James Jeffrey

The lost art of drinking wine with Coca-Cola

  • From Spectator Life
Getty

Mixing red wine with Coca-Cola would have the great Roger Scruton turning in his grave. He wrote the wonderful book I Drink Therefore I am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine about the purity and life-enhancing joy of drinking wine properly.

‘It enacts for us the primal unity of soul and body—the heart-warming liquid stirs us to meditation, seeming to bring with it messages that are addressed to the soul,’ argued Scruton.

Indeed, as I learned on my Camino through the vineyards of Spain and Portugal, imbibing for 11 months endless variations of remarkably affordable quality wines across the Iberian Peninsular, we are truly blessed to have wine.

It was, after all, the centre piece of Jesus’s first miracle at the marriage ceremony in Cana. As the youngest brother Alyosha notes about this fact in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: ‘It was not men’s grief, but their joy Christ visited. He worked his first miracle to help man’s gladness…He who loves men loves their gladness too.’

Which is why I think Christ would nod sympathetically when it comes to turning red wine into red wine with Coca-Cola. Especially when times are hard and alcohol prices are up, there is much to be said for imbibing flexibly—as I learned in Addis Ababa when writing and drinking in the Ethiopian capital.

In Ethiopia, pouring a bottle of red wine into your glass while also tipping in the contents of a bottle of Coca-Cola is common practice. For one, it helps the pricier wine last longer for cash-strapped imbibers inhabiting a developing economy. Handily the resulting mix also serves as a bit of an aphrodisiac, an Ethiopian teacher friend said to me with a wink.

It’s usually a 50/50 split, and while I have been sold on it ever since, such ribald mixing of the produce of the holy grape is close to sacrilegious for some.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in