Sometimes columns come easy, like a loose Australian (bowler or wo/man), and sometimes they come hard (did she say that?). This week’s has been harder than trying to complete a Boolean algebra problem, drunk, at two in the morning while a Slovakian prostitute nibbles gently on an earlobe. Believe me, that’s a tough gig.

I have two ideas. One is to rant and rave about how we drink our wines too young. I could draw on recent examples that I have tasted, pound my digital fists, and, well, that would be that. In fact I can sum it up quite neatly right here: cellar your wines friends, cellar your goddamn wines.

So seeing as that column only needed 56 words, I think I will go with my second option: pairing some wines to three albums that have been occupying my earballs lately. It’s a tad facile. But then it has been shown that music can affect the way we taste wine.

The Black Keys: El Camino

I got into the Black Keys rather late in the day. I find their earlier albums a little more raw, which for me, translates into authenticity. I still dig El Camino though. It’s a popular antidote for saccharine pop, repetitive hip-horrible-hop and the host of generic shit that plagues our world. It’s not the best album ever made, but it’s still pretty damn sharp. A bit dirty. Though dirty in the way 4x4s in Joburg have sprayed on mud. Popular, mass-market dirt, but do you even care? The lyrics border on the vacuous, but hot-damn it makes you want to strip off, and roll in the mud.

Pitchfork describes Gold on the Ceiling “[as] just filthy, like George Thorogood scoring porn, all raunchy organ and licentious handclaps and chorus help from ladies attempting to sound like the sorts of ladies Steely Dan loved to write songs about.”

While Spin describes “‘Lonely Boy’ as Patrick Carney smacking his snare as if it’s the rump of a redheaded stepchild in need of some learnin.”

There is only one grape variety that can be drunk in the face of such descriptions, and with the randy, sweaty, muddy – although somewhat corporately tempered – music of the Black Keys, that’s Syrah. Or maybe Shiraz. I can hear them singing a grating song about a grimy girl, an abandoned bar, and a half-full bottle of Shiraz.

I, however, look to the French versions, the Northern Rhone in particular; their olive earthiness, their full-bodied rich character, long-lived, fresh and classic, real wines of place, wines of the dirt, the earth. Some of the most sought-after wines in the world come from this area of France. The ones I have tasted and remembered are perfect for The Black Keys; it’s the link between dirty, earthy loamy feelings with a jubilant freshness, and a devil-may-care-but-I-don’t-give-him-the-time-of-day vibe. The Black Keys make me think of sweat, bodies pushed against each other, grinding, and all the while being photographed for a GAP ad. The wines too let me imagine the earth rather than something ethereal – an honest brow’s sweat, a calloused hand, a farmer’s nod. They’re both world famous now, glowing under the public’s glare. Drink, listen, get dirty.

The Smiths: Meat is Murder

It’s not their most loved album, but it was my introduction to this maudlin, vegetarian cult British band. Okay, vegetarian cult may be pushing it, but then vegetarians make me feel maudlin. The Smith’s melancholic poetics appeal to me; like this from “It’s Just Not Funny Anymore”:

When you laugh about people who feel so
Very lonely
Their only desire is to die
Well, I’m afraid
It doesn’t make me smile
I wish I could laugh

Or, from my favourite track from the albumn, “How Soon Is Now”:

There’s a club, if you’d like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go, and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home
And you cry
And you want to die

Put that shit over the longing, drawing, souless/ful vibrato guitar and you have only one wine to work with: Pinot Noir. The cliched “heart-break grape”. But it’s not for the heart break that it causes wine-makers – sending them into their own version of Morrissey-like despair – but rather (to use another cliche) the iron fist in a velvet glove character the wines are capable of showing. It’s a subtle power, unexpected. It slips down with ease but the flavors, complexity and depth can catch you by surprise.

It’s a weightless intensity that The Smiths exhibit constantly too. They express themselves clearly with the force of an overcast sky. Just as Pinot caresses rather than high-fives, Morrissey’s conviction isn’t felt from his shouting, but in a slow, meaningful eloquent murmur. Pinot’s pleasure doesn’t rely on dark colors, inky fruits or banging tannins, but rather on subtlety, silky elegance: soft skin, lips brushing, a loving whisper.

There is another wine that Morrissey’s voice brings to mind, and that is a mature Bordeaux styled blend. The tomaoto-leaf, tobacco, and memory of distant dark fruits with a finish that is so long and delicate and speaks of the many years of lying in the bottle. It tastes of time, history, evolution and maturity.

Drink, listen, feel.

The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love

This is my favorite band right now, maybe forever. Not the most musically original, and they haven’t changed a genre or created one, but Colin Melloy’s lyrics, his natural story-telling ability elevate them far above the all the dross that exists today. The Hazards of Love is a seventeen track prog-rock opera telling the story of  a woman named Margaret who falls in love with a shape-shifting boreal forest dweller named William, and features his mother, the Queen of the Forest, and a villainous Rake.

Exquisitely written, the story is operatic in breadth, and folklorish in topic. We fall in love with Margaret, we hate The Rake, we root for William and are repulsed and attracted simultaneously by the Queen. From angry, lifting guitar and straining vocals to a gentle loving whisper, the album places us in story and examines, in fantastical clarity, the hazards of love.

Okay. I gushed. A similar feeling overcomes me when I taste a brilliant German Riesling, which is perfect for this album. Something off-dry, refreshing, floral, delicious, something pretty. Wines that take you to a flower speckled field, holding hands with a lover, delicate of touch, decadent and delicious of taste. A wine suited to these lines sung by William and Margaret to each other:

And wasn’t it a lovely breeze?
That swept the leaves of arbor eaves
And bent to brush our blushing knees?

And here we died our little deaths
And we were left to catch our breaths
So swiftly lifting from our chests

Pretty, right? But yes, the Rieslings of Germany, the Mosel in particular, can have this. Some can be plain and grim, but the good ones are sublime, and a story in their own right. And as they age their depth increases, the scope of flavours multiplies, and you find yourself wondering at the magic of the wine; beauty, magic and heartache as the bottle nears its completion.This is what Melloy effortlessly creates: beauty, magic, heartache. The album slips down as easily as the riesling, entering you into a narrative that sails you quickly from the first to the last track. A tragic story, a story of love and its hazards.

Drink, listen, be told a story.

You may not like these bands, or care much for riesling, or think my pairings are a bunch of codswallop.  And, I guess, it doesn’t matter what you drink and listen to, but it does matter that they are both excellent. Love what you put in your earballs, love what you sip on.

Drink, listen, explore.