They are saying you always remember your old flame, and to today, that Swatch nonetheless issues. It was the primary watch that ever actually spoke to me, that ever actually made me understand what a technological marvel a timepiece could possibly be. I believe it needed to do with all of these uncovered gears, with the way in which that I might see every part twitch to life once I screwed the battery into its port at the back of the case. As a ten-year-old who was fascinated by Rube Goldberg units and constructing huge cantilevered edifices with my set of grey plastic Construx, it solely made sense {that a} skeleton watch would sing with explicit readability.
Nonetheless, I by no means actually thought deeply about watches till I used to be a younger grownup, when my then-fiancée purchased me a classic Breitling 808 to mark the large day. As a substitute, I turned my consideration to wine…which, in some ways, shares plenty of the identical DNA with timepieces amongst collectors. That love, too, might be traced again to my childhood, to my household’s Friday-evening ritual, which concerned my mom simmering the tomato sauce, meatballs, and sausage on the stovetop, and my father taking me right down to the basement after he obtained again residence from work, explaining why he was pulling this wine versus that one to pair with dinner. I can nonetheless see the sunshine bulbs from their recessed tubes glinting off the maroon and navy and white capsules wrapping the necks of the Cabs and Chiantis and extra.
For my dad, the world of wine has at all times been about extra than simply the juice within the glass—simply as, for my mother, cooking has by no means simply been concerning the meals on the plate. It’s concerning the connections, concerning the historical past of the place it’s from, the tales of the individuals who grew the grapes and ushered the juice by means of the mind-boggling alchemy that transmutes it right into a liquid that, at its greatest, can age for many years and punctuate the events that make up a life with profundity and pleasure.
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