Okay ladies, despite knocking back the odd glass of Four Cousins at the Cheese Festival or taking an illicit toke from my glass of Port while I was glued to Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, you reached legal drinking age this year. Next year – 2015 – will be your first full year as wine consumers.
Having a slight bit more experience in this field, I gladly and humbly offer you some sage advice on the wine world.
- All wine is made from grapes and it is made in the same way. Drink the wine that you find the most enjoyable, for at the end of the day the best wine is the one in your glass – except for the wine from those wooden cases in the dark cellar under Mia’s room. You know, those with the French names “Burgundy” and “Bordeaux”. Those are not the kind you’d like. Coffee Pinotage and JC le Roux Chanson are far better.
- When it comes to sparkling wine, stick to Méthod Cap Classique. Any guy buying you French Champagne is just trying to get into your pants. Trust me.
- You have enjoyed visiting wineries from a young age. When doing so as young women, do not splash your bodies with Issey Miyake, Boss or Chanel. No matter how expensive the perfume or how good the wine, any combination of the two makes you reek like a slut. But women have a superior sense of smell to men, so you should know this.
- All wine goes with all food. Just take small bites and big sips.
- Always shower after doing a tasting in the Swartland and check yourselves for hidden creepy-crawlies nestling somewhere in that young flesh. Pregnancy tests are advisable, but optional.
- No, you cannot use your car-keys to open a bottle of wine in lieu of a cork-screw. Which is alright seeing as you don’t have cars yet, and I ain’t selling my Montrachet collection. So whê.
- Should you think of marrying a wine maker who uses American oak on Chardonnay, I am not paying for the wedding.
- Spare yourselves and do not read the stuff I stare at in newspapers and wine publications or on blogs. For the youth there are far bigger concerns and matters of interest than the merits of the Platter Wine Guide, the demarcation intricacies of South Africa’s wine producing regions and the ripening challenges of Cape Merlot. If you start getting into that stuff at your age, you will be wearing pyjamas to social events and grow feint moustaches by the time you are 25.
- A wine snob is a common creature. Think of a tattooed middle-aged man wearing Crocs and a Miley Cyrus T-shirt. Same thing. No-one knows better than you about what it is you like or dislike in a wine.
- Having said that, never trust a wine steward who cannot pronounce Châteauneuf-du-Papes or who smiles lasciviously when saying Romanée-Conti.
- Your bodies are temples – or so I am told – but they can turn into wine fermentation barrels if you overdo it. Drinking moderately is a virtue. Especially if you are not paying your own way yet.
- Drinking wine on your own is quite alright. Just wipe the lipstick from your glass afterwards.
- Do not date a guy who has a gripe with South Africa’s national grape, Pinotage. He is either secretly gay, a clandestine child-molester, has Communist leanings or is planning a career in wine blogging.
- A man may put ice into your wine, but not into your underwear.
- Remember, your first sip of red Premier Cru Burgundy is way better than your first kiss, and you will never forget the wine’s name.
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