Benchmark 18 July 2007

A tale of wine furniture aspiration
(Anonymous, as the author does not wish to be publicly identified as ignorant)

‘Among several fortified wines which crossed my tasting bench lately a few stood out.’

                                    - Michael Fridjhon, Business Day, 10 July 2007

There was something crossing my tasting bench the other day, or so I thought, but perhaps it was only a cockroach scurrying off. In fact, it might not even have been an insect, as there was a flicker of the light bulb, and my imagination was probably indulging in imitating whatever grand people do when whatever crosses their tasting benches. Who knows?

It isn’t was if there were any wine bottles around. Well, not where I imagined I saw something crossing. Wine, in our wine-loving house, is usually just enjoyed and the bottles chucked out.

Of course, I was only fantasising about the tasting bench thingy too. Admittedly, it was a rather hazy fantasy. I wasn’t quite sure what a tasting bench is. Still am not. So I sat down on the bar stool beneath the Pierneef print and gave it some thought.

‘Bench, bench, bench?’ I said to Mikey (our old Maltese which used to be called ‘Maatjie’ before the wife got all fancy), who took no notice. To start, I tried to visualise a bench....

At school, yonks ago, there were those slap-lid contraptions. Ah, memories! Like the year we used to play bench volley-ball in two teams. You were not allowed to get out of your school bench, but, for the rest, everything was allowed. They knew how to build benches in those days.

There were also church benches and, yes, benches in the locker room. And there’s a little odd, oblong two-foot thingy that falls over the moment Mikey tries to jump on it: it came from the wife’s family, who called it a ‘foot bench’.

Just then the wife walked by. She must have overheard my mutterings, and said (helpful as always): ‘There’s also the bench that clever cousin of yours says he sits on.’ I tried to imagine cousin John in his red outfit pouring wine into little glasses perched on the thingy in front of him, sniffing and sipping and perhaps passing one to the Clerk of the Court. 

I poured myself a good glass of Axe Hill Port (for its winey mouthfeel - the afternoon was well on its way, while I was getting more deeply engaged with this existential wine bench problem).

Then I remembered about the workbench in the garage. Not having done anything in the woodwork line for years, I wasn’t sure any more exactly what it looked like, though I could recall that first day after schlepping it back from ... was it, Makro?... and I wanted to try out the my also-new Black and Decker drill and inflicted upon the virgin wooden surface a perfectly round hole.

Maybe I could turn the old workbench into a tasting bench and then learn more about wine? Does a tasting bench have slots for special tasting glasses? What the hell does a tasting bench look like?

I turned in desperation to Google.

Fat help that turned out to be. The only vaguely relevant picture that I could find in conjunction with the words ‘tasting bench’ was a funny little stool thing made from, of course, old bits of wine barrel. How that podgy little contrivance could be of assistance in the high art of tasting and evaluating wine was beyond me. That can't be it.

Even my usually-fired-up-by-a-good-port imagination was now failing.

There you have it: I lied. Nothing crossed my tasting bench the other day. There wasn’t even a tasting bench. I still have no idea what a tasting bench is, except that it’s certainly something to aspire to.