#7: Painting it blue

Solid Air & Chile's Bordeaux blends

The opening track to John Martyn’s 1973 album of the same name, Solid Air is six minutes of dry ice fog from which spots of spun silk slowly emerge. From the first few seconds, with the contemplative murmur of Martyn’s dropped tuning and Danny Thompson’s double bass glissando, there is a starless heaviness to the intro, until the glistening electric piano chimes in like moonlight (more Turner’s Fishermen at Sea than the sort Toploader sold on the cheap). 

This is what it's like to drink one of Chile’s Bordeaux blends (a triumvirate of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Carménère so to speak), a 2009 Seña which I also happened to sink in six equally sultry minutes. Inky and intensely aromatic, there’s an underlying power, mirrored in the low revs of Martyn’s voice, words rough-hewed and sung as if through a single-reed instrument. 

As with many Bordeaux-style wines, Cabernet Sauvignon carries the weight, much as Martyn’s lyrics carry the song’s intent, yet the rest of the ensemble aren’t merely there to make up the numbers. When we hear the first bridge near the 90-second mark, Thompson’s double bass shifts seamlessly from a gravel-crunching growl to light-footed harmonics which float across the strings. There’s a similar toing and froing in the wine; its richly concentrated black fruit, ground coffee, and crushed stone profile is given a sudden shot in the arm by a mint-infused freshness, as if Martyn had accidentally mixed up his heroin with eucalyptus oil. 

Ligament-healing, nostril-clearing, there’s a curative quality to the music and wine, as multiple replays of both taught me, with the warmer Chilean seasons translating as a spraying of Deep Heat™ on a sprained ankle (take a deep breath and you can almost smell your occipital bone). And just when you think you’ve got to grips with everything, the second half springs a sighing saxophonist, exhaling an arpeggio of solid air itself. This is Carménère. A broken off corner of 85% cocoa, mysterious and almost nonchalant, sauntering through the crowd as if to say “the kids have had their fun, now let the adults show you how it’s done.” 

Solid Air blurs the boundaries between jazz, folk, and the blues, a hazy opulence that manages to be both menacing and moving at the same time. Who knows if Chilean winemakers have John Martyn in mind throughout the year, but whatever they endeavour to produce, their Bordeaux blends are more than a match for the Scot’s shadowy song.