Solitary pleasures, treats and infanticide  27 June 2006

Don't murder baby wines, urges Tim James in his latest noseweek article

Wine-drinkers don’t do it alone. It’s meant for sharing, preferably over a meal: wine-drinkers are far above aiming for mere vulgar drunkenness. So claim its propagandists, anyway, many of whom are rather doubtful of spirits and even good-natured beer, and share the widespread social unease about solitary pleasures. Fair enough. It’s also more fun to discuss an interesting wine (for those who can contemplate the idea of a wine being interesting) with someone other than oneself. But I confess to often drinking wine alone – less (I think) because of my moroseness or others’ dislike than because my evening meal is usually an unsocial affair.

So, in this column offering a few lessons and opinions from the depth of my wisdom and experience that is the first: drinking wine by yourself is fine, especially when it’s delicious.

Deliciousness is a factor sometimes underrated by wine critics and that’s another lesson, one which emerged in complex ways from a recent experience. A month into enduring my house being invaded for painting, fixing and patching, I’d spent the day cowering on a sofa with two scared dogs as, overhead, workmen lustily applied paint to the iron roof with hammers. A shattering day. When the weary painters left at five o’clock, the feeling of liberation was overwhelming. I went in search of a bottle.

Nothing intellectual or demanding; something delicious and comforting was called for. That means red wine for me, generally of the Mediterranean varieties: shiraz, grenache, mourvèdre; unpretentiously made, with no taste of new oak. The French still do such wines best, particularly in the Rhone valley. (Locally there are now some good examples of these shiraz-based blends, especially from the Swartland area. Unfortunately the best are not cheap, being priced for the international market: Lammershoek’s Roulette is R75 ex-farm (much more retail); Black Rock Red is decent value at about R88, and Sequillo is my favourite, and sadly the priciest at R121; all very recommendable.)

As I don’t have proper storage facilities at home apart from a wine-fridge, most of my wine is kept elsewhere; and casting about in decorator’s chaos, all that I could find in this category was a rather grand bottle: Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2001 (retailing for around R500). I decided to indulge myself absurdly.

From which at least two lessons emerge. Firstly: a winelover should always have a substantial stock of wine – as many hundreds of bottles as possible, as well stored as possible. Not only will your wine have a chance to mature, and not only will you have more of a choice, but, most importantly, you will wince less on opening expensive wine if you can scarcely remember paying for it. Having plenty available is a sure way of drinking better – you will obviously spend concomitantly more, but won’t notice it nearly as much as you would if you stick to ad hoc purchases. (This lesson is offered only to those of moderate means: for the poor and the rich it would be, for precisely opposite reasons, irrelevant.)

The second point is one that I stupidly ignored on this occasion, although I believe in it deeply: don’t spend a lot of money on a bottle of serious wine which is designed to mature over five, ten, twenty years, and then murder it in its infancy. It is a waste of money: often the grand wine won’t be as appealing in its youth as a more modest one, anyway, and will certainly not be delivering the qualities you are paying for.

My expensive Beaucastel treat was not, in fact, what I was wanting: the 2001 needs another decade before it opens into the joyous, complex wine it is going to be; as yet it is, frankly, rather tough and demanding. With food, and splashed airily around in a decanter, it was more ingratiating, but still  impressive rather than delicious…. I’d have enjoyed Sequillo more (or a humbler French equivalent like a Guigal Côtes-du-Rhone, available locally for somewhat less – around R90).

A legal aside
Unconnectedly, but as noseweek readers seem to have an interest in our judiciary I thought I should point out that embattled (as they say) Cape Judge President John Hlophe is pretty keen on wine and on making it: ‘Hlophe Shiraz’ might already be in barrel, for all I know, at the as yet unnamed Paarl winefarm he owns along with six others. One of these is Judge Braam Lategan – not someone I would immediately expect our new judicial eminences to be pals with. Lategan (also an owner of another Paarl winery, Domaine Brahms) achieved some notoriety in some circles as one of the apartheid regime’s keenest ‘hanging judges’ – he sent 29 people to the gallows in one notably fruitful two-year period in the mid 1980s alone. I always find his wines to be of a particularly disconcerting shade of red.

• This article first appeared in Noseweek, 'South Africa's unique investigative magazine''