When I was 16 I met a very nice, cute girl. She lived in Cape Town and I live in Johannesburg. We met through IRC and had one of the sweetest “flings” online, with a brief off-line kissing-friends visit to her family’s wine farm in Franschhoek.
I remember the day I visited her. I was on holiday with my parents in CT and asked them to drop me off so I could spend time with the girl who had lifted their phone bill higher than Zimbabwe’s inflation rate.
I’m not going to reveal the sweet romance this girl and I shared over a weekend, but more the romance I shared with her father’s Merlot and the breaking of my so-called wine-tasting virginity.
You see, she had been brought up on a vineyard (a very nice place indeed) and I had been brought up in the city by parents who, to this day, would get awfully drunk on a thimble of the good grape, so the contrast was there and we had a lot to teach one another about our teenage lives.
She taught me about good wine. The best, in my opinion. Hers.
You see, since this holiday fling with a fine Merlot, I have yet to find a wine that I truly enjoy as much as I did that day’s. Whenever I see a bottle store, I dash inside and ask for it by name — 99 out of 100 times I am disappointed as no one seems to stock it.
Enter the internet. Web 2.0, in fact. Thought Leader nogal!
I referred to IRC in a previous Thought Leader post and hyperlinked “glass of wine” to the amazing wine farm’s website, Moreson.
The next day I received an email saying I had received a comment — it was her. My long-lost wine girl. We caught up on Skype, I read her blog (where she documents these events) and we are now friends again thanks to Web 2.0.
So the point of this post is not to claim that I am some kind of wine connoisseur, or to imply that this is some rekindled love story that matters to the world. It’s just a fun tale of two friends, the internet and what I call Wine 2.0.
You see, yesterday I received a gift at my office. Three bottles of the finest Merlot I’ve ever tasted. Hers. Needless to say, it also came with an order form — so if anyone out there wants to taste what I’m talking about, drop me a mail and I’ll hook you up!
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