Marianna Hunt writes Marianna Hunt is a freelance journalist writing about wine and travel for publications including The Telegraph, Times and Decanter Magazine. A financial journalist by background, she now works in the City part-time, juggling that with her wine writing. Her one true love is Georgian khachapuri bread and her life mission is to visit every single Eastern European wine region.
The bandoneón and the barrel
I believe every wine has a pairing in dance. Merlot whispers for a rumba – velvety, round and sensual. While Champagne whoops for a jive – a joyful bounce of effervescent energy. But the pairing I crave most of all is a cabernet sauvignon and an Argentine tango.
Both are an elbow jab to the face if you get a step wrong, but a masterclass in drama, elegance and power if you get them right. Linear, but perfectly balanced, with one element flowing seamlessly into the next.
When I drink a cab sav, I see the austere, sharply cut black suit of the male dancer and the acidic sour-red flare of his partner’s dress with her spiky high heel flicks of tannin.
With the best ones, you are constantly surprised, thinking you’re going in one direction, only to be swiftly flipped the other way, releasing new layers of flavour.
At first, it’s the sharp drama of the pairing you remember. But, as you let it unfold, the nuances and layers emerge – moments of softness.
The sharp accents and pauses of the piano keys give way to the plaintive lament of the bandoneón, and the fruit starts to effloresce in your mouth – sometimes reedy, like tart blackcurrant skin; sometimes low and deep, like a juicy, ripe blackberry.
I dream of nights in Buenos Aires, a couple swirling lithely before me as something equally lithe and aromatic swirls in my glass. Sometimes I imagine myself in a dark club, with just one couple, a stage, and a spotlight. A waiter brings a fat hunk of Argentine steak – straight from the Pampas – to create the pairing’s ideal ménage à trois.
Other times, I’m in the streets at a sweaty milonga, a social dance, where straight-backed 80-year-olds pull their wives out of their homes for a flourish on the tarmac dancefloor.
But, failing any of that, a bottle from the supermarket and an episode of Strictly Come Dancing will do.
Growing up, dancing (like drinking wine) was pure refinement. Something I saw my parents and grandparents doing and yearned to join in. My first fumblings with dance – stepping on my Dad’s feet as he foxtrotted me across the living room – were often intertwined with my first fumblings with wine, sipping a thimbleful of my grandmother’s Bordeaux at family parties.
I have always believed wine has synesthetic qualities. Describe an underripe cab sav as spiky and green and everyone will understand. Talk about the high-pitched shriek of a Riesling and people will hear it ring out in their minds.
But, for me, dance is the one thing that brings all these senses together – and with no combination more so than a cab sav and an Argentine tango. That is why it is my perfect pairing.
My early fumblings with wine have solidified into a proper passion and formal study. My relationship with dancing has evolved too, from sipping cheap sangria and partying in Spanish nightclubs to seeking out my roots and joining the same Polish folk group my mother and countless family friends danced in as teenagers. The rustic, fizzy joy of those Slavic mountain jigs is surely a pét-nat if ever I tasted one.
Throughout the years I’ve come to realise that, with both dance and wine, the pleasure is ultimately in sharing something with others.
Whether I’m opening a special bottle with a winemaker I’ve just met or chaotically jumping around with strangers to our favourite song at a gig: in that moment, you’re connected.
For a few precious seconds, you know you’re feeling the exact same thing as the other person, that your senses are fully alive and on the very same wavelength.
In a world where the chasms between people seem to be getting ever wider, we could all do with more of that. So, bring on the dancing, and bring on the wine.
Published unedited and in accordance with the rules of the competition published here.
