And so the bottle of wine I opened on Friday night tasted terrible! It wasn’t off as in it wasn’t oxidized. It was still red and not even close to transparent or metallic, and it certainly didn’t taste like vinegar. It just tasted bad, like a really cheap blend. Maybe it was a cheap blend to begin with – it was a gift I got at a Secret Santa twenty years ago.
So naturally I was disappointed that it didn’t taste good and I discarded that first glass I poured. However, times are tough. And in level 4 lockdown in South Africa we aren’t allowed to buy any alcoholic beverages so even a bad tasting wine is better than no wine!
But then in a moment of clarity this morning, I decided to google ideas on how to improve the taste of bad wine, and the solution that appealed the most to me was mulling the wine.
So when I got home after doing my morning grocery shopping (first trip out the house in three weeks) a heated a concoction of that bad red wine, nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon, star aniseed and sugar….. and voilá …. magnificent 💥beautiful 👌🏾. Tastes a lot like glühwein, but soooo much better.
The evolution of my twenty year old wine!
These days I’ve realized that I don’t have much more use for any thoughts from my past. It just has no value to me. But sipping on this lovely sweet beverage did however remind me of a special moment in time when I sat flat on cobbled road in Nyhavn in Copenhagen, just taking in the beauty of my surroundings and drinking sweet hot cider. I believe it is called Gløgg. Hot alcoholic drinks are foreign to us in South Africa. Our climate is just not conducive to it. It never gets so cold here as what it does in Europe so arguably most South Africans will tell you that they prefer an ice cold beer or draught as a drink of preference any day in the year!
However today we cannot buy any cold beers in South Africa due to prohibition in Lockdown! So today I say cheers to my European friends for coming up with this concept of mulled wine, and in essence saved me from throwing away my last bottle of red wine! 🍷
Bronwyn Swartz 
What is the thinking behind not selling alcohol? (I berlieve) that is the first time I heard it. I can understand not opening bars but don’t understand what the problem is, buying booze to drink at home.
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Gosh Stroke Survivor, I don’t understand our regulations myself! I have South African friends abroad that are just as shocked. Initially, as South Africans we were all behind our government’s strict regulations to flatten the curve, but it’s literally in very practical terms becoming unbearable for many. We are a society characterized by a large proportion of ‘haves’ and then an equally large proportion of ‘have nots’. Without getting into politics, simply put, our very strict regulations ,while well meaning are f’up up and discriminatory towards the poor, the people who drink alcohol, the people who smoke, and the people who don’t exercise.
For example no alcohol is sold in this time because the consumption of alcohol encourages gatherings and social activity – so no Alcohol whatsoever. No cigarettes, because according to our government- cigarettes are ‘supposedly’ synonymous with alcohol consumption. I’m not a smoker (anymore) but I can only imagine how difficult this must be for smokers. I think inadvertently, our government is potentially facilitating ordinarily law abiding citizens to resort to non-law abiding behaviour simply because of their rigidness. They are turning ordinarily law abiding citizens into criminals, not because the citizens have changed, – but rather because our regulations have changed. Grossly unfair. Ultimately all the government is succeeding in doing is creating black market, because they are destroying the free market in South Africa. By imposing a billion illogical regulations, our government is successfully destroying all our citizens respect for the law. This makes me sad. But this is the way that it is.
Another example is those of a ridiculous law is all those who want to exercise may only go for a walk, run or cycle between 6am and 9am in the morning – I won’t go into detail about all the problems which crop out because of that – however the biggest one is arguably everyone, I mean EVERYONE with their dogs, cats and nannies are out in common communal areas that time because we’ve been confined to our houses for the past five weeks #PerfectRecipeForCOVID19Spread. ….Makes no effing sense.
No one is allowed to work (by implication earn money) without a ‘permit’ which confirms that you are performing an essential service, so people are suffering economically. And these people were suffering before lockdown – the current regulations simply makes it worse. I think in South Africa we are no longer even scared of COVID19. After all the strict constraints on our personal freedom we want to take our chances with COVID19…. and that is primarily due to government enforcing crazy regulations.
But I shall stop bitching. The one thing that we all have in common is we want SA to get through this crisis as unscathed as possible. How I don’t know. I’m actually glad that my biggest problem is figuring out how much sugar to put in my mulled wine….
I have real empathy for the leaders of my country. At the moment I don’t believe that they doing a good job- but I hope they figure it out soon!
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We had those “essential” jobsworths in the UK at one stage. In one place, the police started patrolling the “non-essential” aisles in the supermarket. It was, very briefly a news story, until the government must have slapped them down. They even issued a press release saying that people could buy whatever they wanted.
Legally here the police are on dodgy ground because there is no definition of what is essential and what is not, so somebody like me could sue the police if they tried to stop me buying something. (And, someone like me would 😆.)
I can only sympathise with you – I must have 100 bottles here of some very good wines and would gladly share some with you!
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Ahhh Stroke Survivor you the bestest of the bestest! I wish I could get some, but the thought alone makes a difference 🤗 Tight hug…. oh wait we in Corona times… we cannot do that, so we just bow, Namaste my dear friend 🙏🏾❤️
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But I have never touched mulled wine, however, ever since that time when I was sixteen and threw up on my friend’s mother!
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Oh dear!!!
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