‘Ooooooooah! Society’s Corbières!’
You know I like this one, of course. The post title gives it away: it’s a Parn Essential because my wine racks are seldom without a bottle or two.
An essential is all very well. But is it more than an essential? Is it, you may ask, the kind of wine to engender obsessive, bewildering, blind devotion bordering on cultism? Is it, you ask me (paraphrasing, I assume, to ensure I understand your query) the kind of wine about which one might full-throatedly bellow a simplistic refrain based upon its name? Is this humble Mr Corbières destined to be the subject of some mindless White-Stripes-bastardised chant redolent of the football stadium?
‘Oooooooah! Society’s Corbières!’
Those are good questions. I mean, really good questions. So good I can scarcely believe I didn’t construct them myself.
Let’s start with the obvious: The Society’s Corbières is red. Duh. It’s also modest. For a start, it only costs £8.25. But beyond that, it has no pretensions of grandeur. Its simple ‘Society’s’ own label telegraphs as much: it’s very much a representative of a greater whole.
I mean, you could argue that there’s a kind of meta-arrogance in adopting that kind of position, couldn’t you? But, I mean, let’s not overthink it, eh?
‘Oooooooah! Society’s Corbières!’
Once you get the wine into your gob (which is, I suppose, the point of the exercise, god knows how many paragraphs in) you’ll find, though, that its modesty belies its substance. AND HERE’S WHERE THINGS GET TRICKY. Because, you know, this wine is actually just as good in reality as you might reasonably have hoped. More than that, it’s also fun. It’s full, it’s rounded, it doesn’t take itself laughably seriously. That is to say, it’s not the kind of wine that’s fucking desperate to go off on a tedious monologue about its own bêtes noires — Hugo Chávez, say, or the atrocities of Blairism. If you were talking to this wine, which hopefully you realise is testing the limits of metaphor, I think you’d find it a generous conversationalist. You know, one with give and take.
Because, y’know, it’s genuinely humble, genuinely modest. It’s not got that false humility that actually telegraphs a monstrous ego. There’s not a mite of harshness, here, of impatience. I could drink bottles of this shit (and, indeed, do). Because it’s a very easy wine to drink. But that’s not because it’s patronising. Instead, it’s like the best kind of speechwriter, who writes sentences that seem so deceptively simple, yet communicate with an audience beyond their hollering devotees.
‘Oooooooah! Society’s Corbières!’
It’s generous, too: full, and fruit-laden (without being banal and sugary, I should add). It gives you what you want without lectures or circumvention.
I mean, fuck, imagine going on a date with Jeremy Corbyn [OH CHRIST, IS THAT WHO YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT? YOU COULD HAVE MADE IT CLEARER…]
‘Well, I personally don’t believe in indulging in the wasteful and indulgent drinking of alcohol. But would you like a drink?’
And you’d get a 125ml glass of house red, wouldn’t you? If you dared even say yes in the first place.
Fucking hell, this was supposed to be enjoyable. When we set off, you and I, upon this blog post, it seemed amusingly inconsequential, didn’t it? We thought, crikey, this seems like an entertaining premise for an article/leader of the opposition, didn’t we? Oh what japes! What could possibly go wrong?
Well here we are. I hope you’re happy.
The Society’s Corbieres is £8.25 from The Wine Society (a proudly cooperative endeavour). You may freely taste it safe in the knowledge that it won’t tacitly threaten other rival wines you might like to try in future with deselection. You’ll need membership of The Wine Society rather than the UK’s Labour Party to buy it. But the former is, in my experience, an investment you’re substantially less likely to regret.