Revisitations (part 1)

Wine and the spectre of home

Hello! It’s been a few weeks since my last newsletter – I blame a combination of frazzling August heat and writer’s block. London is a dreary place to be in the dead of summer, not exactly conducive to creative thinking. But I’m glad to finally have something to share with you again. This latest newsletter comes in two parts. This week, I’m thinking about home – how little fragments of it can surface in unlikely places, like a glass of Barolo. The second part will explore “home” in quite a different spirit, one for the horror fans among you, perhaps. Stay tuned.

We always love reading your comments – whether they come via Substack or Whatsapp – and we’re so grateful for your support and readership. Thanks for joining us in this ongoing thought experiment.

---

Travel and home: two concepts at seemingly opposite ends of the spectrum, perhaps. One signalling adventure, change and escape. The other embodying constancy, comfort and safety. But recently, I’ve been thinking about the emotional intersection between these two worlds, trying to unravel the strange feeling that takes hold when we encounter familiarity in unexpected places. Home, it seems, can be a transitory, shapeshifting place – difficult to define, returning in snatches in unexpected times and places.

Sometimes it can appear in a glass of wine. One midweek evening, Nathaniel and I opened a bottle of wine: the 2004 Bricco delle Viole from GD Vajra in Barolo. It was something of a throwaway gesture. A bottle that had been left too long in the store cupboard at work, Nathaniel was sure it’d be knackered. KNOB. (Knackered Old Barolo, that is, not Nathaniel.) 

But to our surprise, the wine was really quite pleasant. According to my wine-splattered notes, it was still remarkably alive, edged with muted red fruits and sweet spice, dried roses and violets. But above all else, one note unfurled from the glass and tugged at my memory: raisins. 

I’m very fond of a dried fruit note in a wine these days, but as a child, I hated raisins. To me, that flavour was synonymous with the disappointment of getting in the car after a day at school, and the only snacks to be found were raisins. Little red paper cartons of them fronted by a beaming peasant girl encircled by a ray of sunshine: the very image of wholesomeness and goodness. Yuck. Where are the Dairylea Dunkers, Mum?! For reasons that defy logic, these memories in the car with my mother are always filled with sunshine (in Wales? Implausible, I know). Golden light streaming through the window, across my blue gingham dress, while The Cranberries play on the CD player. It was always one album in particular: Stars: The Best of 1992 - 2002. 

I can clearly remember thumbing through the booklet of lyrics on the inside cover. Dolores O’Riordan with her tattoos and shock of boyish bleached hair, all kohl-eyed attitude. A woman fronting a band of men, but not like any woman I’d ever come across. Her raw, keening vocals with those distinctly Irish lilts; roughly edged, yet capable of such softness – it all made quite an impression on me. To this day, the songs on this album still conjure the fragments of home – one of many homes, resurfacing by surprise in a glass of Barolo. 

It strikes me that so much about food and drink loops back around to our idea of home. The sensation of taste can take us far. It is a vehicle for travel, allowing us to build miniature worlds in our kitchen that resemble places known and unknown to us. It gives us an opportunity for exploration and discovery, and affords us an intimacy with these places, with people we have never met. But how we perceive these flavours ultimately comes down to what home tastes like. 

Wine is unique in this regard, in that it is something of a blank canvas for interpretation. The same glass of Barolo, to you, might make you think of a bouquet of roses that once made you blush, or a dish of juicy dates. Our flavours are hardwired to our memories. It’s the reason why a glass of English sparkling wine inevitably makes me think of the sharp green apples that grow in my childhood garden, the floor blanketed with fruit in the autumn, the air newly cool. 

Leaving home happens slowly. First, at 18, packing your life into the car boot – a collection of items that begins astonishingly small, on reflection. For the best part of a decade, you live between homes – not quite here, not quite there, but still anchored to the place you grew up. But at some point, the anchor is lifted and the boat starts to drift, at first imperceptibly. Then, years later, you look up to see new land on the horizon, the map of stars shifting overhead. The way back is impossible now, beset with all sorts of forces that’ll drag you down should you linger too long. Onwards we go.

Travel is inevitable, it seems. It’s arguably what adult life is made up of, decades of drifting away from home. I remember the times we visited my grandfather not long before his death. He was in his 80s, gradually losing his mind to Alzheimer’s. At some point in the afternoon, he’d look up at the clock believing it was 9 o’clock. He’d announce to my grandmother that they’d outstayed their welcome and it was time to go home. Leave these people to enjoy their evening, we’ve got our own home, he’d say, gesturing at us sitting cross-legged on the floor of his own flat. When my grandmother incredulously asked where he intended to go, he’d always give the same address: the red-bricked street he grew up on in the 1930s and 40s. My grandfather had been a serious cyclist, covering hundreds of miles with his bike and travelling around the world in retirement, but towards the end, there was only one place he wanted to be. When the clock struck nine, he’d come running home without fail.

I wonder where I’ll return to in time – to a garden strewn with apples, sea breeze drifting up the quiet backroads, the smell of my mother cooking rice in the kitchen. Or a sun-filled car stocked with an unreasonable quantity of raisins. Some of these moments return, in fragments, even now. Nestled in a favourite dish, in haunting notes rising from a glass of wine, in songs to which I still know all the words. A trail of stars illuminating the way home, for one fleeting moment.

---

What I’ve been drinking this week:

Giovanni Rosso’s 2021 Langhe Nebbiolo

Lovely summer wine. Think cranberries and crunchy red plums, tangy and fresh with a little pepper spice. Not especially complex, but who cares? This is Nebbiolo, like Barolo, but light, fresh and made to be drunk young. If you like elegant Piedmontese reds but (like me) have limited means and patience, look to the wider Langhe region for declassified early-drinking wines from top names. I really like this chilled to brighten those fresh fruit notes. On a lazy midweek night, I’ll have one glass with some rosemary crackers piled with creamy Delice de Bourgogne, and a handful of snacks from the Italian deli around the corner. To me, this is the spirit of a vin de soif – an easy breezy thirst-quencher. Don’t think, just drink and enjoy.

What I’ve been listening to:

“Come Live With Me” by Dorothy Ashby (1968)

I adore the harp’s musicality, the way it shines like moonlight on a lake. Combined with heady bass and sultry syncopated beats, it’s sonic perfection. Dorothy Ashby’s 1968 album Afro-Harping has so much energy, full of shimmering contrasts and loose, tumbling jazz melodies that are at once soothing and infectiously catchy. One track I can’t stop listening to is “Come Live With Me”. The melody swells, unfurling, then gathering us in. It feels pensive and mysterious, but also full of hope. The anticipation of a lover hoping the answer is yes. Come live with me and drink Nebbiolo every day.