The Idler: Rosé is the wine

REUTERS

A boy at a rally in Kathmandu, organised to mark World Environment Day yesterday holds a globe depicting the effects of global warming.

I’ve always felt that rosé wine sets out with a marketing disadvantage because it looks so much like the stuff you use to wash your mouth out in the dentist’s chair.

But it’s going great guns – at least in Britain – according to the fellow who made the rosé which Queen Elizabeth II sipped as she sailed down the Thames last weekend. Sales have increased by 200 percent, he says.

He only just made the delivery. When the caterers approached him with the order he at first turned it down because the bottles had not yet been labelled.

When he found out who it was for, he scrambled. He and other rosé producers are likely to keep scrambling after this royal endorsement.

He produces from a vineyard of only five acres. How things have changed. There was a time when it was believed wine could be produced only in places like France and Germany, or the Western Cape and parts of Australia and South America.

Today wine is produced in England and it seems to have nothing to do with global warming. It’s also made in the KZN Midlands, the opposite extreme.

Go to any old Catholic mission station or monastery in KZN – even on the coast – and you will find a winepress.

Those old monks knew what they were about. It’s not so much climatic conditions as skill and determination.

Slainte!

Roundheads

A STIFF breeze blew up as the jubilee pageant on the Thames drew to a close. Rain came down. The finale of a flypast by aircraft had to be cancelled. Hardly anyone seemed to notice.

Yet The Guardian – a Fleet Street newspaper that is not enthusiastic about the monarchy – contrived to get into its front-page banner headline the words: “Diamond jubilee – it’s a royal washout…”

The headline did not reflect the report beneath it. And the rest of the headline did concede that a million people had paid tribute to the queen. In theory all terribly well balanced.

But a washout? Wishful thinking. Yes, Britain does have its humourless Roundheads.

Stuck on throne?

DESI Halse was tickled by the comment of her seven-year-old granddaughter, Emma, on the diamond jubilee.

Told that Queen Elizabeth had been on the throne for 60 years, she asked: “Couldn’t she get off?”

Desi compiled a limerick for Emma:

You ask ‘Could she not get off?’

Well, that might make us laugh;

But being stuck with a will

To rule us all still

For 60 long years is quite rough.

Rugby lunch

AS RUGBY fever mounts, the fraternity are gearing for a lunch at Riverside Sports Club (formerly Glenwood Old Boys) on Friday in honour of Frans de Beer, the chairman of Duikers Rugby Club.

De Beer has been in the engine room of rugby in this province for a long time.

He played for and coached Glenwood Old Boys. He was a Natal selector and coach. He coached Maritzburg Collegians, Maritzburg University and Cedara, as well as the Duikers.

MC will be Natal, Western Province and Springbok three-quarter Dick Muir, who De Beer discovered while he was playing for Cedara. The lunch revives a Duikers tradition, which was always to hold a dinner on the eve of a Test match. It costs R100, payable at the door. There are no bookings.

Tax pain

IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, predicts that the Mdluli case is going to cost taxpayers a packet.

A tainted top cop called Mdluli,

Exhibits behaviour unruly;

He manipulates the law,

And opens the door,

To more pain for taxpayers like yours truly.

Tailpiece

A COUPLE are puzzled by a girl who wanders about the beach with a travel bag. She approaches people lying on the beach, speaks briefly to them then usually wanders on. But sometimes she takes something out of the bag and money changes hands.

What is she up to? Selling drugs?

But then they notice that the people she approaches all have with them boom boxes and other electronic music devices.

They decide the husband should lie on the beach with a big radio and see what happens. Sure enough, the girl approaches him.

Later, he meets his wife.

“What happened? Is she selling drugs?”

“No, she sells batteries. She sells C Cells on the seashore!”

Last word

Experience is that marvellous thing that enables you to recognise a mistake when you make it again. – Franklin P Jones