying to work out what it reminded me of, and then I realised.

It tastes like a Robert Frost poem.

I adore Robert Frost.  One of the first of his poems I ever read was this:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening


Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

It is still one of my favourites.  There are others.