In memory of a life well lived

I was once tasked to arrange the flowers around an open casket. I had never arranged flowers before, but I took on the task as if an expert in such matters, out of respect for the dead. She lay there in a purple coffin in her pale green wedding dress. As I worked around her, I never said a word.

A year ago, my best friend had rang me up from Amsterdam, her voice like broken glass, to tell me of the doctor's prediction of her imminent death. It was in Franschhoek in a restaurant that I'd heard this news, and now a year later, after the call and the funeral, sitting in this same town, the memories flood back - what else can one do but drink?

And with death, as with celebrating life, one's choice of wine is crucial, especially if your best mate was Dr Seuss crazy and a playwright more rumbustious than Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In this instance, one should choose a wine more for its nose than anything else. A sublime nose on a fine wine can transport you back in time.

The Raats Cabernet Franc 2007 did this for me. Its heady and intoxicating nose jacked me back to my 20s with my childhood friend, Tanya Sprong, as we hiked the Himalayas and strummed along to Pink Floyd. We backpacked through India for four psychedelic Hindu-filled months. We drank opium tea on camels, smoked hash on the back of elephants, chanted Ohm with Sai Baba and downed bang lassies in ancient temples.

We hung out with strangers like Sue from Singapore. Dressed in tight blue jeans, a red and white checked blanket shirt, black Docs and her short brown hair scraped off her face in a tiny knot, she'd sigh: "I'd open up an ashram for all the lost souls in this world so we can all just smoke chillums all day."

While a good nose is perfect for revisiting memories, to avert intense melancholia, the selection of a wine's balance is key. The wine should be harmonious, effortless, like a line by Tolstoy that reads: "When mamma smiled, beautiful as her face was, it became incomparably lovelier and everything around seemed to grow brighter. If in the more painful moments of my life I could have had but a glimpse of that smile I should not have known what sorrow is."

Indeed it should to be a wine that equally gets you up from your chair in a busy place like Franschhoek's Grillroom where the open kitchen beams onto the restaurant and you can merrily close your eyes and hip slink between the tables to Marvin Gaye. It also helps if you have just had their slow-roasted crispy duck with bitter orange sauce and candied orange peel on your plate. I was here with Amstel Adams' mum who ate "the most exquisite piece of beef, full-flavoured and ripe, beautifully aged and juicy". No surprises it's here that the locals buy their threeweek aged beef, rib-eye, hanger, T-bone or sirloin to take home to braai.

And when acknowledging death, the chosen wine must have depth, like a good life well and truly lived. Our wine was pricey, but then one can't put a price on death. And I rather like to live by wine author Roger Scruton's mantra:

"The worst use of money is to add to the junk pile of old cars or kitsch houses. The best use of money is to buy megaexpensive wine, so turning your money into biodegradable urine, and returning it to the primordial flux."

Suzy Bell runs Red Eye Creative, curating contemporary cultural projects in Cape Town (www.suzybell.co.za). She will consider doing lunch with anyone who dares invite her. Email her at suzybell@iafrica.com.