About 18 years ago my missus and I lost our marbles, got into our car and decided to drive to Cape Town from Gauteng. We were making memories, we reckoned. Because I was (am?) a cheapskate, I scoffed at the idea of wasting our hard-earned cash on hotels, so we crashed with one of my wife’s friends from her Cape Town days as a student. Poor Masiza was then saddled with the responsibility of not only hosting us, but having to play tour guide for my benefit. This is how it came about that on one glorious Saturday morning we left his house and set out for the Cape winelands. The mission; wine estate crawling.
I’d like to interrupt regular programming by making a confession. I know next to nothing about wine. I’ve always been a neo-chimp, chest-thumping and loud belching, beer-guzzling Neanderthal. Well, I’ve also been a bourbon man as well. (I know, I know, you can’t account for lack of class). In any case, my beer consumption over the past 30-odd years earned me the BGM moniker from my Durban circle of friends. They even made me a T-shirt with Beer Guzzling Machine emblazoned on the chest. So, when we paid about R100 apiece for a wine tasting session, I was not there to discover and appreciate new wines. I turned into a WGM, a wine guzzling machine. This is not to say I didn’t discover wines I liked. But that was purely coincidental. I went there to drink. By the time we left the first estate I had consumed at least the equivalent of a bottle of wine — just 23 different wines. Our tour guide, Masiza, kept poking me in the ribs: “Chap, you have to pace yourself. We have three more wine houses to go to.”
I’m not only sharing this story to embarrass myself, my family and my children. However, I come from the AmaQadi clan, which means that I am the spawn of generations of alcoholics. I have maintained a battle-ready stance against ethanol for the past 15 years or so. I’m proud to say that over the past three years, in particular, I have turned a corner like Orlando Pirates. I write this mindful of the upcoming Soweto Derby, which means that the precious sentence might not age very well by the time you read this. But just like the Mighty Bucs, should they falter, I always pick myself up — as I did after the Christmas break at my brother Mxolisi’s house in Kokstad. On Family Day I was so beerful I went around hugging my aunts, nieces and nephews, professing my deep love for them with tears running down my swollen face. However, the abridged story of my 2024 is that I was dry for eight months of the year. This is a far cry from the year 2004, for instance, when I once staggered into my house at 4am and gave a kitchen mop a stern lecture about the dangers of Rastafarianism and marijuana.
In any case, I have come to the conclusion that I am a wine philistine. I only know two kinds of wine: wines that I enjoy and dragon piss that I can’t stomach. And all white wines belong in the latter category for me. It’s so bad that I might be known to add a splash of grape juice or Sprite just to make it slightly bearable.
At this point I’m going to make a sweeping statement and say that I don’t think I’m alone in these dark corridors of savagery. I think that most of you people are pretentious philistines who lie through your teeth when the maître d’ comes around to describe the flavour of the wine. Yes, you, you and you! I think you pretend to taste the “ever so slight whiff of plums, strawberries and a hint of pepper that should hit the roof of your palate”.
This is why, when I do order a bottle of wine in a restaurant, I order according to how much money I’m willing to spend (that cap is R500, assuming it’s a special occasion such as a full moon at that.) The next time I consume alcohol is probably going to be in about two months. If I do buy wine, it will be a red blend. And I will refrigerate it because I’m tired of warm wine. Room temperature in Europe is not the same as room temperature in Boksburg. And if the two bottles I get for R120 are on the vinegary side, I will definitely add red grape juice. If you don’t like that, Poursuivez-moi en justice. That’s fancy talk for ‘sue me and kiss me where the sun don’t shine’.
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