It’s Christmas Day in Australia, and we’re pairing the mud crab, prawns, and salads with a Piesporter German riesling from Gravity’s Rainbow. We’ve had maybe more explicitly Christmassy tipples in past years (fruitcake with brandy and pink champagne), but this one does at least come recommended as befitting an Occasion:

They arrive at Peter Sachsa’s well after dark. She finds a séance just about to begin. She is immediately aware of her drab coat and cotton dress (hemline too high), her scuffed and city-dusted shoes, her lack of jewelry. More middle-class reflexes… vestiges, she hopes. But most of the women are old. The others are too dazzling. Hmm. The men look more affluent than usual. Leni spots a silver lapel-swastika here and there. Wines on the tables are the great ’20s and ’21s. Schloss Vollrads, Zeltinger, Piesporter–it is an Occasion.

Gravity’s Rainbow, page 163.

We plucked the Schloss Vollrads from this paragraphs a few years back. Like then, this Piesporter is a more recent vintage. It’s a 2016 Schloss Lieser Piesporter Goldtröpfchen Riesling Kabinett. (If I’d waited a few more years I could have got a ’20 or ’21 a century late…) It’s pretty sweet and tropically syrupy, somewhat along the lines of last month’s Berncasteler Doctor. Will go very nicely with some plum pudding on the other side of this approaching food coma I imagine…

Happy Christmas Pynchonites. I hope you’ve all had a beautiful day’s eating and drinking and are now getting happily tucked up with all the books you were given.