So
PK and I are at this Spanish Wine Trade Fair in the old Billingsgate
Fish Market in the City of London, and it occurs to me that of all
the major wine-producing regions, including Australia and the whole
of the Americas, Spain is the one on which I have the
slenderest intellectual purchase. This takes some doing, obviously,
and even I am slightly surprised by my troglodytic ignorance of the
wines of Spain. Still. This is one reason why PK and I have made the
trip down to the City; to learn.
Of
course, being in the company of PK I am likely to learn less, rather
than more, on account of the level of discourse in which we
habitually engage.
'I
went for a 5 k run this morning,' PK says, looking pleased with
himself. 'I can show you the route I took. My iPhone plotted it.'
'I've
never been here before,' I say, looking at the old Billingsgate Fish
Market building, now an all-purpose split-level venue, but still with
a pair of fabulous gilded fish weathervanes on the roof. 'When's
lunch?'
'I
wonder if they'll have that Pedro Ximinez stuff I had at my birthday
dinner?' PK asks. 'You remember that stuff? It was like liquid
Christmas Pudding.'
'You're
always talking about liquid Christmas Pudding. Everything is liquid
Christmas Pudding to you.'
Lunch
is pretty good by Trade Fair standards, with some flavoursome ham
buns and pungent cheeses. So far, neither PK nor I have actually
tasted any of the Trade Fair wines, but we do make liberal use of the
lunchtime bar, while PK shows me the route he took on his 5 kilometre
run.
'Then
you get Paula Radcliffe's voice telling you how well you've done.'
At
last we re-emerge onto the Trade Fair main floor, and look around.
There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different wines. Or
the same wines, with different packagings. There are definitely
hundreds of different packagings. The only Spanish wine I can think
of is Rioja. There are scores of differently-packaged Riojas. What
the rest are, I have no idea.
Some
of the bottles have traditional paper labels with a drypoint of the
winery and a date. Many more have multicoloured polka dots, wavy
lines, stylised representations of trees and undergrowth, chic little
retro cartoons of swinging couples enjoying a bottle of (invariably
white) wine together. Some have candystripe vertical bars like a test
card. Some have sepia photographs of incredibly grizzled Spanish
estate workers pulling faces. One has a Roy Lichtenstein pulp comic
image and is called Crash.
Another is covered in pictures of door keys.
'I
like the keys,' I say to the woman who is in charge of the keys wine.
'We
have already won two design awards for our keys,' she says.
I
have an idea.
'Spain,'
I say, wisely, to PK, 'is the true birthplace of Surrealism. From
Cervantes to Goya to Miró to Dalí. That's what this is all about.
There are nods to the Freudian subconscious. There is visual
playfulness. There is disorientating abstraction. It's all about the
labels.'
I
am so impressed by the incredible diversity of the labelling, I get out
my phone and start taking pictures.
'God,
I feel tired,' PK suddenly announces. 'I wish I hadn't gone for that
run, now. I feel really tired. I don't think I can get round this.
What's the time?'
But the wines. I know that we found
the Pedro Ximinez stand, because PK grabbed my arm and told me it
tasted like liquid Christmas Pudding, not my arm, the Pedro Ximinez. Other than that?
'Just
a couple more pictures,' I say, photographing the bottle covered in
door keys.
'Are
you wine writers?' the woman behind the table asks, suspiciously.
Another
five minutes and I have enough wobbly, out-of-focus shots to keep me
happy.
'I've
got to go on to a reception now,' PK says, haggardly.
When
I get home, I cannot remember anything about the wines I tried at
the Trade Fair, or, indeed, if I managed to try any at all. Nonetheless I
carefully download all the photographs. Some of them are almost intelligible. Then, just as as carefully, I delete every single one
of them, imagining that I'm backing them up. I spend half an hour
trying to retrieve them. No success. So now I have no memory of the
wines, no record of the event. Everything has vanished. I am
precisely back where I started.
'Surreal,'
I say to myself.
CJ
Surreal Madrid, si?
ReplyDelete¿ (as they say in Spain...)
DeleteAaaah, 'Dali Atomicus' by Philippe Halsman, the 'Jump' series, the thrown cats, iconic image, etc. Allegedly, Dali's original idea was to jump at a canvas whilst they blew up a duck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Salvador_Dali_A_(Dali_Atomicus)_09633u.jpg
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