Mixing red wine with Coca-Cola would have the great Roger Scruton turning in his grave. He wrote the wonderful book I Drink Therefore I am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine about the purity and life-enhancing joy of drinking wine properly.
‘It enacts for us the primal unity of soul and body—the heart-warming liquid stirs us to meditation, seeming to bring with it messages that are addressed to the soul,’ argued Scruton.
Indeed, as I learned on my Camino through the vineyards of Spain and Portugal, imbibing for 11 months endless variations of remarkably affordable quality wines across the Iberian Peninsular, we are truly blessed to have wine.
It was, after all, the centre piece of Jesus’s first miracle at the marriage ceremony in Cana. As the youngest brother Alyosha notes about this fact in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: ‘It was not men’s grief, but their joy Christ visited. He worked his first miracle to help man’s gladness…He who loves men loves their gladness too.’
Which is why I think Christ would nod sympathetically when it comes to turning red wine into red wine with Coca-Cola.
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