There’s a lesson here…

I’ve enthused about Getwine on the blog before, most notably here and here.

For those of you who missed those posts or have simply forgotten what I wrote about, here’s what Getwine says Getwine is:

GETWINE is a South African Wine Portal which allows you to easily buy superb South African wine online and have it delivered to your door.

What they don’t say in that tagline is that those wines are often heavily (or more) discounted. This puts really good wine into the occasionally desperate clutches of us normal people.

But not just us normal people. Abnormal people as well:

Fullscreen capture 2016-03-03 085526 AM.bmp

Yes, that’s a Getwine delivery going to a motor yacht on the Waterfront. The motor yacht in question is the Vava II. I’m not saying that it’s fancy or anything, but it’s owned by Swiss-Italian biotech entrepreneur Ernesto Bertarelli and cost £100,000,000. OK, it is fancy. There, I said it.

I’m no expert, but I’d wager that Ernesto wouldn’t exactly struggle to buy basically any South African wine (or vineyard) he wanted. He could even check the grapes out in person by using the helicopter that sits atop his big boat.

But no, Ernesto (or his people) chose to buy discounted wine from Getwine.

Firstly, let’s not for a moment suggest that this isn’t a big vote of confidence in Getwine’s offerings and service. And big congratulations to them. Local boyz dun good.
I’m guessing that Ernesto picked up some hints and tips from a local blog and simply went from there.

But secondly, is this an example of how people with lots of money (and Ernesto does have an awful lot of money), get and keep lots of money? By not splurging on the simple things in life, when there’s an equally good – and more reasonably priced – alternative. (Obviously, I don’t count his 97 metre long yacht in this “no splurge” category.)

Is there a lesson for us financially mere mortals here? I think that there probably is.
And will we listen? No. Of course not.

Allegedly, Vava II is on her way to somewhere that’s not Cape Town at some point today. You can live the Playboy lifestyle vicariously through Ernesto via Marinetraffic by following Vava II’s progress here.

UPDATE: See the comment below by Getwine with all the details.