Hearing things

During the coronavirus restrictions, I found myself reverting to sitting at home listening to the radio and relaxing. Perhaps the urge to uncork a nice red was kicking in earlier than usual, perhaps my hearing is simply failing with age, but I noticed something weird happening; I found myself hearing more songs about red wine on the radio. It started with ‘Red Red Wine’ and ‘Heard It Through the Grapevine’, but then it got a little more subtle. Paul McCartney started with ‘Cabernet, all my troubles seemed so far away, oh I believe in cabernet’. This was followed by his Wings classic,

‘It’s everywhere with merlot, and merlot does it good’. Tom Jones clearly had a liking for McLaren Vale with ‘It’s good to taste the gren-grenache of home’, and Elton John chipped in with, ‘But the biggest kick I ever got, drinking a thing called the cabernet franc’. Talking Heads got in on the act with ‘The world was moving, she was right there with it and shi-raz’. Even the Old World varieties were creeping in. ‘When my baby smiles at me I go to Rio, tempranillo’, and the one-hit wonder ‘Turning sangiovese, I really think so’.

And I’m sure I heard Doris Day singing ‘Okay syrah syrah’.

But the highlight has been Nine to Five, a song Dolly Parton surely dedicated to James Halliday and other professional wine tasters. ‘Drink Bin 95, what a way to make a living, barely getting dry it’s all sipping and no spitting’. Bin 95? It’s on the label – Penfolds Grange Bin 95.

DARYL PREEDY, WA