Bordeaux
A city, a colour, a wine
When it rains, the sky is similar to a stable. Every single drop seems like a running animal rushing through the finishing line, the ground. Like galaxies knotted together, the drops mixed, one on top of the other becoming scent of soil, musk and roots. Watching closely, you’ll notice the slug slime tracks on the leaves, barely washed out by the rain. With rain, snails climb over plants, navigating the world with their tiny antennas.
The air is crisp; the ground doesn’t want to turn into mud, still. The soil it’s not sticky yet, but it allows the water to filter deep down to the groundwater. Footprints pass, human stains, boots steps carved on this chirping-sound landscape. Those birds, perching on the lower benches, sing happily to the rain. Humans, well… humans snort and curse to this rain most of the time.
“Bordeaux”
There’s a sign, not far from there, bent by time and gravity.
Everyone goes to Bordeaux, flowing like water, going down without stopping by in the small towns. Yes, Bordeaux is an immense groundwater with many wells; it’s a word you use in an elegant dinner, with the taste of wax down the throat. Bordeaux is even a colour!
A car with a dull tone, the typical tourist car, stops suddenly at the intersection. While small smog clouds leave the tailpipe, the engine is almost silent. Yes, he has to be a tourist. Only a tourist can go around there with a car like that; it would be enough a plant of blackberries to scratch that car badly.
“Hi, madame, are you from here?”
They have all the same eyes, these tourists. They seem to squint their eyes, summer or winter, as they were short-sighted. Now the tourist protects his forehead from the rain that enters inside the car, making them meet the outside world for the first time.
Silvie leans on her stick. She doesn’t squint her eyes; she lets the rain flow on her head and shoulders. She’s dressed for that weather; that rain isn’t a threat at all. Silvie has short hair and long stories to tell, deep as the wrinkles she’s so proud of. Her hands aren’t pretty, the dark nails revealing the hard work on the fields.
“Here where, exactly?”
Yes, let’s make them crazy, those tourists.
The driver turns to speak inside the car, asking the others inside for an impossible translation. Impossible, since the woman speaks the same language, no doubt. He looks back with his squinting eyes outside the window.
“Are you from around here, madame? Do you happen to know Castelmoron d’albret?”
The woman’s face relaxes, getting suddenly 10 years younger. The stick drops on the ground without a sound.
Castelmoron d’Albret is the smallest village in France, with its 52 inhabitants. Who could be interested in such a small village? And yet, the narrow old streets in Castelmoron d’albret, seen from a satellite, recalls the shape of a cell dividing in two. As the village was something more, a vital part, essential out of the landscape. Yes, but why they know it?
“What do you want from Catelmoron d’Albret?”
Asks Silvie, suspicious. Behind her, you could spot her house, covered by some tree and few puffs of white smoke.
Then, it comes the answer.
“A glass of good Bordeaux?”
The driver smiles at her.
Yes, Bordeaux isn’t just a color, not only a city. Bordeaux is wine; it’s the encounter of two different worlds, ready to share some special moments. Silvie collects the stick from the ground and smiles back.
“Follow me. With an empty stomach, you wouldn’t recognize a good Bordeaux from a glass of sugar water.”
The tourists’ car follows her, scratching the doors on the blackberries on the way. Then, the doors slam in the silence of the countryside. Silvie’s stick draws some suspension points between them.
Over them, there’s only the sky, loaded with clouds, which seems now a beautiful wool blanket.
With Vinoè, we decided to write stories to make you feel the same sensations as when you didn’t know anything about wine. An urge to discover through stories. The fantasy of a storyteller, Daniele Frau mixed with the knowledge of a third-level sommelier, Davide Masili, in order to give a new, different look to this wonderful world.
