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Bank. When the élites first came into contact with red wines, most found them too bitter to drink with pleasure. However, status demanded that first-growth Bordeaux be drunk, so Sprite would be added to soften and round out the wine. Horror stories abounded of customers mixing Château Pétrus and Coke. True connoisseurs have now emerged, but so have collectors, with the result that they are among those most responsible for driving up the prices of the first growths, which now are bought but seldom drunk. With continuing economic growth and growing awareness of wine, however, a true wine-drinking culture will almost certainly develop, which should encourage the export to China of wines from all over the world. By then, the addition of Coke will undoubtedly no longer be necessary.

Do they really make wine from bees?

THIS IS A question that, while it has not exactly haunted us since someone first mentioned “bee wine,” occasionally and without warning springs worryingly to mind. After all, there’s hardly a vegetable on the planet that hasn’t been made into wine, so … can you ferment an animal? If so, we can be sure that someone has done it.

But books are not only a (hopefully) diverting way for the reader to while away an hour or two; they also give pleasure to the authors, giving them an excuse to look into things that otherwise might have gone unresolved.

We confess our initial thought was that yes, there probably was bee wine, and yes, it probably was made from bees in some way; if not, it likely was an epithet for mead.

We were mostly wrong. Yes, there is bee wine, but it has nothing to do with bees and everything to do with the yeast, which is introduced into the must in the form of a yeast-and-sugar lump that rises and falls with the fermentation process, bumping around like a bee in a bottle.

On balance, we’re relieved. On balance too, though, we wish we hadn’t found out about the animal wines of Indochina: Seahorse wine, water-snake wine, King Cobra wine, Many Snakes wine, and, indeed, Bamboo Bee Wine. Each bottle has the animal inside it. Of course, it’s not actually wine wine, and the Bamboo Bee isn’t actually a bee bee, but all the same … all the same …

Is there wine in Paradise?

IT’S A GOOD question, and one that has received little attention from the wine-drinking believers in an afterlife, who just sort of assume that Paradise will be like life on earth, only better. Of course there’ll be wine in Paradise. How could it possibly be otherwise?

But for the abstemious faiths, it is a problem. Muslims, in particular, have been exercised over the centuries by non-Muslims saying things like “Oh, go on, just have one glass—after all, there’ll be wine in Paradise.”

Commentators on the Qur’an have come up with answers to such silliness, of course, and our favorite refers to Hadith 589, narrated by Abu Huraira:

The Prophet said, “Allah said, ‘I have prepared for My righteous slaves (such excellent things) as no eye has ever seen, nor an ear has ever heard nor a human heart can ever think of.’”

So as we can see paradise is something that is not of this world. So when the Qur’an talks about rivers of honey that does not mean that it is the same kind of honey that we have in this world. Similarly, when the Qur’an talks about rivers of wine in paradise that does not mean that it is the same kind of wine that we have here on earth that makes you get drunk and do stupid things and gives you a hangover the next morning. No, not at all. God is just using these terms in order for us to try to imagine what this paradise is kind of like. So the wine of paradise is nothing like the wine of this world.

Theology is a wonderful thing. Perhaps the wine of Paradise, which is not like the wine of this world, bears some relation to the drunkenness of Purim, which is not like the drunkenness of this world. Such speculations are outside our qualifications. All we can do is hope that it all turns out for the best …

When is wine not wine?

THE FIGURE OF speech that dominates this book is the erotema, the official word