Wine and Music Pairings, Part Deux

Wine & music pairings again.  Interesting problem to ponder while you're avoiding your real work.  Since most of you visit this site from the office, I think you know what I mean.

It seems so much easier to dream up a nice combination when you're drinking wine than when you're listening to music. 

So there I was drinking the last glass of a Firriato Nero d'Avola after dinner.  As if from nowhere I had a vision, sorta, of some brooding man in formal clothes, walking alone through the darkened streets of a shuttered southern Italian town to a bridge under which a river runs swift dark and silent.  And do you know what I heard?  Uomo in frak, some ancient song about a dandy who kills himself for love, by the late great Domenico Modugno.

Another time I was drinking a strawberry-scented rosé, feeling like summer, and what pops into my agèd head but a big bouncy hit from the summer of 1966 -- not Sunshine Superman at that instant, no it was Gimme Some Kinda Sign by Brenton Wood.  So easy for the songs to spin right into your glass.  In my case what spins in is not Great Art.  But these songs awaken dormant images and sensations and emotions.  Wine, the liquid time machine.

I've just been listening to "A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane.  I have no idea what wine to pair with it, to express and extend the mood "organoleptically" as they say in Italy.  What would you drink with that album?  Or would you just go shoot up?  Or anything by Cab Calloway -- just light up a spliff and forget about the drink?

See, it's really an interesting problem.

I'm listening to Coltrane again and I'm thinking it ain't wine I'd be drinking.  Gin and something?  Scotch?

The brilliant Ethel Waters singing Stormy Weather?  If not bathtub gin, then maybe a bitter, tannic wine of high quality; a too-young but sound Barolo perhaps?

The Overture to "Don Giovanni"?  Something dark, smoky and brooding.  A really expensive vintage Port?  (Sherry seemed a little too obvious.)

Sometimes it's easier.  Whenever I hear Leonard Cohen's old stuff, I flash to Mateus and its round bottles on Back Bay windowsills.  A half-melted candle in them of course. 

But David Bowie's Let's Dance?  Radiohead's Creep?  Patti Paige's How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?

Much as I like most of that music ("the music of my life"), I have to admit something terrible: you need really good music to conjure up pairings with good wine.

Comments

[BR]

TH-
have you gone off your meds again?

say hi to Dom

-BR

[Terry Hughes]

Funny you should say that. That was just asked of me at home. But no, I am compliant. Too much Coltrane might do that to one, no?

Anyway. When I get to musing, well, you never know where I'll end up. The waters are deep. And they are muddy.

[Richard]

Coltrane is the cure for all diseases. You are showing how hip you are with Coltrane & Dali painting in your post. Allwines go with Coltrane, as far as I'm concerned.