What, exactly, would you drink with an award-winning novel about female rage? Is there a better brew than Butterbeer to chug with a Harry Potter? Kim Knight consults the experts for a not-very-serious guide to pairing books with beverages.
Sauvignon with a fish dinner, beers at
Name an occasion and you can bet it has a beverage match.
But what would you drink with a book about fish? Is a rugby biography better with a pilsner or a pale ale? Pulp fiction and a premix?
Slap on the sunscreen and pull up a comfy pōhutukawa – summer reading (and drinking) season is here, and we’ve been thinking hard about the perfect liquid and literary match.
Some genres are easier to pair than others. Bonkbusters and bubbles, cosy crime and chamomile tea, the new Sally Rooney and – absinthe? Authors, of course, have always had an affinity with alcohol.
Consider this from the hard-boiled pen of Raymond Chandler: “I’m an occasional drinker. The kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
Or this from Dorothy Parker, the critic with the caustic wit: “I like to have a martini. Two at the very most. After three I’m under the table. After four I’m under my host.”
(Historians have boringly debunked this as an actual Parkerism but don’t let the facts get in the way of a good summer read. Also, does anyone still read history – a genre best paired with a hard mattress and a long black?).
In my pre-teens I consumed so many books about swords, dragons and magical quests, I assumed that, as an adult, my main source of hydration would be a flask of mead. Our neighbours brewed a beer out of gorse flowers and my tasting notes were “sunshine and The Shire”.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.In my 30s, I felt compelled to catch up on American Men I Didn’t Read Because I Didn’t Go To University.
The relentless machismo was enough to drive a girl to drink – Chivas Regal and chartreuse with Hunter S, a six-pack in the mail room with Charles B.
I gave up before I got to Steinbeck. It would absolutely not surprise me if there was no wine in The Grapes of Wrath.
Today I am 54 and I work in the media and I have no idea what to pair with the end of the written word as I know it, but if someone was to accidentally spill an L&P over ChatGPT I would not be mad.
Obviously I asked the artificial intelligence bot what I should drink while reading Emily Perkins’ The Lioness – this year’s winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
It told me a pinot noir was subtle and nuanced, just like the book’s intricate character dynamics and that the bittersweetness of a negroni or black Russian would “pair nicely with the novel’s exploration of relationships and conflict”.
A follow-up question about Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone returned a recipe for pumpkin juice.
Time to consult some flesh and blood experts. Friends, whānau and publishers: What to drink with that book? What to read with that drink?
Colleague Tyson Beckett emailed that she’d been waiting for a decent break to properly sink her teeth into Rebel Girl – the memoir of Kathleen Hanna whose part in pioneering feminist punk bands Bikini Kill, and later Le Tigre, made her a semi-reluctant leader of the Riot Grrrl movement.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.“I’ve long admired Hanna’s forthright manner,” says Tyson who, as far as she knows, is not related to Samuel, the Irishman who wrote Waiting for Godot and quite liked a Jamesons.
Our Tyson was eagerly anticipating a reflection – and criticism – of feminist politics and art alongside Hanna’s stories from 35 years on the road as a musician and woman in punk.
“I’m less eager to sink my taste buds into the drink most apt to drink alongside it. When I think of Hanna and the music she and her contemporaries produced, I think about messy nights at Auckland’s now-defunct The Kings Arms.
“For better or worse, cans of Woody were never far behind (or before). In my own Riot Grrrrl era I’d probably be found drinking them in the most contrived manner I could stage manage: warm from the can while sat in a gutter outside a gig trying to appear nonchalant.
“In service of modern palatability, if you’re drinking a Woody’s in 2024/25 I suggest serving in a tall glass, over plenty of ice and cut with as many limes as you can be bothered juicing. A post-punk Cuba Libre if you will.”
I waited for a response from the rest of my colleagues, but they were apparently too busy writing Christmas gift guides. Fortunately, the country’s book publishers had a vested interest in my pitch.
“I might have had a bit too much fun with this,” said Caoimhe McKeogh, publicist for Te Herenga Waka University Press, who presented three ideas for “three of our best-appreciated novels of this year”.
First up, Michelle Rahurahu’s Poorhara, paired with car beers. Specifically, a German-style premium lager.
“Star and Erin, the cousins in Poorhara, clink together two warm cans of Haagen – found in the back seat of their car – in a toast “to gritty realism”.
“Poorhara is both sad and refreshing, funny and challenging. If the beer can be cold, even better, but if there’s a bit of sand in your chips and the beers have warmed up in the sun, you’ll still have a great time with this absorbing debut novel,” promises Caoimhe.
“Carl Shuker’s The Royal Free and a very stiff gin and tonic: read while sipping on a half Bombay Sapphire, half Schweppes, on ice, with lime. Pause to head up a nearby hill – drink in hand – to watch New Year’s fireworks and see bonfires spread out below you, and you’ll be transported back into the pages of Shuker’s dark and exuberant novel, as if you’re on Parliament Hill with James Ballard, looking down at London burning.
“Damien Wilkins’ Delirious and a good cup of tea: Delirious features lime-flavoured Fortisips, wine with dinner, straight gin from the bottle, and plenty of coffee, but the novel itself is a good cup of tea. It’s complex and powerful, there’s both bitterness and comfort, it’s perfectly balanced, it’s something to hold onto on life’s difficult days.
“As Mary and Pete face up to ageing, loss and history, you’ll want someone you love to come and hand you a cuppa so you can keep turning the pages.”
At Bateman Books, publisher Louise Russell looked to the text for inspiration. “Sewing Moonlight by Kyle Mewburn paired with Hokonui Moonshine.”
Because?
“Southland’s legendary illicit whiskey gets a cameo appearance in a beautiful tearjerker of a novel about biodynamics set in Depression-era Central Otago.”
Meanwhile, “the Kitchen Confidential-style memoir Let Them Eat Tripe by the one-and-only ratbag raconteur, godfather of NZ cuisine, Tony Astle (with Geraldine Johns) could only be paired with Taittinger”.
Louise said she’d love to proffer a local beverage, “but it could only ever be French champagne for Tony!”
Allen & Unwin outsourced my question to its writers. Might I politely suggest ordering Maria Hoyle’s debut A Very French Affair (bound to contain wine) as a thank you for sending through three recommendations with scant regard to this gold-plated opportunity for self-promotion:
“You really can’t stop at one prosecco, and the same goes for a Pellegrino. Nicky, not San. Light, delicious and so refreshing, Nicky Pellegrino’s set-in-Italy romances – To Italy, With Love (2021), PS, Come To Italy (2023) – would go dreamily with a crisp, chilled prosecco on a cloudless summer’s day.
“Megan Nicol Reed’s compelling novel One of Those Mothers prompts a few ideas for the perfect pairing. You could go full ‘method’ and have what this juicy tale’s middle-class mums are having – a cheeky rosé or four, or perhaps a stiff G&T on the deck of your bach.
“Or else you could heed this scandal-in-the-suburbs and stick to a tonic water so you can keep an eye on everyone else. Even your friends. Especially your friends. Because how well do you really know them?”
And, finally from Maria Hoyle: “Birnam Wood: Eleanor Catton’s deeply unsettling tale takes its name from the forest in Macbeth – and needs a fittingly sombre accomplice. A Dark and Stormy, perhaps. Or a Gran Marnier – a potentially dangerous combo of smooth and powerful, just like Birnam Wood’s Robert Lemoine.”
Also contributing from the Allen & Unwin stable was Jacqueline Bublitz (Before You Knew My Name and the just published Leave the Girls Behind), who had this to say about the book with the cover that looks, literally, like a hangover:
Writes Jacqueline: “Some* people say feijoas are an acquired taste. They throw around words like medicinal and antiseptic. As if, at first taste, feijoa is a fruit that doesn’t behave like … fruit.
“Martha, the protagonist in Meg Mason’s brilliant 2020 novel Sorrow & Bliss, doesn’t necessarily make the best first impression, either. By her own admission, she’s a woman who swings between extremes: one moment she’s diffident.
“The next, she’s full of despair. Those pendulum swings can make life difficult for the people who love her. But there’s no doubt Martha is compelling. Original. And utterly worth the effort.
“For this reason, I recommend reading Sorrow and Bliss alongside a healthy pour of Kiwi-made feijoa vodka. On the rocks of course, to fully experience the unique flavour of both the cocktail and the character.”
A postscript from Jacqueline: “I am not *some people. I love everything about feijoas. That someone thought to officially meld them with my favourite spirit is proof you can (sometimes) have it all”.
Feijoa is, of course, having its very own literary moment.
In 2007, “Feijoa” was the first font issued by Wellington typeface design studio Klim Type Foundry. It’s described as warm, curvaceous and best suited to headlines of 16pt and larger. Perfect, in other words, for the cover of Kate Evans’ recently released Feijoa: A story of obsession and belonging.
Kate’s book cover is so delicious you could eat it with a spoon – or read it with a feijoa cocktail, as per the recipe suggested by Emma Foster, aka @Aglassandabook, an Auckland-based social media account I stumbled on while researching texts and tipples.
(I know what you’re thinking. Sadly, @Textsandtipples has already been snaffled by a Brisbane reader who brilliantly combines books, quotes and drinks. Sample example: Jane Harper’s The Dry. “At least the blowflies were happy.” Enjoyed with “The Redback” – Sloe gin, smoked szechuan, Davidson plum cordial, etc).
I digress.
Emma says there are many, many social media accounts devoted to pairing books with drinks. I checked and she was right. Imagine prettier, pithier versions of this story. I love-hated them all with the fury of a single woman forced to wear a drop-waisted bridesmaid’s dress to her little sister’s wedding.
There can, cautions Emma, be a “real snobbery” behind the “what are you reading?” question.
“A friend – and I won’t say who – recently told me she really loves reading fantasy smut. And I was like ‘Don’t whisper it! That’s cool, go for it’.”
Talking dragons, admits Emma, are not really her thing, but when she did try the Rebecca Yarros “romantasy” Fourth Wing, she paired it with a Lone Bee sparkling mead.
“You just start reading, and it’s like – that goes with this. I don’t know how, it just works.”
In the beginning, if Emma hated a book, she’d match it with a really cheap wine.
“But then I just ended up with all of these bottles of crap wine!”
Today, she’s as influenced by non-alcoholic beverages (absolutely any book, she argues, goes with an undisturbed morning in bed with a coffee) or even the colours in a book’s cover design.
Think Laurence Fearnley’s Grand Glacier Hotel with a Bundaberg Lemon, Lime and Bitters (the central character “isn’t much of a drinker”) or Bublitz’s Leave the Girls Behind with an alcohol-free cocktail because “there are quite a few surprises, none that I picked” and readers need to keep their wits about them.
More seriously: “I read quite a bit of non-fiction too. I’m reading a book about gun violence. I’m not pairing that with anything”.
Kim Knight is an award-winning arts and lifestyle reporter with the New Zealand Herald’s premium lifestyle team. The most recent book she read was Tim Winton’s Juice (best paired with a glass of potable water while you still can).
More on books (and drinks)
From Viva team recommendations to tasting notes.
Summer Books: What We’re Reading On Vacation, From Juicy Autobiographies To Witty Fiction. Finding good books for long summer days can be daunting. Let us help.
The Best Books Of The Year (So Far), According To Booksellers. Booksellers from local shops consult their personal libraries and share their picks for the best books of the year so far.
Book Club: Everything We Thought About Zadie Smith’s Highly Anticipated Historical Novel ‘The Fraud’. We discuss sensationalism, the malleability of truth, and how her fiction – set in the 19th century – feels surprisingly current.
How I Make It Work: Poet, Film-Maker & Theatre Producer Mīria George. Multi-hyphenate Mīria George talks about what inspires her, how she finds balance, and shares her best advice.
Everything Viva’s Unofficial Drinks Editor Drank This Summer. A celebration of summer cocktails and cold beers, because sometimes you need an outlet for the 50 beverage images on your phone.
