Finding Good Red Wine on a Student Budget

Those of you who know me know for a fact that I am at Stellenbosch primarily for the student life. Yes I happen to be studying a degree and I suppose I have at least finally made it to my (hopefully) final year at Stellenbosch, but my actual full time goal is to get as far as possible by doing as little as possible so that I can focus on other fun stuff like drinking, and drinking, an occasional dive and then some more drinking.

This of course is not helped by the fact that when I do occasionally leave Stellies for the supposed safety of home and my family I find one of my favourite drinking partners who also happens to like good red wine and in vast quantities waiting for someone who will help him fully appreciate a couple of bottles.

I am speaking of course, about my semi-alcoholic substitute dad, who spends all of his non-work hours drinking, making beer, buying wine and looking for some cool new adventure to do in his trusted Land Rover, Sandy. How could that not be the coolest weekend ever?

So a couple weeks ago when I was driving home, I was handed a flier through my car window about a wine sale at Somerbosch. Now, as a general rule I tend to try and take as few fliers as possible because invariably they land up in the passenger seat’s foot-well which has become my sister’s new junk storage place and I would hate to add to her vast treasure of sweet wrappers and slips which currently occupy the space.

But I knew from previous experience that every once in a while Somerbosch has a huge wine sale and it is usually well worth your while so I took the flier. And then I did a terrible thing which I am sure my mom will never forgive me for, I made the mistake of telling Harold (my not-so-evil step dad) about it.

So Harold and I piled the entire family into the car and headed off to Somerbosch only to find out once we were there that the sale was in fact far larger than what we originally thought and that there was a free wine tasting of all the wines on offer. Only problem was that we only had a half hour left in which to drink as much wine as possible.

Now, my sister is the type of wine drinker who prefers it sweet, in a box and while sitting at a sticky table either at Bohos or Aandklas, which means that she wasn’t nearly as excited about this prospect as we were. Add to that a thumping headache and the thought of going home afterwards to study some horribly difficult Engineering subject and she decided to sit this one out.

Then there is my mum, who likes wine but has recently realised that the wine gods are against her and even a little bit of wine makes her feel like she’s been dragged through a washing machine backwards the next morning so she was taking it pretty slowly too.

And then there is my thirteen year old brother who cannot wait to one day be old enough to get absolutely shmashed with his two older sisters and would dearly love to sneak a couple sips of each of our glasses but unfortunately may not yet.

So that left Harold and I, and a table of amazingly good red wines at our disposal. To make matters even worse was that some of the wine had more than a fifty percent mark down on the original price. It was like two kids in a candy shop. We went crazy and boy oh boy was it fun.

It wasn’t long before we were back in the car, my head slightly spinning with Sandy’s boot filled with 15 cases of wine and my mum’s monthly food budget completely trashed. Not to worry though, because at least we had wine.

The problem now of course, is that he doesn’t have enough wine racks for all the wine that he bought, so I have decided to make it my soul mission to ensure that the two of us drink as much of it as possible as soon as possible to ensure that there aren’t boxes lying around the house. He’s already in trouble with mom; I’m just looking out for my drinking buddy. Although there is something to be said about getting drunk with the people you love on good quality wine that you didn’t even pay for!

And to think, most people leave Stellies to get away from the drinking.