Wines brings out the flavor of the meal. Choosing the right one for each course is a science and an art; whole computer programs have been created to resolve that doubt in less than a second’s time. Taste buds are easily dulled.

  It is suggested that no cocktails be served before the meal other than vermouth, champagne, port, or sherry, because otherwise it will be impossible to savor what follows; the wine should be preceded and followed by other children of the grape. Once only European wines—especially French—were acceptable, but today you can unashamedly serve a bottle from California, Chile, South Africa, Australia, and other regions. Rigid rules in regard to which wine to serve with which dish have also been relaxed, and it is no longer obligatory to accompany lamb with a French Bordeaux; you can serve a Spanish Rioja or a Merlot from California. However, an elegant table is still set with as many glasses as wines to be offered, each meticulously chosen for the dish with which it will be served. The ideal is always to serve the white first and then two or three varieties of red, if your guests deserve such largesse. When choosing the reds, it’s best that they be from the same type or region, Bordeaux with Bordeaux, for example. If you follow this rule, it is recommended that you pour the youngest wine first, followed by the older one or the better label. Despite the counsel of that diplomat in Turkey, a good French host always reserves the best red for the end of the meal, to be served with the cheeses, before dessert. But take caution when applying these rules during an erotic dinner, because too much indulgence and the impetuous lover will become comatose while still at the table.

  We know that you’re not an expert; if you were, you wouldn’t be reading these pages, and therefore we dare to offer this information. The majority of wines can be classified in five categories: light whites, whites with body, rosés, light reds, and robust reds. The fruits of the sea are served with white wine—oysters always with Chablis—because owing to a chemical reaction that is not worth elaborating on here, when fish and seafood are mixed with red wine they leave a bitter taste. White wine also enhances the flavor of fowl and of vegetable dishes, which, being delicate, usually cannot stand up to the impact of red wine—although there are exceptions, everything depends upon the sauce. A good example is coq au vin, which is prepared and served with a Burgundy. Red meat goes well with red wine; the trick lies in choosing the appropriate one: the more assertive the dish, the more robust the wine, always keeping in mind the sauce and method of preparation. The mystery lies in finding the balance between beverage and food: mild with mild, light with light, strong with strong, sweet with sweet. Here are a few examples a grosso modo:

  A light white: Fish and shellfish.

  A full-bodied white: Delicate fowl, veal, strongly flavored fish like tuna or salmon, brains and other tender and mild-flavored organ meats.

  A light red: Lamb, beef, pork, Italian pasta, organs such as kidney, liver, and tripe, wild fowl, and vegetables.

  A robust red: Game such as deer, boar, hare, and even some birds like wild duck, certain stronger red meats, and assertive stews.

  A full-bodied red wine of highest quality: Cheese.

  A cold rosé: Rustic lunches, picnics, light summer suppers.

  Ruin to the taste of most wines: Spicy dishes, such as curry.

  The typical cuisine of each country demands, logically, to be served with the beverage of the same area: sake, tea, beer, and so on. If you have questions, ask in a liquor shop when you buy your wine. Today there are wine boutiques where an expert can help you select the best bottles for your menu.

  Liquors

  All peoples, including those who for religious reasons are forbidden it, know the medicinal properties of alcohol. Before other antiseptics were known or anesthesia developed, alcohol was used to disinfect wounds and to stun the patient before some painful procedure. Alcohol’s worst defect is that converted into a vice it destroys anyone who drinks it, and its greatest virtue is that in moderate quantities it produces the illusion of well-being and sparks a desire for celebration. Again and again we seek the temporary relief of alcohol to escape for a while the anxieties of life. We are not the only ones—there are even animals and birds that purposely become inebriated on fermented fruits. In the summertime bluebirds crash into the windows of my house, dizzy from the small red fruit of a nearby tree. The first alcoholic drink in history was mead, a sweet wine made from honey, drunk in Europe until the eighteenth century. It was the Arabs, with their refined culture, who developed the technique of distillation; they called the spirits of the vine alkuhul. Common souls consumed a crude, strong beer; wine, with a greater alcohol content and more delicate flavor, was the luxury of the privileged classes.

  In ancient times Bacchus and Dionysus, the Greek and Roman gods of wine, ecstasy, and eroticism, figured prominently in their pantheons; they had their equivalent in nearly all pantheistic mythologies. Orgiastic festivals were celebrated in their honor, during which the masses poured into the street to drink and fornicate without restraint. In the Old Testament, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed as a punishment for their libertine customs: orgies, incest, adultery, and other diversions offensive to God. This is one of the many parts of the Bible I wasn’t allowed to read in school. If we judge by the description, it seems that Jehovah, fed up with their clamor and outcry, launched upon their city the equivalent of an atomic attack, but there are other versions that place the responsibility in the lap of Abraham and his armies. Before manifesting his ire, Jehovah sent two angels as messengers to warn Lot, the one just man to be found. The two angels were near to falling into the hands of an inflamed crowd of Sodomites, but Lot managed to protect them by taking them into “the shadow of his roof” and offering the attackers his virgin daughters as a distraction. Talk about an exemplary host! Before God loosed his wrath upon the city, His messengers commanded Lot to escape with his family, never looking back. Lot’s wife, overcome by curiosity, or nostalgia, did turn to look and was turned into a pillar of salt. Finally, after many adventures, Lot and his two daughters found asylum in a cave. In view of the fact that there were no other men available to “come in unto us after the manner of all the earth,” the girls got Lot drunk and, as they used to say before the invention of the Pill, “took advantage of him.” A slightly dysfunctional family, but I suppose that in desperate cases, one doesn’t dwell on details.

  According to the Bible, Lot’s two daughters “lay with” their father for two consecutive nights, without his having been aware of what happened. Both conceived, giving name and origin to the Moabite and Ammonite tribes. This is one of the few times when a man drunk out of his mind has been known to perform such a feat, because too much alcohol makes the male member swoon, producing temporary impotence, and submerges its owner into the dark shadows of melancholy. At such a moment, one always quotes Shakespeare, of course. In Macbeth, in answer to a question about the consequences of drink, a second responds: “Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep and urine. Lechery, sir; it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes desire but it takes away the performance.”

  In a different section of this book, I’m not sure which, I mention that fresh snake blood and sugar stirred into liquor is a greatly esteemed stimulant in Taiwan and other Asian countries. In China they toss a few baby cockroaches into warm sake and drink it down in a single swallow. According to an issue of the San Francisco Chronicle from the end of the last century, Malaysian Chinese immigrants imbibed rattlesnake blood. They opened a slit in the tail, and while one person held the snake by the head and squeezed downward to drain it, the other lay on the ground and sucked the blood between swigs of whiskey. A prodigious aphrodisiac cocktail for those with exotic tastes.

  Neruda’s Wine Glass, pastel by Vivienne Flesher, 1997.

  My friend Miki Shima told me that once in the Colorado mountains, at eight thousand feet and in freezing cold, sitting by a campfire in the light of the moon, he was served a menu of elk sausage and raw buffalo liver marinated in beer, all liberally washed down with a drink called Black Dog, which is a mixture of whiskey, tobacco juice, and gunpowder. With the first swallow of this concoction the cold disappeared; with the second, he recovered the memory of his oldest yearnings; and with the third, just when his brain was about to explode, came fantastic visions of all the beautiful women he had wanted during his lifetime. One of the most terrible battles of the nineteenth-century War of the Pacific, which pitted Chile against Peru and Bolivia, was that of Morro de Arica, an impregnable escarpment that Chilean soldiers conquered by climbing up the cliff face with curved knives clamped between their teeth after, as the legend goes, being drugged with a mixture of whiskey and gunpowder not unlike Black Dog. In some South American prisons, the men get drunk on pajaro verde, green bird, a drink made from alcohol and paint thinner, which eventually leads to madness and death.

  Like almost everything else in this world, liquors, too, go out of style. In his memoirs, the Spanish film director Luis Buñuel gives his recipe for the perfect martini: allowing a ray of light to pass through the bottle of vermouth and for an instant touch the gin. After the martini, so popular in the sixties and seventies, we went through a decade of white wine, which in the nineties has culminated in the popularity of kirsch. Whatever the vogue, the vessel is nearly as important as the contents. In a paper cup, the finest champagne tastes just like that green punch you drank at high school dances, whereas a mediocre wine in a fine goblet rises in category. It’s like women, whose clothes reveal their economic and sometimes, not always, their social class. In certain Tantric ceremonies, arga, chalices shaped like vulvae, are employed, but that degree of refinement is not necessary for serving your cocktails. Good crystal will do.

  Absinthe, or wormwood A green liqueur extracted from the plant of the same name (Artemisia absinthium) to which various herbs are added; it has had the reputation for being a powerful aphrodisiac since the time of the Greeks, but it is so toxic that in 1915 it was outlawed in France and then later in other countries. It causes muscular and gastric spasms and if consumed on a regular basis leads to paralysis and death. Absinthe is served with a little water and sugar to cut the bitter taste. In the nineteenth century it was the favorite drink of intellectuals and artists in the Place Pigalle, because it was believed that it convoked the muses. In England, on the other hand, it was used in the flagellation clubs, at the time a very popular sport.

  Amaretto Made from the almond, it has a sweet, strong flavor. It is used as a digestive and in cocktails and desserts. Its erotic reputation comes from the almond, the mythological fruit born of the womb of a goddess, as we have earlier pointed out.

  Anise Popular in France and Spain, this is a transparent liquid that turns milky when mixed with water. The well-known brand Marie Brizard was created in the city of Bordeaux in 1755 by a woman of that name, known for her good heart. They say that she saved a man’s life during an epidemic and that in payment he whispered the secret for making the liqueur into her ear. The woman became rich and devoted a large part of her fortune to charitable works. Marie Brizard is still sold in that city. Similar to absinthe in flavor but less toxic, anise is the base of several aphrodisiac liqueurs such as Pernod, Ricard, Pastis, and arak, the national liquor of the Greeks and Turks.

  Benedictine This name derives from that of its originators, the Benedictine monks of France, themselves chaste, who surely did not suspect that they were contributing another aphrodisiac to the long list of temptations humanity must suffer.

  Calvados Native to Normandy, this is an apple liqueur, intense and velvety like all good brandy, to which are attributed the same invigorating qualities as the fruit. In the past it was also used as a tonic for staying youthful.

  Champagne The inarguable queen of wines, indispensable at celebrations. A sparkling white wine from the Champagne region of France, it can be successfully produced elsewhere, but only the authentic wine can be called by that name. In 1806 Barbara Nicole Ponsardin, widow of a banker whose family name was Clicquot, dedicated the fortune she inherited from her deceased husband to developing the champagne produced in his vineyards and celebrated throughout the world under the name Veuve Clicquot. Champagne is always drunk in good company and at moments of celebration, which may be why it acts as an aphrodisiac even when that is not the intent. Sparkling and light, it goes down without a thought, and it is more intoxicating than wine because, thanks to the bubbles, the alcohol enters the bloodstream so rapidly. Champagne is considered a “feminine” wine and is thought to have more erotic effect on women than on men. In the feasts of ancient imperial Rome, baths were filled with bubbling wine, in which naked men and women frothed and frolicked. Champagne made solely with the Chardonnay grape is the driest and most prized.

  Cognac, brandy, and Armagnac Henry IV of France made this drink stylish as an aphrodisiac; the idea spread rapidly, and soon, as a precaution, gentlemen began having a glass before going to bed, just in case the wife didn’t have a headache that night. Thus originated the custom of ending a good dinner with a cigar and glass of cognac or brandy, a ritual in which the women did not share. Brandy beaten with sugar and egg yolks is a formidable tonic for the depression suffered by pregnant woman and blues brought on by rainy days.

  Grand Marnier A French cognac with the flavor of orange; very similar to Curaçao, a sweet drink made of bitter orange rinds on the Caribbean island of the same name. The Dutch who colonized the island credited the sensuality of its beautiful mulatto women to this liqueur, and exported it to the rest of the world at great profit.

  Kirsch Made from a cherry base, kirsch is very much in vogue for lending a bouquet to champagne or white wine, the drink of the elegant. The aphrodisiac power of this mixture lies primarily in the festive reputation of the champagne, and surely in the rosy color it gives the cocktail, a treat to the eye.

  Parfaît Amour A rare lavender-scented liqueur once served in a few refined brothels in France because it was believed that it instantly stimulated the libido. It has gone out of style but still can be found, in case you want to impress your partner some special night.

  Sherry and port Strong, sweet wines, very popular in Portugal and Spain, served at any time of the day other than with a meal. In the past, the favorites of women because of their delicate texture, but today’s women drink vodka and ride motorcycles.

  Vodka Like many strong liquors—whiskey, gin, pisco, and others—vodka is not particularly aphrodisiac, except in the moderate quantities that relax inhibitions, but we include it on this list because it is the indispensable complement to caviar. Is there anyone who hasn’t made love after a preamble of caviar and icy vodka?

  Love Philters

  The list of aphrodisiacs is much longer than I imagined when I began these pages, and I’m beginning to be bored by the subject. (With all this thinking about gluttony and lust, I’m afraid I’ll become anorexic and frigid.) I have learned, for example, that licorice, which I sucked like sugar candy in my childhood, is loaded with estrogen, and sarsaparilla, which I enjoyed as a soft drink, is heavy on testosterone. Mexican Indians have always used sarsaparilla to restore the carnal ardor of the depressed and despondent. After scoffing at folklore for centuries, today scientists are extracting the male hormone from that native American plant—to what end, I can’t imagine, since we already have more than enough testosterone in this world. Stimulants of great renown come in the form of powder, liquid, or capsule, from the popular extract of green oats and famed ginseng, whose unsurpassed efficacy in strengthening the immune system, calming the nerves, and stimulating the hormones is well known in China, to Spanish fly (Cantharis vesicatoria), a cockroach species ground to a powder that initially produces an arrogant erection but also mercilessly irritates the urinary tract and can lead to irreversible agony. According to El Libro de los Venenos, The Book of Poisons, by Antonio Gamoneda: “Great injury befalls those who take the Spanish Fly, because they will feel a burning corrosion in almost all their body, stretching from the mouth to the bladder, and it will represent in their taste a certain fishy flavor or the astringency of cedar. They will suffer from swoons, surfeit, and lightheadedness, and will fall to the floor and gnaw table legs.”

  It is told that the Marquis de Sade landed in jail for having given candy laced with Spanish fly to certain ladies of light morals he had invited to one of his orgies. One of them nearly died, and the others, yes, “fell to the floor and gnawed table legs.”

  Love philters have been known in all cultures since ancient times. My acupuncturist friend, the wise and good Dr. Miki Shima, tells that in the mysterious little shops of San Francisco’s or New York’s Chinatown you can buy the famous rhinoceros-horn powder so prized in Asia as an infallible aphrodisiac. That reputation has cost the lives of thousands of those pachyderms, exterminated without a second thought merely for the horn. We are told that this powder is so toxic to the human brain that a pinch is enough to turn one’s memory to magma and lead the soul down astral paths, so if you take it and experience no secondary effects, surely you were sold a substitute. Some users ingest it, and others, more reckless, prick their skin and rub in a minute amount, not enough to cause death, but enough that desire spills through their blood and fires the lust of even octogenarians.