Caveau is a good escape from Long Street’s chiaroscuro of either uber-pretentious or super-scummy dives… I swear I will never set foot in Miam Miam again but Marvel also grows a little old once you tire of becoming a human bolus being masticated against the gyrating bodies of every tourist and pick-pocket in Cape Town.

Caveau is a breath of fresh air for the city centre, with an urban-rustic feel to it, combining class and elegance with a laid back environment. The design, lay out and mood leave you feeling like you’ve stepped out of Cape Town and discovered a more modern Franschoek. On the three occasions I’ve been there I’ve shared a bottle of their 2004 Spice Route Mourvedre. Accustomed to the Cape’s usual Noble varietals it’s amazing to see how well other cultivars benefit from the Cape’s rich soils. This is a nice big red that has a faint bloody-Maryesque note on the nose. It’s great to see how this Spanish wine has done - bring on Tempranillo!

Like many a webworker - I’m addicted to Podcasts and am pretty much plugged in on a daily basis to the best of APM, NPR, Guardian News Media, Grape Radio etc. Robert Krulwich of NPR did a show the other day about the MIT Bioengineering faculty, and the dawn of a new species under the fostering care of some students with olfactory concerns. You can listen to the show here, but basically the show discusses how for bio-engineering students - life is spent in fume cupboards culturing e-coli in a petri-dishes, and due to the fact that e-coli smells like, er, smells like, well… shit, these students applied their trade to splice out the shit-smelling gene from the e-coli and replace it with the gene from Wintergreen that makes Wintergreen smell like Spearmint resulting in good smelling shit.

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White Zinfandel has certainly ruined many opportunities for rosés in the United States. Slowly they are appearing in restaurants and at wine bars, yet, it is only the brave that are drinking this pink sensation. The rest of us, myself included until recently, don’t want people to believe that we might be drinking White Zinfandel. In reality, the only person that will care, and should care, what you are drinking is you, unless someone else is buying your drink, but that is more geared for the topic of economics, which I won’t be covering here.

I was recently at a wine bar in Paris with friends for dinner. When it came time to order our wine, I was looking at the reds, and by accident I ordered a Cotes-du-Provence thinking it was red. The server came back with our drinks. We had a rainbow of wines sitting on our table, one ordered white, another red, and apparently I ordered a rosé. A bit reluctant at first, I considered sending it back, but quickly remembered the French customer service policy…

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The Rhône Valley.

That’s all I have to say, it is a region that does not need a proper introduction. South of Burgundy, here is where we start to leave the Pinot Noir, Gamay, Cabernet Franc dominated reds and move into deeper Syrah, Grenache, Mouvedre and Carignan.

Chateauneuf-du-Pape is the big stand out in this region, as well as the way to my heart. Of course such quality and recognition is also accompanied by a prestigious price. If you are fortunate enough to be able to enjoy this treat of a wine on a regular basis, then give me a call and we’ll start hanging out. To the rest of us, there are great alternatives within the Rhône without going into debt.

Côtes du Rhône is the most popular of these alternatives and is available at a great value. A typical bottle will range form $12 to $20. A Côtes du Rhône is, generally speaking, a blend of Syrah, Grenache, and then sometimes Mouvedre and/or Carignan, but Grenache is the dominant force here. It’s centralized within the Rhône, displaying characteristics of the North and the South. Côtes du Rhône Villages are within Côtes du Rhône, but a bit more specific. French wine can never be simple; there always has to be a break down and then possibly two or three more after that.

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Sour-grapes for Hillary Clinton, whose rotting cynicism is no match for Obama’s sparkle. There’s no doubt that if politicians were wine - Hillary is vinegar and Obama is champagne.

How dare Senator Clinton come out against Senator Obama, after his over rated comments about small-town America being bitter, with a series of photo-opportunities, going through the motions with a camera crew in tow - and in one audacious clip, pausing to have a sip of beer and drink a shot!

Oh sure Hillary, you drink beer so that makes you working-class.

The idea that a certain product can dictate one’s class is especially infuriating to a real wine-drinker, who recognizes wine’s essentially humble and agricultural roots - much the same as beer. That Clinton thinks that she can relate to the working class man with a photo-op drinking beer demonstrates that she is in fact far more derisory of the working class than she would dare let on. Although Obama may be on record saying that people cling to guns and religion because of economic uncertainty (which may not be entirely untrue), for Clinton to respond by taking a sip of beer and drinking a shot means that she thinks the best way to get the attention of the working class is to show an affinity for the bottle (which is slanderous.) Unwittingly, and thus tellingly, she implies that middle-class America are a bunch of drunks.

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