The second witch of Macbeth, a dead ringer for Platter taster Dear Angela, had some novel additions for her potations:

“Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,–
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

Distell goes the whole hog and puts the entire gecko in the bottle, according to Wilhelm Nakale and Julius Jabula, two customers from Ondangwa in Namibia. Coming hot on the heels of the crushed glass in a bottle saga which has seen Distell brands recalled from Tokyo to Tipperary, is the lizard in the Capenheimer akin to the worm Mexicans put in the bottle of mescal for extra potency? After all, Distell CEO Richard Rushton was previously boss of SA Breweries in Central America while “critter wines” are all the rage in the USA.

Wilhelm and Julius are not happy. “Those people at Distell are not taking us serious because until now they has not given us our checkup results and we do not know what the gecko has done to us. Instead of giving us medicine, they gave us each some bottles of wine to silence us, but our health is our concern.” While the glass powder, dismissed by wine snobs as tartrate crystals, was poo-pooed as not a health threat by Richard, can he make the same claims about geckos? Chameleons have long been a feature of Stellenbosch terroir but is SA wine now branching out to include lizards?

Distell area manager Matheus Imbamba has another expanation. “We have a department that deals with those kind of cases, but their case is different. Those guys are pressing too much for compensation and we are suspecting that the gecko was put in on purpose. We are still investigating it because we are suspecting foul play.” Meanwhile the wine lizard is laughing like a drain at the UCT Business School.