#4: An acapella nightcap

Once Was A Time I Thought & Rainwater Madeira

If you’re like me – someone with eyes bigger than their liver – then you too have often finished many a meal stuck behind a barricade of half-finished drinks, not sure which one to end on. But there’s only one fitting drink to finish a meal with. Madeira. Barbeito’s Rainwater Reserve to be exact – the digestif to end all digestifs. 

Another ‘happy accident’ (of which there have been many in the history of wine), how Rainwater Madeira came to be is as charming as you’d imagine, especially if you only believe one of the two theories. The story goes that, having just been shipped to Savannah, Georgia, numerous barrels of Madeira were left out in the pouring rain, absorbing the water, which diluted both the colour and flavour of the wine. Overcoming their initial shock, the merchants loved the resulting wine so much that a new style of Madeira was born. And so brings us back to Barbeito’s Rainwater Reserve. 

Pale gold in colour, like a Burmese cat’s eyes, this is a lighter style of the fortified stuff but, clocking in at 18% abv, it is capable of remedying any distended after-dinner bellies (think less pin to a balloon and more blow torch to a beach ball). Still, there’s an effortlessness to the wine, a floaty elegance and almost casual sweetness that reminds me of The Mamas and the Papas’ Once Was A Time I Thought. 

Bringing their eponymous 1966 album to a close, this 61-second-long track is equally short and sweet, itself the digestif to end all digestifs. The foremost proprietors of four-part harmonies (Il Divo, look away), it’s somewhat eerie to hear the group singing in unison, albeit an octave apart, with only reverb and a ghostly guitar to keep them company. There remains, however, a richness to the individual voices, which, when combined with a littering of alliteration within the plosive lyrics, adds texture and weight to the song. This is like Rainwater. Despite being a watered-down version of its fellow islanders, it still possesses a complexity with its chorus of dried apricots, orange blossom, and almonds all crooning simultaneously from the glass. 

The song has a sense of urgency. The time signature is tricky to pin down, the use of triplets throwing us further off the scent, while the chord changes, pre-emptive in their pursuit of post-feast relief, seem to hurry on ahead. It gallops, but is always controlled; it’s eager, but never panicked. Rainwater is similar in that there’s a sudden showering of flavours – the downpour outpacing the window-wipers – a wave of warmth and a sugar-swathed freshness that’s akin to licking a maple syrup-glazed electric fence (tzzt!)  

But all of a sudden, everything begins to settle as the vocals catch up with the accompaniment. A rallentando forewarns us before the single line of melody splinters into several sheets of harmony. Meanwhile, the warming alcohol gradually settles the stomach, a taste of brown sugar and orange pith tingling the tongue as the song ends with a Picardy third like a light from heaven – from the purgatory of engorgement, we have made it to the other side. 

Barely a minute long, one play is not enough to do the song justice. And neither is one glass.