Holiday’s wine

By Roberto Lo Russo

Time to get ready for the journey back from holidays (or almost time). All clothes and swimsuits to be washed are being just thrown in the suitcase that sooner or later we’ll be emptied to start the marathon laundry-drying. What? Non everybody have been at the sea? Of course, any destination is worth, it just matter to enjoy the holidays…

I don’t know about you, but personally every time I plan a trip – either for business or leisure – I leave a bit of space in the suitcase to store some bottles of local wine and bring it back home. It makes no difference if it’s a domestic or international trip and, in my mind, it makes more sense if that wine is not available in Italy, ideally not even online.

Is it worth it?

Why should we carry home some wine from a trip when online – being a bit geeky about it – we could possibly find everything? Well, reasons might be a number and the most obvious is that we might have tasted a wine (say it, at a restaurant) and so we’d like to enjoy it again once the trip is over. There might be a deeper and more sentimental reason: taking with us a wine may be tasted far away from home, could give us the feeling to be still there, perceiving the sounds, the flavors and a long series of emotions we experienced in those moments.

Let’s imagine (or remind) of a trip to Santorini, gorgeous island born from what’s left of an ancient collapsed volcano, the joy of a sunset seen from one of the many bars in Fira, on the edge of the cliff over the deep blue sea and, on the horizon, the sun slowly plunge into the water flooding the atmosphere with a hint of deeper and deeper orange, the wind firmly blowing cooling down the burning air of the daytime, an Assyrtiko is a good company and that glass of wine is now your notebook on which you record your emotions. Now, tell me that, once back in town after the holiday, you would not love to live again that same pleasure at your place, pouring that very same wine to a friend that came to visit you and to listen how you enjoyed your time on that amazing island in the middle of the Egean Sea!

What we put in the suitcase

Now, pay attention: pack a bottle of wine onto a bag doesn’t necessarily mean that, along with that bottle, are emotions traveling too. Rather I’d tell you, by experience, that the longer the distance between your home and the place where you bought the wine, lower the energy that will bring memories back to you at the time of opening the bottle itself.

Not talking about the traumas a wine can experience during a journey – bigger or lower impact depends on multiple factors, above all the quality of the wine and therefore its resilience – we need to know that, of everything you experienced as you were sipping that wine for the first time in its own native place, just a minimal part will show up once back at home. And I’m not just talking about the emotion given by a cool ocean breeze blowing in from the Pacific Ocean caressing your face as you were watching the sunset beside a Californian beach (beside tough, not on it, other wise you’d be reading this from some jail close to the border with Mexico…), I’m more talking about the sensory sensations given by the tasting itself.

Our mind

Now, it would sound a bit unreasonable, but if we think about how much our beloved brain could be influenced by numberless inner and outer factors, we could understand that is not that difficult to taste the very same wine in two different places in the world and get different tasting sensations, sometimes even a lot different.

When we’re far away from home – and with “far” I mean anything from one hour drive to 20 hours flight – our mind radically change its attitude towards everything surrounds us and, generally speaking, it’s far more receptive to external stimulus. Still not convinced? Just think about that fellow co-worker a bit too reserved, super-super meticulous when working, with no swings in his mood either in positive or negative way, that never join the group for an after work party or Christmas dinner. Well, just be aware that the very same co-worker, during its vacation in a tourist resort, could be the one taking the scene to the head of entertainers, giving freedom to a limitless theatrical energy.

The transformation of your “how-is-him-called? I have no clue…” is the same that makes us feeling the sensations differently compared to daily life, making them wider or even hiding some of them.

Coming back consciously

So are you telling us not to bring any bottle from a trip, either it’s a holiday or a business trip? Definitely not! Quite the opposite! If you liked a wine and you had the change to buy some, let’s take it home. Just be aware that you’re not bringing back a memory such as a bracelet, a painting, an house ornament (well, does anyone still use those?), but you’re rather bringing back a wine that you liked and that contributed to please a moment. But please, don’t get upset if it doesn’t bring you back to that afternoon while you’re having lunch on a terrace beside a vineyards in a beautiful Mendoza (Argentina) winery overlooking the snowy Andes in the background. And please again, don’t pronounce the fateful sentence “I though it was better…” as that “better” was due right to what we left back there.

But, if tasting again the wine, should you be totally brought back at the moment of its first tasting, well you’re due for a jackpot!