Never let your mother choose the wine : Ken Gibbs

The date was 1982 when we were entitled to take Home Leave and we elected to take it to Zimbabwe as it seemed it would be our last chance to see the farm on which I was born and brought up.  There was a civil war on-going at the time so this could have been a bold or foolish choice.

My parents were still alive although they were ‘elderly’ but my mother felt that if we had taken the risk to come to a war zone, then we should be ‘feted’.

The farm suffered a fair amount of damage from wild antelope which have a prodigious appetite, so it was natural that when the opportunity offered, one or two kudu would be culled.  The best of the latest cull was aged and a special venison recipe applied.  What could go wrong, one wonders, but then you didn’t know my mother.

She apparently had made a visit to Bulawayo to consult with the local off-licence holder to find a suitable wine for this festive occasion and she was told that there was a promising new Zimbabwean white wine that might be a good match for the venison.  One needs something to offset the home grown vegetables and this wine was said to do this admirably.  The wine even had an indigenous name which I choose not to publish because there is still an estate going by the same name even though Google cannot find any wine which is named after the estate.  The name alluded to an indigenous musical instrument so one might think it would be music to the taste buds.

And now to the meal itself served as the evening meal:  It was everything that I remember about the farm suppers.  There were even sherry glasses on the table and the hawk moths would land on the side of your glass and would unfurl their ‘tongues’ to get at the sherry if you didn’t cover the glass in time.  

When the venison was carried in it smelled delicious and was carved and circulated to be served with heaped vegetables before the ‘piece de resistance’ – the wine - was opened and we each were given a glass of this precious liquid.  ‘Bon appetit’ to all and we set about it.

Those were the days when one would eat some of the main course before quaffing the wine, and I followed tradition in this, but when I got to sipping the wine, I was severely jolted.  It was pure vinegar.  I choked on it and had to make lots of excuses as to why I couldn’t possibly drink it – perhaps I was still suffering from jet-lag ?  Mother seemed to be a bit crest-fallen but as she was the mother of five boys (and no girls) she was accustomed to the incivility of the men in her family.  My brothers had done far worse in their time

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Luckily, the civil war did not affect us on this visit which was surprising because Robert Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade – North Korean trained – was operating in Matabeleland which is where our farm was situated – and it is said that they slaughtered over 20,000 N’debele people in what was termed ‘Gukurahundi’ which was a tribal genocide.  The Minister of State for National Security in the President’s Office who supposedly directed The Fifth Brigade was Emerson Mnangagwa – known as the Crocodile – and who is the present President of Zimbabwe.

We returned to Bangladesh and immersed ourselves in the work again but were asked about our Home Leave.  One of those who asked us was Swedish and had links with Zimbabwe, and she was surprised that we had been ambushed by this wine.  She already knew about it and told us the following:

The owner of the vineyard – and novice wine maker – had decided that this particular wine should be judged by a recognised wine taster.  Accordingly, after the arrangements had been made, the wine taster was sitting at a table in the wine maker’s house when the wine was brought in, suitably wrapped in a napkin to hide the label, and a small amount was poured into his glass.

He held it up to the light to examine its clarity, swirled it round the glass and then sampled its bouquet having put his nose over the glass.  He looked pensive and said, “This is a wine I don’t know.  Where does it come from ?”

His host, the wine maker, pushed his chair back, walked to the window and proudly indicated the vineyard just outside the window.

The wine taster looked at his glass, and then looked at the vineyard before saying gently, “It doesn’t travel very well, does it ?”

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Ken Gibbs can be contacted via kengibbs1941@gmail.com

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