darling books: wine of a hot bright scent

  But Jay was not listening. He lifted the glass to his face.
  The scent hit him again, the dim cidery scent of Joe's house, with the incense burning and the tomato plants ripening in the kitchen window. For a moment thought he heard something, a clatter and glitzy confusion of glass, like a chandelier falling onto a laid table. He took a mouthful.
  'Cheers.'
  It tasted as dreadful as it did when he was a boy. There was no grape in this brew, simply a sweetish ferment of flavours, like a whiff of garbage. It smelt like the canal in summer and the derelict railway sidings. It had a acrid taste, like smoke and burning rubber, and yet it was evocative, catching at his throat and his memory, drawing out images he thought were lost for ever. He clenched his fists as the images assailed him, feeling suddenly light-headed.
  'Are you OK?' It was Kerry's voice, resonant, as if in a dream. She sounded irritated, though there was an anxious edge to her voice. 'Jay, I told you not to drink that stuff, are you all right?'
  He swallowed with an effort.

Joanne Harris: Blackberry Wine (picture from Wikipedia). While Harris' later novels are too dark for me, this one makes me want to buy a derelict house in France, fall in love, make peace with my childhood memories, and yes, drink homemade, magic wine. This book is evocative, like its wine. It has "a breeze of other places - a scent of apples, a lullaby of passing trains and distant machinery and the radio playing."