Wine

The Third Doctor enjoys some red wine. (TV: Day of the Daleks)

Wine was a alcoholic beverage made from pressed fruit, usually some form of grape. While commonly found on Earth, many alien civilisations made their own wines. The Wine Lords were famed throughout the Galaxy for their wines. However, society collapsed when they were convicted of mislabelling wine.

Wine was often consumed with a meal, though it could be drunk without food as well. Wine was sometimes drunk for medicinal purposes. According to Richard Mace, wine tasted like "nectar", he claimed this to Adric after looting a manor's cellar.

A Bacchanite bartender tried to use wine at a Viennese tavern to create illusions of personal sorrow to capture his patrons.

Types of wine

Fortified wines, like sherry and vermouth were wines with an added distilled beverage. Champagne, sometimes known as "sparkling wine" was a wine with carbon dioxide in it, making it bubbly. It was often used for a celebration such as Christmas or to celebrate the end of a particular event.

Médoc was a red wine favoured by John Lucarotti.

Irongron had only sour red wines in his castle. The Third Doctor drank several goblets.

Chris Cwej got drunk on melon wine and had his right ear pierced.

Alien wines

Bernice Summerfield once drank Craxiatanian Chardonay.

Rassilon's Red was Gallifrey's finest vintage.

The Doctor had wines from Ribos and champagnes from Manussa in his wine cellar

The Seventh Doctor had Coralee wine in the TARDIS.

Whilst in the Gateway, the Fourth Doctor drank wine with Biroc and other Tharils.

Slipping drugs in wine

In 64 Rome, Vicki Pallister attempted to kill Nero by putting poison in his wine goblet.

Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen attempted to kill the Ninth Doctor by poisoning his glass of wine. The Doctor was aware of this and swopped his glass with Blon's.

River Song put micro-explosives in a Dorium Maldovar's glass of wine, which he drank. She did this to convince Maldovar to accept a Callisto Pulse as trade for the vortex manipulator she required.

Jack Harkness added a level 6 retcon to the champagne at Gwen and Rhys Williams' wedding, in order to keep them from remembering the day's strange events.

Drunkenness from wine

According to Susan Foreman, she couldn't get drunk unless she wanted to.

On Peladon, Bernice Summerfield consumed a lot of wine during a meal with King Tarrol, in order to trick a pair of accompanying Ice Warriors into thinking she was drunk.

The Eighth Doctor tricked Vengorr into believing that he had contracted "the World Cup Fever" and told him that drinking wine was the only cure. Vengorr became so drunk he could not function and had to return to his homeworld, ostensibly to cure the fever. While Vengorr and Thon were drunkenly fighting, the Doctor was able to reprogrammed the transdimensional portal and send them to one of the moons of Mordelius Prime.

The Tenth Doctor, while acting drunker than he was, used the wine he had brought back from a party in France to disable the Clockwork Robots and rescue Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith. He also claimed to have just invented the banana daiquiri years ahead of its time.

Wine storage

Wine and other alcoholic beverages were often kept in special cellars created for the sole purpose of storing wine, called wine cellars. The Third Doctor noted that Sir Reginald Styles' cellar at Auderly House was "impeccable". The Seventh Doctor kept a fully stocked cellar at his house; Smithwood Manor where he had wines from every conceivable century on Earth as well as alien wines.

The Doctor

Several incarnations of the Doctor enjoyed drinking wine, with the third incarnation of the Doctor in particular enjoying a glass or two of red wine while guarding Auderly House, saying to Jo; "That's a most good-humoured wine. A touch sardonic, perhaps, but not cynical. A most civilised wine, one after my own heart." The Fourth Doctor described 1979 as more of a "table wine" of a year. By his ninth incarnation the Doctor could identify the year and place of origin of wine by its taste.

The Eleventh Doctor did not enjoy wine, spitting it back into the glass after taking a sip when given some at the house of Craig Owens. At Lake Silencio, the Eleventh Doctor brought a bottle that he said was thrown at him by Napoleon to drink at a picnic with Amy Pond, Rory Williams and River Song, but again spat it out, stating before he did that he must have tried it sometime in his life.

References