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...

Thesis

Today I was supposed to start writing my thesis. Actually I was supposed to start writing on the 14th April when my lecturer gave me the go-ahead, but I decided to take a little ‘break’ until it was officially approved by the Board. My little break followed pretty much the same pattern as a normal day of work, i.e. get in late, scourge the internet for cool stuff and head out to lunch early. Sadly, my little holiday is up, and today is the day.

However, when I came into work this morning, I had an annoying beaurocratic surprise waiting for me in the form of a whole invigilation timetable. Bleugh. This gave me about 15 minutes of working out exactly when and what, and then about 45 minutes of bitching and complaining to my colleague about the total unfairness of it all. This brings us to 10h00, a mere 15 minutes before I had to leave for my hair appointment. I managed to write one, very badly constructed, sentence. It uses little punctuation and pretty much doesn’t have a subject. Where the hell do you start to write a 180-page thesis? I am completely stumped.

After my (hair-raising) haircut (I am being a cheap little Jew about luxuries this month and paid a minimal amount for a haircut from a trainee hairdresser), the colleague and I had missed our daily coffee break and so HAD to walk all the way to the local to buy some. (This is a classic example of the ‘procrastination cup’ as in my last blog post). All of these critically important activities managed to fill the day and bring us to now (12h30). Since it’s only half an hour until lunch, I see little point in writing my thesis since I don’t really have any focus/motivation/pressure/will to do anything with brainpower. In any case, my farm needs harvesting and I have 13 games in FB scrabble in which to make a move.

Did I mention that I do all of this while at work? Since I have no work, this is what my department pays me to do. It’s a tough life.

In other news, my hair looks great! Check out Head Boys salon for appointments…

My top ten Favourite Coffees

1. The first cup of coffee when you get to work in the morning. Before anything gets done, the warm silky caffeine kick that makes you feel somewhat human.

2. The procrastination cup (usually hunts in packs). This cup features alarmingly often during any study session, resulting in the two-fold downfall of time-wasting and lack of concentration due to caffeine high.

3. The morning-after coffee. Takes like warm sticky sludge and always has too much sugar in it. Necessary purely for survival.

4. The I’m-sad-and-tearful-pms cup. This usually tastes mildly salty, whether from licking one’s salty lips or tears dripping into the cup. Mostly only useful for pressing against your tummy and feeling sorry for yourself. Sometimes also synonymous with the you’re-a-bastard-and-are-making-me-cry boyfriend apology cup.

5. The I-gave-up-coffee-for-lent-and-this-is-my-first-cappuccino. Silky caresses of foamy milk and hot strong espresso and mmmmmm……

6. The “skinner” cup. Coffee brewed, served and drunk for the sole purpose of facilitating a gossip session. Can be re-filled several hundred times, depending on the prettiness of the girl and the juiciness of the story.

7. The getting-to-know-you-cup. Coffee drank again for the sole purpose of getting closer to another person with the hopes of a date. Apparently, there are hundreds of rules surrounding how this coffee should be approached (don’t have too high hopes, don’t bring a buddy, go somewhere central yet where very few of your mutual acquaintances hang out), how to solicit it (like you can’t sms the person, it has to be casually suggested after a mutual class), how long it should last etc. If you have been in a relationship for a few years (like I had) and then tried to hit the single work of dating-coffee without a full brief, you would flail and drown like a legless pirate.

8. The Kahlua-coffee (variants include the Irish coffee and the Grappa espresso). The delightful little gem served after dinner, or all on its own, combines two beautiful things in one beautiful cup and warms you from your throat to your toes. Best served on winter nights.

9. The Mountain coffee. Served from a silver flask into a convenient lid-cap on the side of a mountain at below-freezing temperatures at an ungodly hour. Usually brought by the cheerful bugger who promised a lovely walk up the mountain (here I have visions of a leafy lane and lots of waterfalls) and you end up wading through freezing river streams at 400ft. This smidgen mouthful of coffee is the only thing that stops you from killing him.

10. Home coffee. The 6 or 7 cups a day I have when home for a weekend, made by either mom and dad, shared with both mom and dad. The safest, warmest and most delicious cuppa java you will ever drink in your life is the one that you have right in your own home. I’m soppy, so sue me.

Friday afternoon joys...

It's just beautiful. 'Nuff said.

Tagline

While filling in a an application for a conference the other day, I came across the question

“If you were a brand, what would your tagline be?”

Naturally, my first response was to google ‘best taglines’, just to see what was out there. There are some amazing ones, like Apple’s

“Think Different”

and then there are shockers, like the one K-fm is pumping out at the moment for the World Cup

“If you aren’t in Cape Town during the World Cup – you suck”.

I get that it’s straight to the point and the message is clear, but it’s hardly something that will go down into the annals of history. In any case, the google search then morphed into the WORST taglines in history. There aren’t many. There are, however, loads of the worst MOVIE taglines, which I have so kindly collated here for you:

http://www.moviezeal.com/ten-worst-movie-taglines-ever/

Nights alone

Nights on your own are less fun than you’d think. Sure, every magazine advises that us girls take some time out, chill out with ourselves and re-charge our batteries. The boy is away in Pretoria, the housemate out until further notice. I had my weekly dinner with the best friend last night, and then went for drinks with the drinking buddy. So far, have exhausted all my hang out passes for the week. The other awesome choices have all removed themselves from the social scene to visit their boyfriends/study for exams/live in hermanus. So, since I have just been paid and never have a night alone, I decided to splurge. On myself.

Inventory = One bottle odd bins Shiraz 2006 (looked promising), small slab (I don’t get paid THAT much) 70% cocoa Lindt chocolate, one Cleo magazine (I can’t even defend that one...embarrassing I know) and one trashy feminist art novel. I snuggled down on the couch, the weather so very kindly playing along and giving me stunning winter rain and wind against my window. I let the wine breathe (obviously – it’s just correct) for a sumtotal of 10 seconds and had a glass. A mouthful of chocolate and a chapter into the book later, life was good. The only thing that caused me to break was the 6.30 call of 7de Laan. After that, however, the excitement level dropped distinctly.

I then sms’d pretty much everyone I know to detail the scene above and brag.

That was fine, but I only got one response. It sucks when people aren’t jealous.

Ho hum ho hum....so I finished the book. I then decided to cook for the at-some-point-in-the-future-to-return flatmate. Ok. Done. So I read the magazine. Ok. Half the bottle is now gone, and I am seriously not feeling the alone vibe. So I put on some Rihanna and dance around the room. Fun for about 15 seconds in total.

I then sms’d pretty much EVERYONE in my phone book trying to convince someone to come out on this rainy night and see me in my not-very-flattering I-don’t-ever-expect-company-again sweatpant/pyjamas and drink wine with me. NOT ONE TAKER!

Sufficed to say, I got seriously bored all on my own. Eventually I put on an old Enya cd and went to bed. Please, in the interests of my sanity, next time I sms you and ask you to come over, just do. Next time may be suicide...

Things I like about me

1.       I eat meat. Because it is awesome. Your carbon footprint may be smaller, but so is your brain. Take that, herbivores (in T-rex accent).

2.       I drink wine. Wine makes your heart strong, your brain pretty and your liver want to be a donor. I did studies.

3.       I struggle to exercise. Don’t get me wrong, I do it and I like it once its done. But I struggle to get motivated because I am human and inherently lazy.

4.       I tell racist jokes. Shut up, so do you. Even if you only do once you’ve checked over your shoulder.

5.       I think I’m better than most other people. ‘Nuff said.

6.       I read trashy Mills ‘n Boon novels. Its awesome reading about people who are stupider than you in order to justify No. 5. Plus, steamy stuff is fun to read.

7.       I am happy when my ex-boyfriend’s girlfriend is fatter/dumber/uglier than me. Because I win. At everything.

8.       I am occasionally jealous of my friends. They are fabulous, awesome people (which is why I choose to have them surround me) but sometimes its hard not to want to be what they are.

9.       I lie about my weight. I am not even going to justify the stupidity of that one.

10.   I love my boyfriend and I want to post hundreds of facebook status updates about how amazing and sexy and special he is, and I love that people are jealous of the kind of relationship we have.

And for all of these things, I am truly thankful, for they are what have made me a real person.