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Alcohol
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Wine Experts: Useful or Con-artists?
17 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
A reader sent in this clipping a week ago, and with a glint in his eye questioned whether wine “experts” are as useful as snake-oil salesmen. The man has a point. When people start advising on matters that largely concern taste, you need to be extra careful for bullshitters. Not as careful as for a bullshitting anesthesiologist I’ll admit – a blagging doctor can kill you. But be careful, because there will be more half-arsed winos than there will be doctors.
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Local Prison Warder Too Drunk To Stand Up At Work [VIDEO]
13 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Video footage taken last year of a prison warder too drunk to even stand up at work have gone viral. This after it came to light that the warder in question, only known as Pitso, would not be disciplined for his disgraceful behaviour. See the very sloshed Pitso shuffling around on his arse after the jump.
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Wine Drinkers, Let’s Stereotype
08 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 8 Comments
The next time you are sitting at your favourite after work spot – sipping on something as the day ends while stress and worry take a backseat for the evening – let your gaze wonder to the other customers and observe how they sip their wines. As I am a frequent visitor to a number of bars/restaurants/pubs/wine-bars/shebeens/picnics/holes-in-the-walls/sidewalks/gutters/parks/etc I have observed how people drink my favourite tipple. And when stress and worry get out from the backseat entirely, kicked out by the third bottle, I find myself thinking about stereotypical wine drinkers based on how the wine gets from glass to belly. I present you with a few of my favourites and most observed.
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Wine Competitions: A Crock of Gold
03 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Wine competitions. Born from the union of Satan and Lady Luck, I loathe them. And there a lot of them too. Just in SA there’s the Old Mutual Wine Awards, Michelangelo, Veritas, Top 100 wines, Young Wine Show, Classic Wine Awards, Diner’s Club Winemaker of the year, the various Top 10s, Nedbank Green Wine Awards, Terroir Awards, and more. There are also, of course, the plethora of international competitions. What are these providing other than extra weight to the competition owners’ wallets? Sod all if you ask me.
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Wine And Fine Braaing
25 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
It is summer, and here in the Cape the long evenings nudge one in the direction of that most South African past time: the braai. Growing up, however, it was always beer around the braai and wine (white, nondescript, loaded with ice) in the kitchen. There was, of course, the exception in my French uncle for whom a glass of red wine is never far away. But beer was the norm. Beer dominates the braai. Is it some form of magnetic alliteration? Is beer that much better designed for smoke and charred meat? Do we still hold some outmoded idea that wine is for girls and beer is for boys? Or, possibly, is there some emasculation going on when a can is taken from the chief steak flipper and an elegant riedel glass subbed in?
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Fine Wines, And The Music They’re Made For
18 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
This week I’ll be pairing some wines to three albums that have been occupying my earballs lately. It’s a tad facile. But then it has been shown that music can affect the way we taste wine. Drink, listen, be told a story.
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Wines For The Unpretentious Jungle Adventurer
06 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Durban, the sweaty sticky place of my birth. Salty, thick air, slops, shorts, bananas and spice. If Capetonians are laid-back, it is because they’re stoned. In Durban people are simply mellow. It’s built in, climatic. It takes longer to walk through the weighty, humid air. As I was buffeted by this wall of jungle breath, and a filmy layer of sweat – that would remain with me for the next 10 days – formed, I wondered what wines would suit such a climate. And, more importantly, where could I get them?
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Planet Restaurant At The Mount Nelson – It’s Not “Fine Dining”
03 Jan 2012 by Seth Rotherham / No Comments
I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest. I spend quite a bit of time at the Planet Bar (Thursday nights a must), which is sophisticated and cool, with a relaxed vibe. It certainly is more ‘mod’ when compared to, say, the world-famous Mount Nelson tea room – just next door. So when it came to […]
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Wine, Cars, And Pretty Things
21 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In previous columns here I have gone on ad-nauseum about us needing to be more interested in wine. But I thought, maybe I can attack this from the reverse today. If I can get someone to consider the aesthetic of a wine, then maybe it will result in more of an interest. It’s a long shot. You may be thinking that I am being a pretentious wooly-hat-wearing hipster knob-end talking about the aesthetic of wine. I may have to give you the benefit of the doubt; although the wooly hat is very comfortable. Sod it, I’ll give it a go.
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Science: Loud Music Makes You Drink More
15 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 4 Comments
It’s always nice when researchers employing a loosely scientific method produce results you were more or less expecting. Folks at the University of Portsmouth have determined that loud music makes people want to drink alcohol in greater quantities and at a much faster rate because the music makes it taste sweeter. Science!
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Hoodwinked By Chenin
14 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 6 Comments
What’s the deal with South African Chenin? It has been a variety that I have espoused with vim and vigour since I became a wine consumer of serious proportions. I thought it offered excellent value for money, and offered a range of styles – “I’ll find one for you” I have cried to unbelievers. But had I been fooled by overt sweetness? Was my praise of this variety ill-founded? Had I been hood-winked by easy drinking cheap wines? Did my wallet guide my palate?
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Inside Europe’s Largest Booze Warehouse [PICS]
12 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Welcome to Avonmouth in Bristol, home to Europe’s largest alcohol warehouse. The warehouse stores 9,5 million gallons of wine. That’s enough to fill 15 Olympic-sized swimming pools. No spice.
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A Jack Daniels Christmas
08 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 49 Comments
This year, Jack Daniel’s will solve your Christmas gifting dilemmas, with a fantastic range of whiskey products available for the festive season. The Jack Daniel’s Limited Edition Collectors Single Tin offers a unique metallic silver design in dedication to Jack Daniel’s Silver Cornet Band, which was formed in 1892 – an ideal gift for the […]
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Wine Advice For Christmas: Keep Drinking
02 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Christmas: a time of drunkenness, praise, and popped shirt buttons. There’s revelry and excess, angels and shepherds, and of course, the fat man in the fur-trimmed getup with a hankering for cookies, milk, and having children on his lap. A weird and wonderful time it is. It is also the time of year that wine columnists all over the world trot out their terribly banal “Top 10 Wines for Christmas” piece. I hate those.
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Where Is The South African “Sideways”?
28 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 4 Comments
What is needed is for wine to start appearing in South African popular culture. (Do we have one of those?) Remember that rather kak film, Sideways? That changed how Merlot and Pinot Noir were sold in the States. Just because that snivelly little prick Miles told everyone to “Fuck Merlot”, they did, running to quaff cheap Californian Pinot Noir by the bucket load.
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The First Beer In Space [VIDEO]
28 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
A couple of “Natty Light” enthusiasts approached the brewer, Natural Ice with the idea to make the mediocre frat-house beer slightly more remarkable by making it the first to be sent into space. Their spacecraft’ was a styrofoam cooler, a GPS tracking device, and an HD camera, launched into space with a weather balloon last week.
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Judge Motata Wantsch Hish Old Job Backsh (hic)
25 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Disgraced High Court Judge, Nkola Motata, has filed papers at the Pretoria High Court demanding his job back. Given his indiscretions, however, he might be about to hit a brick wall… again.
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What Would You Ask Daniel Craig?
24 Nov 2011 by Seth Rotherham / 14 Comments
I leave in a couple weeks for London, where I will be interviewing Daniel Craig on behalf of Ster-Kinekor for his new movie – a remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. These ‘junkets’ as they’re called, feature journalists from around the world who come in, one after the other, to interview the actors for […]
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Skip Work And Win Your Place At The Most Leisurely Event Of The Summer
22 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 48 Comments
Friends, by now you’ll all be aware of the sterling social work that 2oceansVibe and Jack Daniels have done over the course of the 2011. Every month, we’ve liberated desk-bound Capetonians from the drudgery and depression of working on a Friday afternoon. Check out last month’s vibe. And we’re rounding out the year with a […]
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The Cape Town Festival Of Beer – 10 Tickets Up For Grabs
21 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 14 Comments
The Cape Town Festival of Beer is here, boys and girls. Click on these fliers below to glean all of the info that you need. BUT WAIT! There’s more! To win one of ten tickets to the Cape Town festival of beer, tell us how many glasses of beer the blonde woman in the Cape […]
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Whisky Alive
18 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
The line to enter the Johnny Walker stand literally went around the block. Well, I say block: it was a few square metres long. But still, it had the biggest waiting line by a quite a measure. There were dozens of stalls to choose from, and yet the upper crust of Johannesburg’s upwardly mobile chose to line up for shots of Johnny Walker Blue. Didn’t they miss the point?
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The Price Of Wine: Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
16 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 5 Comments
I think we pay too little for our wine. These thoughts have clouded my brain like a Joburg smog – discussions about money always leave a dirty taste – since I heard a few different pronouncements about wine and money. The first was at the Swartland Revolution – the constitutionally testing wine event I attended this weekend, whose schedule ran daily from august conversations about fine wine to hangovers that would bring a tear to your eye and a lump to your throat.
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19 Criminals Tricked Into Arrest With Free Beer
14 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
How do you capture wanted criminals that keep avoiding arrest? You lure them with free beer, of course. Derbyshire police managed to snag 19 wanted criminals after they managed to trick them into meeting officers by baiting them with a free crate of beer.
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Be A Patriot – Drink A Sauvignon Blanc
11 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
I remember growing up with this notion that things were always better “over the seas”. Finding myself amongst winos later in life, there is still a remnant of that idea. There’s almost a measure of disbelief when a South African wine is preferred to a French wine of similar style. It feels as though there is a lack of confidence in our own wines, one that’s only bolstered briefly when a foreign critic gives us a high score. The point – which is quickly becoming a bush around which I am beating – is that South African Sauvignon Blanc is world class.
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Drinkify: The Website That Lets Your Music Dictate What You Drink
10 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
If you’re bad at choosing both your music and your beverage, drinkify.org will help ease the burden by telling you which drinks go best with your music of choice. And if this isn’t what the internet was made for, well then I have been mislead.
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There Are No Great Wines, Only Great Bottles
10 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
I love tawny port. The flavours of sweet raisin, black tea and earth make we want to shout and dance around singing, “I’m Tawny, Tawny Tawny Tawny tonight.” I finished half a bottle last night in preparation for this column. It made me happy. But not as happy as I was the last time I drank it – and that’s the rub.
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The Average South African Drinks A Bakkie-Load Of Booze A Year
09 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 5 Comments
Some organisation by the name of “The Central Drug Authority”, is here to tell you how bad you are. Or, in the words of the authority’s acting chairman, Dr Ray Eberlein, “If we had a boozing world cup, South Africa wouldn’t even have to practise.” Duh, Dr Ray, we already had one. And I’m still hanging from it.
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Lil Wayne’s SA Tour Will Be A Sober One
07 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Looks like the only bottles in da club for Lil Weezy will be the ones filled with mineral water. Following his recent conviction for drug possession, the rapper isn’t allowed to consume alcohol or associate with anyone knowingly engaged in narcotics – good luck. Let’s see if he can last longer than (Camps Bay) “twenty minutes my broda”.
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Enjoy De Grendel’s Latest Vintage At Sundowners This Friday
31 Oct 2011 by Seth Rotherham / No Comments
L’Heure bleue – the hour of blue. That’s the french description of the period when the sun has set, so named for the wonderful quality of the light. Now imagine celebrating this special time of day on a Friday evening between 17h00 and 20h00 at De Grendel estate, as the sun sets over the Atlantic […]
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Sunday’s Summer Guide To Wine
30 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
As the temperature warms, the days grow longer, the skirts get shorter, skinny jeans are replaced with skinny denim shorts, and all and sundry converge on Camps Bay, Llandudno and the Cliftons after work to tan, swim, and pat themselves on the back for living in such an awesome city. We know summer is here.
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