WHAT DOES SOMEONE’S WINE

Who are you?

LIKE A BOOKSHELF, you can TELL A LOT from a person’s WINE COLLECTION by Dave Biggs

Ionce heard a philosopher friend say you could judge the character of a person by running your eye over the books on their bookshelves.

Collections of matched classics? Expensive leather-bound volumes with gold-tooled spines? Dickens, Kipling, Milton, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Tennyson, Bronte? Forget it. e man’s a phony. Probably inherited the books from an ancestor and never read any of them. ey’re there strictly to impress visitors.

On the other hand, a collection of well-thumbed paperback books that touch on subjects like history, nature, cooking, travel, rugby, bee-keeping, politics, motorcycling and navigation indicates an owner with a wide range of interests and probably a lively, curious mind. I’d be happy to spend time in the company of such a person. the quiet joy of married love. 0r it could result in an explosion of erce passion that leaves you ful lled and emotionally exhausted. e only thing that’s certain is that it will never be the same again. Once the cork is pulled, that particular wine can never be enjoyed again. It has become a precious memory shared by only the one or two people who were there when it was opened. is is why I regard the opening of any bottle of wine as an emotional experience. It can be the calm, comfortable experience of the love between the partners in a longstanding marriage, or it can be the erce passionate discovery of a red-hot bond between two new lovers. ere’s a wine to suit every mood.

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SOUTH AFRICAN CONNOISSEUR

I suppose you can also tell a great deal about somebody by taking a look at the contents of their wine cellar. Are those wines there to be enjoyed or merely admired? Does the cellar owner say, “ e 2017 was the best vintage ever produced in the Swartland, and I have six bottles stored in the cellar. Let’s open one now.” Or does he just say smugly, “I have six bottles of the great 2017 vintage. ey’re probably the last bottles le in the country. ey must be worth a fortune.” e point is that wines, like books, are there to be enjoyed. To be experienced. Unlike books, wines can be experienced only once. A er that, it’s just a memory and an empty bottle. is is what makes wine such a mystical, magical thing. Like physical love (okay, sex), it can never be the same more than once. When the cork is pulled it could produce a calm pleasure like

Illustration by: Chloe Damstra