From Pensula with some Arra to Vueve Cliquot

Thursday night one of my closest friends was gonna be in town, woot woot – once more for the nostalgia, we Forked with some other friends – after which we went for a wine dinner at the Peninsula Hotel. It’s the Peninsula Hotel; imagine my apprehension, so off we went. Much like I expected it, the décor was uneventful, with the same carpet design running from the lobby all the way to the restaurant, at least they are cutting cost by buying in bulk – oh look, a man with a synthesizer and a mic crooning some non-descript soothing classics for mood, and the chairs are very similar to the chairs in your office boardroom, anyway, the friend who invited the close friend of mine, is a club member here and they host wine dinners every last Thurs of the month, and he’s referred to by name, this alone stars making the experience better. We are shown to our table, which is marked with the name of the host (the club member) – an announcement is made that the dinner will now commence; apparently they were waiting for us, and couldn’t start till all guest were seated. The wine estate for this particular evening was Arra. Which the visiting friend pointed out was a palindrome. A palindrome being a word, phrase, number or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction. This brought about brief excitement of trying to come up with other palindromes. Each meal of the five course meal was paired with a complimenting wine from the estate; lovely wines, with the Viognier being the highlight of their range. If you wanna read more about the specifics of the wine from that evening, please check out: www.wineexclamation.co.za, the friend of mine who was at the dinner will give more informed descriptions of the various wines. The food was generally all right, except the main, which was pigeon and absolutely atrocious, seriously it w-a-s just W-R-O-N-G. It’s a fine line between which birds can be eaten, chicken, yes, duck yes, guinefowl, yes, pigeon, never! There were prizes to be won, the MC (without the extra C) asked questions and people answered, I remember answering a question that won me a dinner to the value of R390 at the Sunset Restaurant at the Peninsula Hotel, yay, but I’d be lying if I told the question asked or even what my winning answer was. The evening was coming to an end when the same friend of mine decided to make a speech, which was good, solid and to the point till he decided to start digressing to politics, elections, machetes and other things I believe I chose to block out. At this point we had drunk some MCC at Fork, wines with each of the five meals so its fair to say we were all deeply inebriated, and this was about the same time it seemed like a good idea to get a bottle of Vueve Cliquot! The host of the evening, the owner of the Arra wine estate also decided to get another bottle, which took the evening from a surprisingly great dinner to an absolutely festive evening I’d love to do again. I don’t remember a lot of what took place after this, but I know we went to Cubana where we bumped into some friends and I woke up at home the next day, I’m still trying to piece the details of what happened after…