Pinning the tail on it

May you live in interesting times, and have many children. A clichéd and perhaps spurious Chinese curse, certainly, but no less profound for that. A cliché being in this case a truism, but too wearisome to ruminate on, and therefore filed away in the sound of its own words, lest we forget it not. This morning I had a dream of a faintly Andy Warholean character; unimportant exactly what, but it left me alerted, realising something about religion and society and power I somehow seem to have not allowed until now: we’re prone to believe we live in a secular society, but we might very well live in the most religious phase of mankind yet, if counting gods brings any truth to the matter. Our gods: every actor, every politician, every specialist, every representative (be it of a Party or of love and partnership or, merely, of the truck which picks up the garbage); just about every person we meet, in other words. We might not go on our knees and repent (all that regularly), nor do we utter oaths in their name as a rule, or pray unto them, in quite those words. But they are religious entities and feed on our need for those, as much as, and, I’d venture, even more than, in times today considered more religious. A provocative statement, you might say, and perhaps I’d be lying if I’d say not, but it bears thought, I think, and might shed some light on a few things awry today. If, of course, I may be granted this uncareful presumption.

There appears to be a degree of consent these days, for which we have more than Marx or Nietzsche to thank, that religiousness may have the occasional downside. This is said to hold, of course, mainly for the religions of other people; especially if held closely and dearly. This opprobity could be as heart-felt as intellectual, not to mention institutionalised, as seems the wont of not only the US government. It is not solely the latter which should raise the warning flags, as it does, but also the first, and, dare I say, the second. No-one seemed to like much what Bush did (excepting, perhaps, slightly less than half of all Americans, and quite a few more, not saying anything, who liked it enough), perchance flinging the odd tomato at it, but appearing more than happy to bend over, as it were, and pick up popcorn from the floor of where the other two are concerned. What feeds the misgivings of the emotional response to fervent religion, as much as the intellectual response to it, is the very thing which supports them. It is, simply said, its own shadow, or its tail, if you will. Every intellectual, every committed atheist, feels the beast of fundamentalism cowering in her own breast, scribbled into the margins and the hesitations of his own books.

Back to Andy: Mr Warhol wanted me to realise that I was him; that we all are him. That the face which we don every morning to the world, as silly and contrived as it may well be, will be two things: the only face we have, firstly, but also, the face the world will be praying to. So, pick a face, remembering that we are who we pretend to be. But this is only the beginning, these being interesting times and all. We’ll also be attending the church of the unbeliever, if we’re not careful; buying healthily slaughtered food, listening to sustainable earth-friendly music, arresting the run of free run chickens and free-run juice alike, not to mention free-run thought, dynamising the dynamic, burying the inert, and digging it up again, to be alive. This same church, however, if we are careful, will be a happy church. Because we’ll be kept busy, and our demons with us. Tom Cruise will be an actor (as would Angelina, and John Malkovich), with us looking out of their eyes; Gandhi will be sprinkling sea salt on our food, quietly resisting; Bush would be us talking, putting our feet in deeper, every second, killing what’s guilty and what’s innocent, alike; what we think we know best will be nodding our consent, and showing us ignorant, of everything and all; what we believe in will be preached to us, what we fear most, imposed on us; what we love will end up hating us, who we hate, loving us; the garbage can collector will be going about his job, noisily and smelling of trash, as would we. So, in the end, if there is at all and end to this all, there won’t be much deciding, merely living, except perhaps picking where exactly to be pinning the tail on the donkey. And may we, indeed, as these are interesting times, pick well.

Choosing Power or Empowering Choice?

If I have the choice again (alas, we shall remain victims, and dizzied beneficiaries, of economies of scale), I should only ever buy things I have never seen advertisements for. It’s not some hidden rule, making for a fuller life, but as a default, as a rule of thumb, it might just make that little bit sense. It gets worse: whenever I encounter an item I feel I might need and I sense that this desire has anything to do with some form of (call it) “hype”, I shall either buy some other equivalent, or seemingly blander, item, or not buy anything at all.

“Pain, without love..”

By a slip of reason, information has come to be seen as a commodifiable saleable substance. A form of production. This is a long and complicated subject and I don’t have all the facts and theory at my finger tips, as it were. But if information can be a commodity, decision would be one too, and be considered a form of production. When decision is appropriated by those who have so-called power and turned into a commodity for consumption by those who are said to need it. Need I even elaborate further?

Apart from the “free will theorem”, which I, incidentally and perhaps wrongly, see as mostly a bunch of pseudo-scientific claptrap, I am no great believer in the notion of free will. Gasp! How can you say this? Also this is beside the point here – perhaps when I’ve found words and occasion to elaborate my misgivings, I shall do so. Choice, free or not, on the other hand, is something we’re confronted with at every moment. And what, may one ask, is the difference between choice and decision? As cauliflower was once described as cabbage with a college education, decision is perhaps choice with a funny hat and a tassel. Choice, in a sense, is the mother of all production. Not only does one choose courses of creative or otherwise productive action, but choices made amongst available items to consume, pro-actively or retro-actively, influence production. When one chooses to buy a piece of pork from the local supermarket shelf, a (part of a) pig dies. Mostly somewhere in the past, but very much. It’s somewhat like a form of remote-controlled blind time-travel, and no less real than slaughtering one’s own. In fact…

Naturally it would benefit someone with some degree of insatiability for controlling things, such as politicians, CEOs and husbands*, to be able to control choice. Money, the way it is seen today, is a way of controlling someone’s environment, if nothing else. If you can get someone to give you some of his/her money, you can get them to choose something else you want them to choose. As simple as that. You (the one who gets to hand over the hard-earned) are transported from “your” world into “their” world. This might sound familiar, especially to an African-American who thinks back far enough. Or to anyone perusing a piece of medieval literature. But there it is.

Agreed, everyone wants to control things to some extent. Try not doing this and see where it lands you. But it helps to remain aware of the mechanisms at work in seemingly normal actions, such as buying those chips they had on TV last night. My warning lights tend to illuminate when I sense that something starts to point at itself. When things become self-referential. Think of it this way: you’re sitting around watching telly and generally minding your own business. Up comes an ad for McCain’s. Tomorrow, in the store, you’re reminded of this by the picture on the package and the bag ends up in the trolley. (Let’s say you weren’t concentrating when you read this.) But the picture on the TV flashed a glimpse of something which looked like a burger. The kids definitely didn’t miss this. So burgers there’ll have to be, but which? Oh no, they didn’t say. Fortunately another ad you thought you’d forgotten fills this gaping abyss – in goes a box of icy cellophane-separated pucks. What was that ketchup they showed the little ‘uns splashing over their buns? Must remember to look tonight, but let’s grab a few sheets of cheese first.

Soon they’ll be charging us for watching advertisements. So you think they aren’t? And time spent watching doesn’t count? Oh boy! See, time either is a commodity or it isn’t. If you’ve ever thought the phrase “some time for myself”, it probably is to you. It’s precious, it has value to you. By sitting and watching TV, you’re paying. Time, electricity, DSTV subscription. And tomorrow, in the shop, you’re paying again: time (well, how much fun is it?), VISA card, parking, listening to Checkers Hyper ads over the strained-sounding PA. In one word: stress. Because some little voice in your head knows this is all wrong. All so very wrong. But everyone does it. 17 quadrillion flies can’t be wrong.

Have I any suggestions, apart from my near-impossible rule-of-thumb? In fact, yes: spend more money. Slow down – make time. (This does make sense – once one gets one’s head around it. The Kundera I haven’t read yet, but Gleick makes a good enough point in “Faster”.) Go to that organic market or the Italian deli on the corner and buy the expensive stuff. Trust the guy behind the counter – he’s probably losing a lot of money to supermarkets anyway, and can’t really afford to lose any customers due to lack of integrity. I said ‘probably’. If he’s an old guy with a simple smile and not a few lines of concern on his face, even better. You know who these people are; I don’t have to tell you. And if you don’t, find them, because they won’t find you. Not in you own lounge, anyway.

* I might as well have said “wives” or “girlfriends” here, but I didn’t.

Attention Span – The Difference between Food and Fodder

I wonder how many people have looked at a cow grazing and have wondered whether she’s enjoying what she’s doing. Or at a horse. If I had to bet, a horse does and a cow doesn’t. But this kind of questioning is thoroughly moot. Even though one may one day (probably today already) look at neural activation patterns of eating animals and notice similarities to patterns arising from other activities more likely to produce or indicate pleasure, there simply is no way to know whether the sensations these animals experience are similar to ones we experience. In their world they prefer to do it, a lot of the time. It is the same question, in fact, as whether they need to do it, if frustration is not to be accounted for. In the end it’s a bit like breathing: they simply do it.

Two rather upsetting experiences form the mood for this rant. The first, somewhat embarrassingly, a simple request for butter in a very middle-of-the-road Italian restaurant, met with an abrupt “no, we don’t serve butter with this.” It might have been laudable – I enjoy the occasional raised eyebrow when cappuccino is ordered after lunch. (I also enjoy the occasional cappuccino after lunch, timidly.) The problem was the “this”, the alternatives to butter on offer and who it was who had been doing the offering – in the first case: ciabatta bread. Right, Italian folks don’t use butter much if they can use olive oil. Fine. Secondly, how much of a tradition can be attributed to ciabatta – a bread, as far as I have been able to learn, only baked since the early eighties, originally in Liguria, the home of pesto, for sandwiches. In Rome it’s served with salt, olive oil and marjoram, they say. In Milan I had it with parmesan shavings and oil, in Luxembourg with chilli oil, parmesan and fresh garlic. Elsewhere solo, with salt, as ubiquitous panini or, regrettably, with vinegar and oil. But very fresh, usually, and without attitude. Here it was oil and balsamic vinegar – at most a fad limply elevated to tradition and subsequently embalmed as religion. Which brings me to the who: a restaurant that serves the blandest, stodgiest, most astringent lasagne I’ve eaten to date. Including my own rather desperate attempts – at least I don’t use margarine..

In fact, my butrous request was nostalgically motivated by a recent slice of crisply yielding ciabatta, heavy with a slab of butter and two anchovies – served to me in a restaurant known to ceremoniously (or unceremoniously, depending on where one looks from) escort out clientèle with a lack of Italianate diffidence. Three cheers for them!

The second experience surely was nothing. A mere sign above a restaurant entrance: Japanese Tapas. The question to ask is this: what exactly upset me so much about this seemingly innocuous utterance? Surely not any notion of tradition – most “Japanese” foods we see today (sushi, teppanyaki, meat, for that matter) are more American than Japanese. This somehow doesn’t bother me much. The ensuing conversation at the sushi table surely was a bit frustrating: my Dutch friend maintained, while poring intently at a plate of Unagi Maki, that the Dutch use “tapas” as a general term for finger food. Maybe they do. The Dutch are known for borrowing words, and I certainly have no problem with that. There was something else though; something I had to think about for a while before it started making sense. It had to do with tradition, or, rather, our notions thereof. Specifically with the commercialising and politicising of tradition. (Ask Steiner* what’s wrong with that.) There is one reason and, bearing in mind the Occamesque “never attribute to malice that which could be adequately be explained by stupidity”, only one reason why I would like to take down said signage: it’s a bluff, a commercial sleight of hand, preying on ignorance and an indifferent and passive need for sophistication, to sell something, which perhaps no-one would think of buying on their own. In fact: it refers to something that doesn’t even exist. (And if it does, it would be sold in a seemingly Spanish establishment in Tokyo, not here.) Why not just call it izakaya food or sakana, or stick to Japanese finger food or, simply, tapas, if these are indeed the descendants of Spanish bar morsels, covered against flies or sand or used to discourage wine odours. Or “fusion tapas”, if that is what is meant. Or call it Hispano-Japanese smorgasbord. At least some pun and intentional irony could be found in this. Exactly here lies the rub: it wants to make less, not more. Because there’s too much already, and no-one is listening any more. Come to think of it, it does make more; it makes another nothing from something. Something that’s already there, but much too hard to look for amongst the clutter of other empty promises and hype and fad and glit. Another self-fulfilling promise in a sea of sameness, to put too fine a point on it.

I’ve said too much already. Let me rather not start about rare tuna. Freshly Bestowed from Our Church of the Lady of the Uncooked Fish. Or about fruit-driven wines, for that matter. My point is made.

 In the end, the difference between fashion and tradition is concentration. Or attention span, if you will. Fashion might be tomorrow’s tradition, but until tomorrow it’s nothing but yesterday’s fad. Something to chew on. So I’ll have to ask myself some day: how long have you been concentrating?

*Another friend has kindly pointed out that I might be too hermetic about the whole, well., thing. I’m referring to Social Threefolding.

I’m not sure whether he is right, and I tend to feel strongly about (not) using too many too literal references. But maybe he has a point. In the words of the poet: those of us not busy being born, are busy dying. Or something to that effect.

Complexity, Humility and Wine

The biggest thing lacking, if I were the one to be asked, from society today is humility. Humility in its broadest sense – of knowing that one does not know. Phrases like “what actually happened”, while the germ of scientific thinking, form part of just about any evocation, not excluding this piece of writing. Inevitably, it seems.

Enough has been said of the bias in histories, the assumptions of psychologies, the bold exclusions and inclusions in philosophies, art movements, politics, law. Even science isn’t always the science it set out to be. It doesn’t take a divorce lawyer to assert the magnitude of divergence between testimonies of a plaintiff and a defendant. Yet, most would agree, one set of events transpired. There is an “outside” vantage point to the events; an objective description. But is there?

The vagaries of by far the greater part of biodynamic thinking, if I may call it so, are not known to me. Perhaps I should be bold and say: not overtly known to me. Yet, somehow, I’m drawn to them. Of course it is a little bit weird to fill a cow horn with powdered quartz, to bury it from spring to autumn, dig it up, mix the contents with water and to spray it over crops mostly minding their own business. Or to harvest and sow by a lunar calendar. I’m sure I could come up with far weirder examples from our daily lives, randomly gathered from a set of bedrooms, corporations, abattoirs, churches, police vans. If there is a point to be made here it is that there’s a difference between things done and things said about done things. Or that entrenched actions are beyond the pale of descriptions, though firmly within the realm of prescriptions. And it’s exactly here, where prescriptions and descriptions co-mingle and conflate, where badness is born. As soon as the farmer opens his mouth and explains why he does something, an army of pseudo-knowledgables rise up and squash the infidel. Yet, if most farmers do something not entirely understood and proffer views about what they’re doing, they’re greeted with a relatively benign “what actually happens”. They have been inured in the faith; a small rap on the knuckles should suffice. There’s a name for this: it’s called politics. A system of power, blind and unrelenting. But it bears the right insignia. Clearly it must be right – look how many people do it. I call these insignia the politics of knowing: scientism.

Science isn’t scientism. Science, if this is not too rosy-hued a description, is a system conceived to describe “natural” processes. Things which happen. It’s also a system of prediction of predictable events, and an indicator of predictability. Seen thus, it’s a pretty humble affair, and often more than handy. What science never set out to do was to be prescriptive, or, even worse, proscriptive in terms of the way things happen. (I wasn’t there when science “set out”, but I’d imagine most scientists, when asked, would agree to this. An ad majorem argument, to be sure, but what is science without scientists?) Maybe the way things are thought of does directly influence the way things happen – there seems to be evidence that may suggest that the universe “learns” – but this is an area science has not explored much, and an uncomfortable area, particularly to those of fixed mind. The point is: reality is really really complex. (It probably is the most complex thing there is.) It certainly contains wonderful parallels and symmetries and has a habit of collapsing, every so often, into the most beautiful simplicity. That’s why scientists keep doing, if they’re doing it right, their difficult job. Not everyone can do what they do; not everyone can see where they see. Sometimes these realisations and epiphanies are so compelling that they cannot but help to translate their findings into easily assimilable statements. Statements which all too easily form the armament of the next layer of knowers, those who know but know not that they know not (if I am to be pardoned the ecclesiastical tone of this phrase). Mostly they are the ones who love talking, who are compelled to purge and to limit, who need to be right. They are the ones who say biodynamics isn’t scientific. Is a fad, is a craze and, most probably, evil. They are also the people who stand to gain the most by saying what they’re saying: a predictable and controllable universe. As in Terry Pratchett: turtles all the way down. They are the ones who say “evolution”, but mean “Darwin”. Who say “science” but mean “engineering”, who say “difference” but mean “more”. Who say “God”, but mean “Us”.

It might to some extent be true that actions should be judged by results. If a biodynamic producer makes a superlative wine, she has done something right. The fact that taste comes into play, and that taste is a variable and subject to opinion, experience, environment, complicates this sentiment. For now I choose to agree to this: if I enjoy a wine and it doesn’t make me too ill, I’m not going to suggest it be made differently. But this is not what I’m trying to convey here. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes we need to stand back and allow things to be themselves. That we need to realise that everything exists in an environment and that it’s neither possible nor desirable to control these environments. It is, however, possible to learn to understand these environments, these complexities, if only by interacting with them, by forming part of them and by seeing ourselves (and perhaps sense itself*) as inevitably interwoven with them. By allowing them to contain that which we do not know, that which include ourselves. What we stand to (re-)gain is difference; variety. An escape from a grey goo scenario universe where everything is the same and equally nice (-ish). Where we understand everything so well that we fail to see it has become us, in our worst form: big and bland and conceited.

* In the sense conveyed in David Bohm’s “Wholeness and the Implicate Order.”

Klaar Lekker – ‘n Paar Vinnige Gedagtes oor Eerlike Kos

Dis snaaks, hoe ouer (en dommer) mens word, hoe meer kom mens agter hoe dom jy nog altyd was. Hoe min jy eintlik geweet het. Soos altyd is daar ‘n groot caveat rondom die woordjie “eintlik”. Dit sluit dinge uit; dit valideer ‘n stel dinge (dinge wat “eintlik” geweet word, in hierdie geval) bo ‘n ander. Hierdie is miskien ‘n aparte gedagtegang.

Soos nou, hier waar ek staan voor die woordjie “eerlik”. Eerlike kos. Eerlike mense. ‘n Eerlike omgewing. ‘n Vorm van een-tot-een spieëling? Dan is die eerlikste ding tog maar die ding self, in al sy besonderhede. En dit sluit oneerlike dinge in. Eerlik kantel telkens om ‘n nosie van vertaling – ‘n transduksie – van een toestand, die “oorspronklike”, na ‘n ander, die angebiede. So, as mens van gesprekke praat, is ‘n eerlike persoon een wat ‘n gegewe situasie op die mees verteenwoordigende manier in taal omsit en aan die ander oordra. Op hierdie manier is die digter, of die literator, miskien die enigste wat in eerlike gesprek kan tree, mits styl en “embellishment” nie deel vorm van sy apparatuur nie. M.a.w. mits hy/sy nie ‘n literator is nie.

Op die ou einde is ons weer by ‘n “nie wie nie maar hoe”. Sonder die onnodige. Sonder die voorbedagte (“contrivedness”.) Sonder politiek, gewig, waardegewing, in kort. Maar, natuurlik, om aan eerlikheid voorkeur te gee is presies so ‘n vorm van waardegewing, van oortolligheid. Dis die ingeboude flater in post-modernisme: dis nie post-modernisties oor die waardestelsel wat dit definieer nie. Dis byna modernisties oor ditself, maar meer. Dit is, vir alle praktiese doeleindes, inherent oneerlik.

Vinnig gaan ‘n mens, deur so te dink, by stasis opeindig.

Dus, as mens tog iets wil doen, en wil bly naby aan iets wat mens as “eerlik” sien, moet mens dalk anders te werk gaan. Einstein se “make things as simple as you can, but no simpler”, deus ex machina, kom by my op. Bly by die besonderhede. Ken, maar moenie ontken nie.

Waar laat dit mens as mens “eerlike” kos wil maak? Kos, in die sin van ‘n gereg, is kos-items apart, saam. Dis ‘n teenstrydigheid, alreeds. En op die oomblik is die strukturele al waarna gekyk word. Dis ook ‘n waan: dat sekere dinge, sekere kombinasies, sekere maniere van kombineer intrinsiek lekkerder of beter as ander is. Dat hulle buite ‘n omgewing (in die wydste sin van die woord) staan. Dat daar werklike “excellence” moontlik is.

Dan is daar die res van die leuens (verskeie waarvan ek baie hard in glo): eenvoudige kos is lekkerder; bestanddele moet so vars as moontlik wees; gesonde kos is lekker; lekker kos is gesond; daar’s ‘n verskil tussen tradisie en oorspronklikheid; daar is ‘n “regte” manier; party goed is “klaar lekker” – ag, honderde.

Miskien is die grootste leuen dat daar wel iets soos eerlike kos is. En die tweede grootste dat mens gevolglik moet ophou probeer om eerlik te werk te gaan. Dalk is die tweede grootste leuen altyd die grootste. ‘n Mens verloor veels te maklik tred met mode.

Kook, en eet, natuurlik, so eerlik as wat jy kan. Daar gaan waarskynlik nooit regte antwoorde wees nie, maar as mens goed genoeg besluit waarna jy gaan kyk en waar jy gaan toehou (en miskien in gedagte probeer hou presies wie verantwoordelik is vir al hierdie besluite), gaan daar ten minste mettertyd ‘n hele klomp kos gemaak word. Dalk is van dit selfs lekker.

An Afternoon at Diemersfontein

(Published as “An afternoon in Wellington” in Grape – Open Space: 24 April 2011)

It could be said, with apology to Murray Gell-Mann*, that obtaining information about wine areas is like being served a bottle of one of the world’s finest wines and being fed the label. Strangely perhaps, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to know something about a particular wine’s producer and history before the actual wine is tasted – at some stage one has to start trusting oneself enough to be able to be exposed to information which may cause some form of bias without necessarily succumbing to this bias. It’s certainly better than prejudice, and to blindly (this time I intend the pun) believe that we are always equally able to be objective and alert and discerning is perhaps a bit ambitious. An important difference lies in this: the label of a wine is something concrete. It might be misleading or conditioned by advertising, or evocative of a sense of history and sophistication to the extent that it influences one’s opinion and experience of the wine. But at least it’s something that can be torn off or at least hidden (or eaten, as in the above example). The “label” of a wine area, though no less a brand, is a different animal. Not many would venture that Pauillac is a terrible wine region, or that Stellenbosch should rather produce chutney. And though many South Africans might be said have visited Stellenbosch wine farms, the same can not as easily be said of Bordeaux. Nor of Wellington, it would appear.

Some weeks ago a rather frank letter about my attempts to secure some form of income was sent out to a number of wine farms. The letter ended up on a blog and not long after, on a hot Friday afternoon on the way back from Cape Town, my phone rang. It was David Sonnenberg, the owner of Diemersfontein. Somehow he had been alerted to the strange letter by Brett Rightford, the winemaker there, and decided to give me a call. I was feeling rather flat after an entire day spent in vida e caffè, answering email and sending out job applications, and thought I’d botched an opportunity. However, I made a call to the farm on the following Monday and meeting was set up for late Friday afternoon.

Now, if I were to be asked for the name of a nice little town to spend a balmy afternoon in, Wellington doubtless wouldn’t have been the first place to race to mind. Somehow the name brought images of a sweltering backwater, comprised in the main of old sun baked churches and a dull sprinkle of slightly out of place farm houses, all presiding disapprovingly over a main road deserted by all but municipal workers and shop owners. The fact that, driving there, the car’s computer purported an outside temperature of 37.5 degrees, didn’t do much to banish these images. As helpful were the endless shimmering vineyards on the way: typical Agter-paarl, the front of which I wasn’t particularly keen on either, especially since a particularly clinging memory had been formed there during a slippery and almost fatal encounter of one of the “pearls” during childhood. I was becoming less and less sure of seeing anything remotely beautiful – fun seemed equally out of the question.

Perhaps to explain: I’d taken off early, being too preoccupied with the looming visit to be able to do anything useful, and was looking for somewhere cooler than a car to while away the afternoon. Preferably a restaurant or an interesting wine cellar. I was beginning to suspect I was in a bad mood and that my nose wasn’t at its keenest. The wine tasting lady, earlier at Beyerskloof, hadn’t cheered me up much, being slightly patronising and perhaps a bit too keen to catch a glimpse of the rugby sevens team that, I was told, were presently having lunch there. (The Reserve Pinotage, however, I thought was good. A bit sombre and turned inward maybe, but nice. Close to my kind of wine.)

“Wildspasteie”, a sign at a stop street declared and I decided, somewhat glumly, to go take a look. They turned out to be huge doughy Sputniks of pies, filled to the seams with almost pure flesh – enough, as a friend once drily put it, to have killed the kudu it was cut from. Minutes later, sufficiently revived in body and heart, I took to the road again. Seconds later I had passed a cemetery, turned the wrong way and ground to halt in the entrance of a retirement village. Quite a large area seemed to have been set aside for living units, none of them built yet: the white walls and entry gates appearing as some kind of brittle bow tied around a large angled empty lot. I read a name – something evocative of peacefully poring back over a fruitful life: Vredezicht, perhaps. A man sitting on a crate looked up..

The alarmed look on the face of the man on the crate was still puzzling me when, a few minutes later, my wheels crushed to a standstill in a patch of gravel before the Diemersfontein gate. (I’m writing this bearing in mind an ingrained caveat not to be too twee in describing things I enjoyed. The only way I can see to do this is to try to be succinct; at the very least, brief. Here’s how one fails.) The plan was to attempt a quick tasting of some of the wines made on the farm, to familiarise myself, to some degree, with what I was bound to end up discussing. I was somewhat worried, particularly because I was (correctly, it turns out) beginning to suspect that the wines were being made in an up front “and what are you going to do about it?” style. A style against which my own rather hermetic nature seems to have taken a definite stance. As I entered the tasting room (after getting lost on the farm for a quick few more minutes) a particularly friendly and scarily knowledgeable young gentleman, rather aptly answering to the name Auburn, dashed to my service. Bottles appeared. It was decided I should attempt the Pinotage and a measure was poured. I must have winced slightly as all my mental soldiers jumped to attention. Auburn enquired. Spluttering slightly I started groping for words “I assume it’s illegal to add espresso to Pinotage. Nederburg…” It’s done with oak staves,” came the smart answer before I could get myself in deeper. Staves. Another one of my horrors. Why not just toast saw dust and rack, filter and fine the wine later – with Easter Eggs? A second party, who had entered the tasting room in the meantime, were making appreciative smacking sounds. It was becoming glaringly clear that I needed to perform an urgent mind shift. These people were vinifying grapes, not soil and sunshine, and I had better soon get used to it. I was pinning all my hopes on the Carpe Diem Pinotage, a serious wine from what I’d been able to gather, but unfortunately it had been sold out. Relief, as it does, appeared unexpectedly, in the garb of an elegant bottle of pale crystalline liquid so clear it almost felt if you could break it: Carpe Diem Chenin Blanc. I’m not supposed to like tropical flavours – pineapple, apples, lime, perhaps (thankfully no guava!) – but there I was: gob smacked. I thought Savennieres, which it wasn’t at all, and blurted out, somewhat inappropriately: “c’est pas du vin, c’est du parfum!” Auburn consolingly produced a bottle of Viognier from the depths of the counter. Unbelievable – it’s like dry apricot liqueur. Or a benevolently vinous tincture of peach blossoms and young honey.. There seemed to be a secular corollary to Jerusalem Syndrome, and I dimly realised that I had better start focussing.

Diemersfontein certainly is one of the most beautiful wine farms I’ve had the opportunity to visit. The buildings look fresh and unpretentious, the gardens snug and inviting. Tall trees lazily brush at the sky. But there’s an atmosphere here one has to go find for oneself. Perhaps it merely was a perfect afternoon, or maybe I shouldn’t have swallowed everything I’d tasted. Somehow I don’t think it was only that. The farm simply has something special – and so, dare I say, have the wines. David loves many things, not least helping those lacking opportunity. He also puts his money where his mouth is – all this becomes clear when you see what he’s done. But for this you’ll have to drive out to Wellington.

Come to mention it, I still haven’t seen the town. Maybe I will one day – after all, Breytenbach grew up there. What I did see though, driving back, was a world somehow transformed. Passing the cemetery I heard birds gathering for the night. Through the middle of the mounting ruckus peeked sounds of children, hastily finishing off their play before going home. The light had changed. Clouds seemed as if splattered against the palest of powder blue skies and in the distance the mountains had turned into grey and purple cut-outs, vibrant yet unmoving before the cool grip of the ocean. Somewhere towards the left the sun’s last sliver slowly melted away on an edge. I’d hate to see the mornings here.

* Professor Murray Gell-Mann – Elementary Particle Physics Nobel laureate who is said to have remarked that modern science education is like being taken to the world’s greatest restaurant and being fed the menu.

Wine Terroiriste Manifesto

(Published as “Forget cultivars, find magic” in Grape – Open Space: 14 February 2011)

“I love a nice Merlot.”

“As long as it’s not Pinotage.”

“Anything, as long as it’s a Cabernet.”

By now I hope to have someone’s back up. Mine certainly is, and it’s lonely out. What’s wrong with these people? I wish I could rig some rapid switch tasting and confuse the grapes out of them. And while I’m at it, close down three quarters of the wine industry. The fine wine industry, that is.

Take Pinotage – André van Rensburg is purported to refer to it as “that awful grape”. And awful it is, mostly. But a grape is a long shot from being a wine, and so are a growing number of wines.

What is this tiring compulsion of eking jaded wine terms from unsuspecting puddles of swirling red? “Hmmm, I get blackberries; some hint of straw.” Madam, you are going to be pouring that into your mouth in a few seconds. Best you start readying yourself for something more involving than plucking out rogue brow lashes. And, lest I cast myself as some kind of misogynist teetotaller, I’ll be thinking of a comparable example of male fastidiousness for the next half hour. For that’s what it is: fastidiousness parading its inevitable jadedness through the narrow streets of knowledgeability. It’s a drink, sir. It grew somewhere, once. Some guy with a stained T-shirt went to a lot of trouble making it. Named it after his wife. Did you hear that? – named it after his wife.

I don’t like Pinotage much. In fact, I don’t like wine much. I’d much rather have a glass of Monis with my burger or my schnitzel. Or a shandy, come to think of it. Water beats Tassies hands down and, before rotten fruit starts slamming into my pilloried semblance, Tassies beats quite a few R50 plus bottles of purply alcoholic cordial masquerading as wine. Hands down.

Ponder this: someone hands you two vine cuttings. (Let’s pretend there’s no phylloxera.) One cutting gets planted under your gazebo in some soil you bought from Builder’s Warehouse, in a hope of training it to grow up the side of the structure. The other ends up in some sandy soil next to your driveway. Bacchus smiles on your cuttings and in a year or two a few bunches of grapes appear on each plant. Juicy and somewhat squishy on the gazebo plant, and small, sun burnt and black on the unfortunate bush you’d forgotten next to the driveway. It’s Saturday and a friend who has made his own mead once comes for a visit. Glasses are refilled and a plan is hatched in the ensuing enthusiasm. Somehow the gods (and spouses who’ve seen all) are indulgent and a few weeks later a small number of bottles of slightly murky brick coloured beverage lie next to the tumble drier. On a whim you’d decided to keep the grapes from the two plants separate. (And to mark the bottles.) The friend returns and in a while your wife gets summoned to deliver some form of verdict.

What are the odds of the contents of these bottles tasting the same? (Let’s assume you were serious and did everything “right”.) Remote, I’d venture. These were not the same plants; nor were they absorbing the same things from the same soil. (Must I say “nutrients”?) These two are very different wines, from genetically identical plants. This in a few hundred square meters of garden, not in different cities. Am I beginning to make sense?

I still don’t like Merlot. But I had some Durbanville Hills last night. It wasn’t Pomerol, but it wasn’t half bad. One could drink it, and I had a bunch of fun doing it. So go on some holiday and forget about cultivars. One day you’ll get back to that and be happy you did. The disadvantage of dictating to experience is that we end up in a false simulacrum of ourselves. Ask Narcissus. A world of words, without recognisable life, much like a display of named dry butterflies. In fact, my half hour being up, this is what a guy would do: put a pin through a half-dead butterfly and stick it up on a felt covered board, above some name. I know. I’ve done it.

OK, I am a “terroiriste”. And proudly. But there’s another point not to be missed here: nothing is simple, not even simplicity itself. Start opening yourself up to the larger experience wine affords – wine is not just a swarm of happy ingredients in a liquid form. It has a history and a life and something not much short of magic. I’ve seen grown men cry, after a single sip of wine. They weren’t thinking of Semillon or botrytis or of the R2500 they’d just spent. They cried because they hadn’t thought possible what they’d just experienced. So should you.