Noseybonk is away this week, conducting an interview with non-plagiarising columnist Johann Hari for a special piece next week. In his stead, guest society correspondent Jasper Huddlestone-Huddlestone picks his favourite wines to go with cocaine.
It was during one of my periodic binges when I realised that my little brother, Tobias, had surpassed me somewhat in the sophistication stakes. We’d been at the White Horse in Parsons Green all afternoon hitting the Pimms and charlie quite hard with some of the old gang from Bristol. After closing, we continued back at my place off the Fulham Road. I fished out a bottle of half decent St Emilion – Ch. Teyssier I think – but just I was opening it my brother looked at me and said with a withering sneer: ‘Oh dear Jasper, don’t you know it’s white wine with cocaine?’ The girls, India, Scheherazade, possibly someone else, giggled. I felt this small.
He was right, of course. The St Emilion tasted awful. There’s something uniquely horrid about tannin when you can’t feel your teeth. Still every cloud has a silver lining and all that and it got me thinking about what is the best wine to go with cocaine? After much experimentation I have come up with some rules:
- No tannin. See above.
- Not too sweet. As decadent as it sounds to drink d’Yquem on a drugs binge, they really don’t go together. I know I‘ve tried.
- Not too acidic. Most of my friends go for Veuve Cliquot for these late nights but it really is beastly stuff. All that acidity is almost as bad as tannin and makes your mouth ache the next day. I find even the best champagne pretty much unbearable after a bottle.
- Not too bland. If you’re going to be drinking in quantity then you want something with a little bite. Pinot Grigio will not do!
- Not too expensive. I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous because the whole point of these evenings is to show off but when you’ve got your flat full of giggling totty do you really want them drinking the good stuff?
So here are a few suggestions: a just off-dry German Rieslings – preferably a Rhine rather than a Mosel as they have more weight; unoaked Burgundy with enough maturity to round off the acidity, a good St Veran perhaps; a chilled red, sorry Tobes, but sometimes a red wine does go with cocaine, such as a nice Fleurie or my own favourite red Sancerre (but not a white – much too acidic!).
These wines tick all the boxes being dry, distinctive and lively. They’re bound to impress your friends, hangers-on, floozies etc. My top choice, however, would not be any of these. Instead I take a leaf out of my Uncle Peter’s book. Whenever he had a problem choosing the right wine to go with something or whenever he had problem full stop, the answer was sherry. There’s something about a good fino that sings with powders. Is it any wonder that cocaine is so popular in Spain?
Oh Jasper, Jasper, desist, enough of this upper class twatery. Foreign Johnnies will assume that this is the national characteristic and must be the reason for our bloodstained colonial past, good little earners being made from conducted tours of Jamaican plantations and the North West Frontier.
Nice plonk though but, a tidy bottle of Fleurie.
PS
Dear Mr Spine, could you please draw your semi-naked women the proper way up, this monitor is very heavy and makes my arms ache.
PS again
Where on earth do the Krauts find the time to make wine, all of that standing around at pedestrian lights and stuff.
Agree on all of the above, pimms is great, although finding fruit and leaves in your drink can freak you out if you’ve had too much ketamine
I’ve always understood that a good quality chilled sake is the de riguer grog with Devil’s Dandruff. In the same way that Japanese food is always the ‘favourite’ of your average pop star Q&A: it’s the only food you can eat with absolutely zero appetite.
A Japanese company set up a sushi bar in Edinburgh, they had not done their homework, the Scots, shall we say, do like value for money. The enterprise was notable for its brevity.
First time visit, a lunchtime, junior and I sitting at the trough, “some of that, er and that, that one, that, those ones, ooh and two of those, that lime green one, the brick coloured one and the one that looks like the inside of a poodles nose, oh and the electric blue ones.”
£85 it cost us including drink but excluding tips. Junior gave him one “don’t wash your feet with your socks on”
All that cocaine in Spain …. another reason why they wouldn’t put up with a dictator …. eh?
Would gin work as well as sherry?
Bingers on a budget might consider hitting two birds with one stone by putting away a few pints of Dr J Collis Browne’s tincture.
Not since the spoilsports removed 99% of the morphine content just because the Daily Express ran a series on the horrors of opiate addicted grannies having a calm restful time with a nightly swig of the good doctor’s tincture
I went to young person’s ‘rave’ party last week where I periodically heard the sound of compressed gas being expressed. No, it wasn’t the sound of party balloons being inflated. Apparently, laughing gas is the current sort-of-nearly-legal intoxicant of choice.