Wine Fictions

 To the people close to me it is no secret that I am a huge fan of the most efficient form of human transportation.  In fact, I can barely imagine my days without a bicycle. Sure is that the fact that I am faster to get to work with it then with public transportation or even by car. Adding to it, there is also the fact that I can almost always find a parking spot relatively easy and close to my final destination.  Of course I could keep on describing how the perception of space and time deeply changes, how the inner feeling of freedom grows to an almost perfect state of happiness but I will just state that it is something that it is as deeply connected to my identity as wine itself.  In this sense it is not surprising at all that I have found the recent Mapped videos by Madeline Puckette in both Alto Adige and Alentejo tremendously inspiring and since I have first seen it that I feel like doing something similar not only in the given regions but also in some others....

Wine and literature.  For me these two words belong together in a very special and intricate way. Literature has enough examples of deep connection to wine. From Omar Khayam to Goethe  there have been several writers which have made references to wine and this number does not seem to stop growing in what seems to be a pretty special relationship.  Getting into a more daily life level, I often get asked at work about what I am reading and, in some cases, I even get books borrowed. Confidence wise, this is something that definitely connects to my previous post .   Now that I am reading Murakami's  The city and its uncertain walls  the number of people who ask me about it is even bigger, attesting the author's popularity.  Something that has also marked me was this good friend of mine saying that he was first driven to drink Chablis after having read Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress .   Close to where I was born there was this em...

 "Can you please get me a bottle of wine from Piemonte? I have this birthday from a guy from there and a... can I pass over later on?" What, for me, is an absolutely normal phone call has, this time, driven me to some further reflection on how much certain people seem to trust my wine recommendations.  In this particularly case it was nothing too much as it was a call from a close friend, but whenever people I don't really have such a big connection to say outloud that they simply trust whatever I recommend, I do feel between flattered and puzzled.  Sure it also happens to my colleagues as there are certain customers who just want to be attended by one of us.  Somehow I find it fascinating how you manage to gain someone's trust. At least, wine wise. I do believe that a big part of the job is about this unique relationship that you can establish with customers which, in a very last interpretative point, makes them come back.  That is also the reason why you often...