A Layman Exploring Wine 19

by William Powell

Summer is the season for real magic. The kind that happens in your head and your heart. The kind that creates memories and drags them back out into the light.

Chianti or Heating Oil, Who Cares

I filled up the car today – and once again realised that, for me, the smell of petrol on a hot summer's day will probably forever be linked to the thought of red wine.
Now, there may be a few people who have always rated my judgement on wine so poorly that, after a few glasses of Chianti, they could safely give me heating oil to drink and I wouldn't notice the difference anyway. I don't want to be too quick to cry “slander” here ... and if I do, not too loudly ... but for once, that has nothing to do with it.

Life in a Ford Transit

This combination – somewhat unappealing at first glance – is all about olfactory memories of my very first “proper” holiday. By proper, I mean that it was the first time I went away on my own. And by on my own, I mean that I was neither under my mother's irritating supervision nor surrounded by my even more irritating siblings. Otherwise, “on my own” meant that ten of us were travelling in a Ford Transit. 

To Italy – on an “educational holiday”. All the planning had already been nerve-racking and exciting, but when we finally set off - at 07:00 on Sunday morning - I was so wired that many impressions of that day were burned indelibly into my memory. One of the first is of us hanging around a very sleepy petrol station on the outskirts of Aschaffenburg, already feeling the gathering heat of the day as the smell of petrol rose into our nostrils. Petrol for our holiday van. Petrol that would take us to Italy without our parents. Petrol we paid for with our own money. It stank terribly and smelled wonderful.

Under Hypnosis

And that mood lasted – despite endless hours in the old rattletrap – until we pulled into a campsite outside Verona late that night. It was insanely hot and dusty, and the air smelled completely different from home. We were surrounded by huge numbers of young people who, like us, were probably chasing their dreams towards the sun. Of course, it wasn't long before we were holding our first bottles of wine, handed to us by drunken strangers, and although I probably couldn't tell you even under hypnosis what wine (or how many different kinds) went down my parched throat that night – it was delicious. 

And that taste was evidently stored on the same internal hard drive where the smell of petrol had already been filed under extremely cool and wonderful.  
Just so there are no misunderstandings: the trip itself was very, very weird. The tents weren't waterproof, and Siena was having its wettest summer in years. I fell onto a sea urchin near Pisa and had to spend the night in hospital. 

Coming Out in Bolzano

Our van broke down, and a very enterprising mechanic in Follonica practically “robbed” us. Two of my fellow travellers discovered Campari Soda as the ideal breakfast drink and, just past San Gimignano, threw up so spectacularly all over our vehicle that the journey home was hell (even though we had forced them to scrub absolutely every last bit of the Transit). On Elba, Sabine fell madly in love with a sleazy nightclub bouncer and became almost unbearable, while Olli had a very disappointing coming-out in Bolzano because none of us was even remotely surprised. 

And yet that summer was full of magical moments, and the taste and smell of red wine played no small part in them. I think my personal wine journey and the search for my own taste in wine were also shaped by that summer. Why else would I not simply surrender to beer instead of nurturing this complicated love-hate relationship with wine? Just because it tastes good? Pah - certainly not!