Three days, surely, is sufficient time to buy a bottle or two of wine, even for those who seldom imbibe? I thought so - but it doesn't seem so for my parents, for whom three days' notice that I'll be coming to stay wasn't long enough to incorporate a visit to a bottle store or a detour down the wine aisle at the supermarket. And so my 'childhood home' in Johannesburg was dry when I arrived after a day of back-to-back meetings on Monday this week.

In all honesty, it wasn't completely dry but they had just finished the Old Brown Sherry purchased last winter, and there was gin (but no tonic or lemonade), half an inch of whiskey (a tipple for which I have yet to develop an affinity), and a bottle of Amarula (which must have curdled since my Dad unwrapped it on his birthday some five years ago). It's nights like these when memories of great wines keep me company, and I'd had more than my share fair just a few evenings earlier at Christine Rudman's house.

Cape Wine Master Christine is one of the most generous people I know, particularly when it comes to sharing wines from the cellar that she and her late husband, cigar and port aficionado Theo, stocked. Many of these wines were bought during the 1970s and early '80s when Johannesburg drank mostly foreign wines and only those living in close proximity to the Cape wine lands drank its wines, according to Dave Hughes.

Christine had aptly christened her dinner 'Old Treasures' and the nine of us made our way through some 14 wines, not so much soaking up the alcohol but rather revelling in the perfect food matches prepared by her friend, Freda. The oldest of the 'treasures' was a 1947 Moulin Touchais from Anjou in the Loire and the youngest a 1995 Clos de Mazeray from Domaine Jacques Prieur from Meursault in Burgundy.

The flight, however, that intrigued me was that which paired a 1988 red Burgundy, Domaine de Comtes Lafon's Clos des Lambrays, with a wine 22 years its senior: the 1966 Chateau Ausone, from Bordeaux's right bank Saint- Emilion commune. Both were beautifully scented, with obvious but attractive aged characters of mushrooms and damp forest floor topping delicate, but still present, fruit. Their palates were seamless, balanced and long; neither suggested they should have been enjoyed any earlier.

My fascination lay in the fact that, for me and everyone else at the table, they were so very true to their respective origins because I share the same problem, when the wines are old, as Harry Waugh who reported retorted 'Not since lunch' when asked whether he ever confused Bordeaux with Burgundy. Actually, if one is fortunate to sip fine claret and Burgundy with lunch every day; can one really have any problems, particularly when it comes to food and wine matching? Which leads me to share with you this cartoon I found on the web:

PS: My Dad did volunteer to drive some 10 kms to my sister's house to raid her fridge but I opted to take a book to bed along with the sweet jar he and my Mom keep to appease my gaggle of nephews. Sour worms and Sugus: not exactly gourmet but somehow very appropriate.