TONIC - Moments

Special or “Tonic Moments” are at the core of what we are looking for and wanting to create and share with our readers. Co-founder Benita Finanzio gives us an insight into one of her Tonic moments…

When I was teething as a baby, my mother used to rub brandy on my gums (against all conventional modern wisdom).  As a child in the 70s and 80s I watched my parents socialise with their friends over a glass of cask wine, or a bottle of Porphyry Sauterne on special occasions.  

My parents were always conscientious.  They’d been told by someone that one way to lower the risk of us kids binge drinking as teenagers was to destroy the “mystique” of alcohol by giving their kids the odd sip of a beer or wine.  Maybe it worked…. but, I imagine like most, I was never really schooled on the finer points of nice tipple.  

The closest to any kind of ‘schooling’ that I got in those early years was from my mum, who thought that I needed to be warned about how gin imperilled a young lady’s virtue.  I never really understood why my mum was so preoccupied with gin being a risk to my honour over, really, say any other booze, but hey that was just the way it was.  

I always understood that there was good stuff to drink, and plonk – but I never really explored what made the difference. All told, I was pretty green when I started university – but my interest in being able to tell the difference between the two was piqued.  

Imbibing being the great social lubricant, much of life became about what one drank in a social setting. It became clear to me that what I drank seemed to say a lot about me, at least to those around me.  

I felt naïve and inexperienced, and terribly self conscious. In truth, and with the clarity that only hindsight offers, I was….and probably so were all of my friends.

But at the time it seemed important to know more. I didn’t feel like my parents were the right one’s to ask especially after the sound gin advice from mum.  

Instead, I turned to my great uncle Gordon. Gordon, and his wife Irene, were two incredible cats.  When they were young, they travelled overland from London, back to Australia.  No 24-hour single  stop-over flight for them; instead trains and ships, camels and caravans. She was Irish, and a bit mad. He was tall, handsome, quiet …urbane even. He’d had plenty of different jobs. He’d been in the war in Darwin. He’d travelled. He ran a grocery store in the 50s. And when I knew him he was a National Park Ranger. They were adventurers. They were conversationalists. And why not? They had a lot to talk about. And they loved a party.  

Their parties were…classy… the classic 1960s, 70s party. Those parties were the talk of the town and an event on the social calendar. My brother and I would often be the wait staff, filling glasses and serving hors d'oeuvres or as we liked to say at the time “horses’ doovers”. Everyone dressed nicely – the music wasn’t too loud, and everyone drank what they described as nice wine, or cocktails. Uncle Gordon was the perfect host. He had a razor wit and a cheeky smile….sort of Hugh Heffner meets the Leyland brothers (think the 70s equivalent of Steve Irwin times two). He was a bit of a wine buff too; he’d been a wine merchant for a stint in the late 60s.  

If I wanted to know the difference between good wine and plonk then – reflecting on it, Great Uncle Gordon was the perfect person to ask – I went to see him. 

He greeted me with a smile that filled me with the warmth of childhood. I told him about my dilemma as we walked down to the den. He listened attentively. I could see that he understood the gravity of the situation. He sat me down at his home bar. He could see that I needed an education in the finer things, and I knew I was about to get it.

He said that this would need to be a practical lesson.

He went to the fridge and retrieved a bottle of white wine…chilled.  Carefully…artfully it seemed, he removed the cork.  He sniffed the cork.  He poured two glasses. He picked up his glass and tilted it, swishing the wine around slowly, instructing me to do the same. 

He asked me to look at the wine.  He wanted to know what I thought it looked like.  Inexpertly, I fumbled for the words that I thought were important.  “It looks nice, and seems clear.” “Right” he said.

He then asked me to smell the wine: what could I smell? Did I like the smell?…”Yes,” I said. He asked me to take a small sip, but before I swallowed, to swill it around my mouth a little bit. I followed his instructions obediently; what had I tasted? Did I like the taste?  “Yes” I said again.

He put his glass down on the bar. He looked at me seriously. I was ready to receive the wisdom – how could I tell if this is a good wine or not?

And then came the lesson.

“Love,” he said, “If it looks good, smells good, and tastes good to you, then it’s a good wine.” 

I looked up at him pretty confused. Then the penny dropped. If it looks good to me, if it smells good to me, if it tastes good to me – if I like it – then that is, by definition, a good wine. 

Liberated, I re-entered the world, perhaps not having learnt the finer points of wine appreciation in quite the same way that I had expected, but having gained something much more important; the self confidence to trust my own palate and be my own person.

As long as you keep an open mind, embracing new experiences and opportunities to drink in the richness that diversity has to offer, you will learn a lot about what you like and what you don’t. And that’s all that matters. 

Oh and I love gin…and TONIC.

Uncle Gordon and Benita circa 1995

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