I have been absent from this space for some time now. My apologies for that. The pressing demands of my pressing schedule—a schedule so pressing that, at times, I commit the inexcusable sin of ignoring my own personal and pressing needs.
To ameliorate that, to attend to my own needs, I took a trip earlier this week, without a plane ticket, without a passport or without even a single carry-on. I took a trip to Spain without ever leaving New York. And I took it via wine. The Spanish wines on display at my eponymous shop, Maslow 6.
I see stories when I see bottles of Spanish wine. In bottles of Rioja, I think of the ancient Phoenicians and Celts who were cultivating grapes in La Rioja region 1,200 years ago. When I see Sherry, I think of Chaucer. (Perhaps I should update my reading list) because his father imported Sherries. Yes, and I think of Shakespeare’s Falstaff, who says of Sherry “It ascends me into the brain… It illumineth the face…” I see (and hear) a line from Cole Porter—“You’re the purple light of a summer night in Spain.”
And then I think of Cervantes. Nothing is more Spanish to me except perhaps one of the aforementioned Spanish vinos. “Somewhere,” Don Quixote begins, “Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago…”
Come along to that place with the Knight errant and a glass of sherry or Rioja or some other wine waiting to be discovered. Attend to yourself and your pressing needs, and travel, ever-so magically, to Spain.