Wine faux pas

As a wino, we occasionally come across some of the funniest experiences, questions and mistakes. A friend was so kind to send this list of Cathy Marston to me, but I have many more of my own…


 I once stood politely behind a stand at a large wine tasting listening to some old bat fulminating for what seemed like hours about her hatred for Chardonnay. She finished up her diatribe with the words "So I never drink the stuff - I only drink Chablis!" I was young, I was tired, I could perhaps have been more tactful in my response - but she never bought wine from us again. Oh dear. (Chablis is Chardonnay)

 The best one I heard was the girl behind a prestigious winery's tasting counter pouring wine for a customer who sniffed it and pointed out to her that it was corked. Baby-blues wide and an anxious smile on her face, she informed him "But sir - all our wines are corked!"

 I had a similar experience to the above in a sushi restaurant the other day when I told the waiter that the wine was corked and asked for a replacement. Much muttering and conferring behind the bar eventually produced a bottle of a completely different wine (a screwcapped one - guess where this tale is going...) with the apology that this was the only wine which wasn't corked.

 And then of course there is the waiter in the terribly smart restaurant in Camp's Bay endeavouring to open a screwcapped bottle with his waiter's friend. He struggled for several minutes before we pointed this out to him - in self-defence, we did tip him very nicely!

 And finally - although not technically a wine gaffe, I think this definitely counts as a complete social no-no. I remember seeing a couple going round at the end of a big tasting in the UK with a large 5litre plastic container. They were emptying the spittoons into it and I asked my colleague what on earth they were doing. "Oh, they take that home to cook with" was his reply. "Wine, spit, canapé crumbs - the lot."

Mine include:

 The obvious pronunciation errors eg Mer-lotte instead of Mer-low, and Pino-ta-jay instead of Pino-taj, which subtly distinguish the wino from the wine-pert (my nickname for a wine expert with their nose a little too high in the air). Incidentally, both the words obvious and subtle are also so often mispronounced as to distinguish the person, but perhaps I’m just splitting hairs…

 The shocked look on any Gautengalenga’s face when we sadly inform them that no, we do not, in fact, make any form, variation or style of sweet wine.

 After reading the somewhat flowery descriptions of the wine (lime infusion morphing into a tropical fruit explosion, with a bouquet of roses etc), the question often comes up “So, how do you make these flavours? Do you, like, inject the essence into the wine?” Oh dear. No, we don’t. The French would shudder.

More will follow! But in the meantime remember, In vino veritas! Long live Bacchus...