'A Christmas wine should be one to spend time over'

I've let you down: more than 250 columns for Decanter, and not one on Christmas wine. There is an urgent topic to address; it's not, though, so urgent that it can't wait until January. I've also got an undiscovered jewel among Big Reds to describe: provocative and challenging, but rich with excitement... and still affordable. That will do nicely for February's chilly nights. Now, though, it's Noël.

- Andrew Jefford

In the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes where many Decanter readers live, late December means damp cold and blanketing darkness. The Christian narrative lends this moment a spiritual charge for believers - but the winter solstice was of signal significance in pre-Christian times, too, as light drained and 'The world's whole sap is sunk' (John Donne's phrase from his magnificent Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day). Go to Maeshowe on Scotland's Orkney, a 5,000-year-old burial tomb, and you'll find its entrance passage designed to align with the last rays of the sun at the midwinter solstice, as if to beseech light to return. For all our comfort and plenty, we still need that reassurance.

Deep red wine is our readiest symbol of summer sunlight and warmth, stowed safely away inside a bottle: the resumé of an entire growing season. Unconsciously, perhaps, the return of that light - and a little nourishing rest in the interim - is what we're hoping for when we drink our treasured bottles at Christmas.