#6: What's your poison?

Toxic & Grüner Veltliner

“Toxic” and “wine” aren’t two terms you’d expect to find in the same word cloud (unless we’re referring to Austria’s antifreeze days of the 1980s), yet here I am, drinking Austria’s signature white wine while listening to Britney Spears. Intended for Janet Jackson and rejected by Kylie Minogue, the chart-topping hit of 2003 landed on Britney’s lap somewhat fortuitously, as if it were a glass of bubbly being spilled by an overzealous flight attendant.

The song’s opening is unnerving. A hornet’s nest of violins, disturbed by a forceful thwack of staccato from an accompanying acoustic guitar, which only adds to the anxiety. Grüner Veltliner can be equally unsettling upon first pour. Its enthusiasm and eagerness invades your personal space, culminating in a lip-spritzing pepperiness and slight prickliness on the palate. This soon subsides, however, much as the disconcerting intro of Toxic gives way to the song’s infectious melody, and you begin to appreciate the wine for its extraversion, its confidence, and, above all, its moreishness. First impressions aren’t everything.

There is a lemon-lime love affair that whets the appetite, just as the purring bassline and Britney’s breathy vocals dispel the immediate danger and get you in the mood for dancing. Texturally, there is weight to the wine too, an opulence of fruit that coats the inner cheek, before it is carried away effortlessly in a fireman’s lift of freshness. Yet, we surprise ourselves by longing for that pepperiness to return, just as our ears crave the stinging strings that eventually fling us into the song’s iconic chorus. From here we leave the realms of mainstream pop; the song’s experimental chord sequence and complex harmony wouldn’t look out of place if played by a pianist in a jazz lounge. 

Toxic is littered with musical influences throughout, traversing genres, cultures, and centuries along the way to becoming a certified crowd-puller. The refrains reference pieces of classical music, such as Flight of the Bumblebee and Eine kleine Nachtmusik (the latter the work of another celebrated Austrian producer). The surf guitar riff has all the hallmarks of Hank Marvin (a collab we never knew we needed), while the hook itself is lifted from the soundtrack for the Bollywood film Ek Duuje Ke Liye.

Similarly, Grüner Veltliner is more than just a people-pleasing white wine from Austria. Yes, all the usual suspects are there in the glass, but it too borrows motifs and flavours from elsewhere. The notes of ripe white peach and tropical fruits speak of warmer climes and not of a country which has had more success at the Winter Olympics than the Summer equivalent. 

But that’s the magic of wine and music. Both can be so much more than just a label, a country of origin, or a first impression. Toxic takes us on a tour to Southern Asia via 1700s Europe and 1950s California, much in the same way that Grüner Veltliner circumnavigates the flavour wheel.  

Then again, one is simply a delicious white wine, and the other a veritable earworm.