An invitation to El Burro to taste Mescal with Rui Esteves of &Union fame is not a date to be dodged. Especially when the other tasters are a brace of blonde beauties from House & Leisure – surely the best lifestyle magazine in the country? Why do design magazines have a monopoly on goddesses while wine and food get the Sipping Moms, Boozy Bores, Special Needs Nerds and Beardy Weirdies comme moi? I’m hoping I’m not pre-empting any scoops when I divulge that indoor plants are a trend H&L has identified for 2012. And artisanal spirits, like the Tequila and now Mescal that Rui distils in Oaxaca. And if you can’t pronounce that, you’re square this season.

So there we were, sucking on double distilled Mescal matured in oak for eight months along with a gusano worm and Rui, El Burro chef Paul Van’t Hoff and proprietor Nic Haarhoff, when a jolly party of six punters burst through the door with a box of BYO: Four Cousins, red and white. “Even my cheapest Swartland wine on the wine list is better than that” exploded Nic. I wonder if they ordered out for Nando’s like the African presidents invited to the ANC 100th birthday party did?

The top-of-the-line five year old Mescal is real ancestor worship stuff and tasted like the magnificent Man Mo temple in Hong Kong that Debra Meiburg MW took us to last year. Rui’s entry level single distilled Tequila will needs change as the distiller was recently killed in a car wreck, so the 2000 bottles left will soon become as collectible as Johnny Walker Green Label the H&L beauties are collecting. And since the world ends for us Mayans on December 21, the five year old stuff won’t be repeated, either.