Wine, fate and surprises - by Alexis Naira (Posted sull'antologia "Wine and magic" Editions Estro-Verso) Firmly push the metal screw into the cork and with a fluency gained from experience, stappai the bottle. "Who tastes?" Was the usual question.
Ingell While the boy with his hair and wore a dark jacket to his lips the cup, I was sitting there stiff with her skirt gathered at the waist and the bottle in his hands show the label Gewürztraminer.
The wine was all my life and those few gestures calculated, perhaps a little 'artifacts fills me with pride.
Was I a famous wine maker? Or an expert sommelier note to the best restaurants?
No, I was just a job, a waitress in a wine bar.
'm an Italian girl in the fullest sense of the term: average height, medium build, olive complexion and brown hair. They are from Apulia, but I grew up in a village near Pisa that I speak Tuscan Italian for excellence (I do not want my other compatriots). But what characterizes my being is a love of Italian and Mediterranean cuisine for local wine. I am a fanatical supporter of the superiority of Italian wine in the world (and for that I do not want the French), and yes I know, sometimes I may seem stubborn, but believe me, I have my reasons to think so.
The wine was not love at first sight when my mother died, he left me and my younger brother in the hands of fate and an alcoholic father. As you can imagine I hated the wine with all my strength, considering the cause of all my misery and misfortune. For me there was no university, vacations, clothes, jewelry and fine dining, to me there was only work until the leg I could stand to make a living for me and my family miserable.
It was funny how I could not blame my father for me he was just a victim, too weak to resist, too depressed to respond.
And then there was the wine, with its ability to bamboozle, to attract, enslave.
And so for a long time, a time when I saw my father distorted and stretched through the glass of a bottle.
One night I came home after my second job and found him dying, his belly swollen, her skin turned yellow. He tried to talk to me to say something, maybe asking for help but went out of his mouth just a breath of fetid breath and a delirium of words without meaning. I grabbed the phone in an attempt to rescue him, but I felt the trembling hand of my father to stop. With the little strength he had left, he grabbed a bottle of wine from the table and handed it to me mumbling something incomprehensible.
What power had the wine, I thought at that moment he knew to call their victims even when he was almost killed. But I was wrong, it was the last wish of a man condemned to death, was a gift, a legacy, all that remained of a life destitute and outcast.
After the funeral, my father took the bottle with the intention to hurl it as far as possible from my life, I wanted to see it shatter into a thousand pieces and I wanted to observe the liquid disperse insidious, particular as the blood of many victims. But I did something unexpected, I put the bottle on my bedside table just as you would with a photograph of a deceased.
the evening before falling asleep, the looking with a prayer, a salute to her better than any other thing was the perfect synthesis of my father.
And so day after day hatred crumbled slowly giving way to a strange feeling that was hard to accept.
It 's amazing how time can fix things, I had a double duty: relieve the suffering of a life of sacrifice and softened the memories of a childhood not so happy.
But even more amazing are some jokes in which the fate of Serbia for us. Yes because I can not give the case ended up being a waitress in a wine bar, it is not possible to me, I paid a high price for the weakness of my father, can be touched such a coincidence.
But it was just the way it went, now it was selling the wine with increasing satisfaction.
me was that the owner (the old Archibald Conti) sent to recommend the right drink for a slice of bread or fish pate, it was I who suggested the purchase of the perfect bottle for a party, a marriage proposal, a family dinner.
All this was beginning to like it and soon began to love the wine and see my fate inextricably linked to it.
Then there was the turning point.
It was Christmas Eve and before closing, the owner I came up with his air that look peaceful and good-natured that I was so fond of and made a gesture that I had seen it done years earlier by another man handed me a bottle of wine. It was a Bolgheri Rosso with a ribbon tied around the neck.
Of course, I had already tasted the wine before that day, but with a purely educational interest related to my work.
This time he came home walking slowly, letting the snowflakes and thoughts slip gently away from my body, squeezing my hand in Bolgheri.
That night I celebrated Christmas with friends of enjoying that bottle of his color, the scents that rose from the glass to tease my nostrils, its harmonious taste and the sensation of lightness that gave my mind.
The next morning I felt wonderful: bright, cheerful and full of brio.
I was reborn, my life began again exactly at that moment I realized that the wine was not necessarily a demon from which escape and thought of my poor father who had not grasped the difference between diversion and addiction.
Thus began a period of redemption for me. Allacciai romantic relationships, squeezed new friends, some even told me I was beautiful, although I knew for a lifetime.
In the evening, at the end of my shift I spent time in the damp cellar enoteca. I walked up and down and I ran my fingers that rested on those bottles lying on the dusty shelves, I stood there sitting on a stool listening to half broke the silence and the sounds of old wood. If you passed a high-speed machine, the bottles clinked together, joy. They were peaceful moments where I let myself be entertained by the magic that releases those bottles.
The old Arci had reserved a corner of the basement to rare and vintage wines. They were on sale, but were part of his private collection. I enjoyed reading them and coming year, and I pause to observe them as if they had some kind of forgotten stories to tell.
One day I came home in a good mood I was calm and it was a good feeling. I turned to my father telling him a silent salute that finally had something to be grateful. I took the bottle from the table and scratched with the nail a corner of the label dry and yellowed and suddenly took a decision: I would have donated to Arci. Would certainly not have been the pride of his collection, but I knew the meaning of that gift. And then I was sure my father would not mind seeing all that was left of himself to be part of a collection of rare specimens.
Arci's reaction to the sight of the bottle was a colorful expression typically Tuscan.
He wanted to know just where I had taken and I surprised, I told my father. It was the first time that someone spoke to him.
"Dearest child, your father left you a precious gift" by returning the bottle said "sell it to some rich collector willing to pay!"
Yes, that unemployed father, an alcoholic and depressed left a legacy to those who had occupied him until the end. Of course, there was an apartment in the center, but he had thought of me and this was as good as the most precious treasures.
been ten years since that special day when I discovered that my father had left me a rare Sassicaia of 65. I wonder why so many years I never bothered to read the label to give a name to the unknown.
If I sold the bottle? No, it was a gift for Arch and I'm not the type of person who does these things. And then the wine is like a house for me, any more than it has ever been my dark studio. Moreover, the fact that the memory of my father rest in this magical place is a relief for me: it's like to know that this poor man has finally found a little 'peace.
Last year Arci has passed away at the ripe age of eighty-eight years and being childless, he left me his precious collection of wines.
And the wine.
now running the restaurant in the evening with my brother and my prayers and my thoughts go out to the generous and dear Arci well as Dad.
The wine has made a miracle.
Wine is my whole life.
