Vintage Attraction (22 page)

Izzy had been on wine tours before, in Australia, in France, and regaled me with a preview, stories of sorting machines, bottling lines, fermentation tanks, barrel samples, and tasting rooms. We became delirious with information and imagery. In so doing, the bitterness and animosity between us seemed to fall away. If it didn't disappear entirely, at least it got for the moment relegated to the background. The more facts we amassed, sitting there, taking turns reading from the MacBook screen, the more we lost ourselves in this mythical land of myths and, apparently, ideal viticultural conditions. In Greece grapes could grow as they did in the celebrated regions of the wine world. Yet since the country was largely overlooked in the marketplace consciousness (an ironic state, given vinification's ancient Mediterranean origins), the varietals needed to be hand-sold. Via a trade trip, like the one on which she and I were about to embark, powerful international sommeliers, like Izzy, could potentially be able to turn the wine-tide and lead the charge. At the very least, taken for granted in America, the wines Greece exported were affordable. That fact resonated for both Izzy and me. In our stupor, we forged a truce.

“I really want to go on this trip,” she said.

“So do I,” I said.

“I want to go on this trip
with
you
.”

I nodded solemnly, took her hand, brought her close to me and kissed her forehead. “Me, too.”

“This is going to be so useful for your restaurant concepts.”

I couldn't believe I hadn't even considered that. In all the craziness, I'd failed to make the connection. She was absolutely right. A new culture's customs, habits, private and public idiosyncrasies, not to mention their food and beverage—it had no choice but to inspire me. It had been a long time since something had. I'd almost given up on conceptualizing, without even realizing it.

15

Friday, March 21

Thessaloniki

The Thessaloniki thoroughfare was busy in the afternoon.
College students traversed on scooters and in compact cars. The taxi let us off on Monastiriou Street, in front of the Capsis. The hotel fronted tenement apartments that had laundry dangling from their windows. I steered our rolling suitcases. Our new friend George went ahead to the desk to check Izzy and me in with his Greek Wine Council credit card. The hotel lobby was foggy with cigarette smoke, and covered in mirrors. It had a long bar off to the side. A white-shirted bartender brewed espresso. There was also a jazz lounge behind the narrow elevators. The place seemed something out of the early twentieth-century French Riviera I'd often read about in novels. I could imagine Scott and Zelda staying here.

The forms Izzy signed at the desk had been prepared on a typewriter. The key she received to our room was founded of old-fashioned brass. But I was pleased to discover when I powered up my MacBook, the hotel had free WiFi available. While I logged on, Izzy washed her face in the bathroom. I did the same after she'd finished. The soap was harsh and unscented. The towel I dried off on was starchy. Abraded, dazed, we fell onto the low-standing full-sized bed.

When the dinner wake-up call came through, I answered it at the room's corner desk. I remained to check my e-mail and Facebook. No messages. The only update was one made on Talia's profile. She'd changed her affiliation status from “it's complicated” to “in a relationship.” I hadn't before realized that the two categories were mutually exclusive in her life. More important, I was relieved she hadn't tried to contact me.

I showered and shaved. The beach-town humidity and late-day warmth made hair styling difficult. I stepped into the room with a towel wrapped around my waist.

Izzy sat on the edge of the bed. “How are you?” she asked.

“Out of sorts. But the shower helped.”

“We'll feel better after we eat something.”

I flipped through the TV channels while Izzy got ready. I bypassed the English cable news station. The local offerings included movies in Greek, weather reports in Greek, Greek infomercials. I settled on a soap opera. The actors seemed even more maudlin when you couldn't understand their words. Izzy came out with a turban on her head. She cracked up when she saw what I had on the screen. “What?” I said, feigning offense. “I'm trying to immerse.”

“You're crazy,” she told me.

In the lobby, we sat on a rattan love seat and conversed with George, now our tour guide, who had also taken a shower and shaved. He'd changed into a dark-blue button-down shirt, which was tucked into faded jeans. We were soon joined by a large, rosy-faced man named Dick. Dick was a franchiser, he explained without anyone's needing to prompt him. His background was in fast food and convenience stores, but he had recently made an enological foray. He'd built up a bottle-shop chain that spanned one-hundred-fifty wine stores in twenty-six states and several locations in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Dick's wife, Medea, shortly arrived from their room and took a rattan chair. “Call me Maddie,” she told us. In contrast to her imposing husband, Maddie was a petite, delicate woman, with dark hair and dark eyes. She'd been raised in New Jersey by Greek immigrants. Dick and Maddie now lived in Florida. They weren't having any trouble adjusting to the Mediterranean heat.

“So what is it you do, Hapworth?” Dick asked.

“I'm a conceptualist,” I said. My voice was so uncertain that I had to clear my throat and repeat myself, in case I'd only imagined having spoken the first time.

Dick brusquely interrogated, “What does that mean?”

“I invent restaurant concepts.”

Izzy interjected, “Give him an example.”

The first thing that came into my head: “Life's the Wurst. It would be a gourmet hot dog stand and therapeutic facility.”

Izzy revised aloud. “In a clinic. Like an upscale mental hospital snack bar.”

I looked at her. “Hey, that's good,” I said. I scanned the end tables for a pen. Sadly, I couldn't find one.

The others smiled and nodded perfunctory measures of approbation, but Dick refused to yield and play along. “And you make money on that?”

“No,” I said. The small voice had returned. “Not yet.”

“So, what's the point?”

I held an imaginary object between my hands—an old classroom lecture idiosyncrasy—as I tried to construct a sentence in my head. “I guess that fine dining is too serious, and that it should be about fun?”

“How is eating in a hospital fun? Or fine, for that matter?”

“Maybe that was a bad example.”

“I like it,” Maddie said.

We moved along Monastiriou into Thessaloniki. Sidewalk kiosks were jammed with cigarettes and tourist trinkets, newspapers and magazines, and, of course, beer and wine options. This was Europe, after all. We peered into the windows of bars and beach clothing shops and strip clubs. George narrated, mainly to Dick and Maddie, the significant historical, architectural, and cultural details. He was a walking
Fodor's
guide of our route. He pointed out the new subway stop. The line had been built for the Athens Olympics four years ago, and construction to extend all the way to Thessaloniki was still taking place. At every intersection, bags and bags of garbage were piled up. The bags surrounded light poles and completely blocked the flow of sidewalk traffic in places.

“There's a strike,” George said.

“How long has it been going on?” Dick asked.

“Almost a month now.”

“Jeesh.”

The restaurant was by the water. We entered through a path in the deck seating, which was empty, save for a few occupied tables. The dining room was completely vacant. The locals ate after nine o'clock, George told us. We'd have the place mostly to ourselves for a couple of hours. The host led us up some stairs to a table in a semi-enclosed space where two men and a woman sat. They greeted George in Greek. He introduced Constantine, the Boutari winery president, and his nephew, Stellios, the sales manager, to the rest of us. Between the two was Constantine's wife, Nikki, a genial woman with a broad smile and a mane of wavy blonde hair.

The Greeks had ordered the meal before menus even reached the table. Shortly, waiters brought bottles of wine Stellios selected. The first served were regional light whites. Moschofilero was very similar in style to Sauvignon Blanc. Malagousia reminded Izzy of white Grenache. As we swirled and tasted,
mezedes
, small canapé portions, began to come. There were baskets of grilled black and sesame breads, onto which we spooned
taramosalata
, a pink-colored spread made of fish roe. I liked it right away. Another spread,
tsatsiki
, was flavored with garlic. Everything was flavored with garlic. A vegetable plate of spinach, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, slices of ginger-glazed carrots, and olive oil followed. I wanted to go slowly, pace myself, but Izzy kept feeding me. She'd take a round piece of bread, paint on a bit of
taramosalata
, have a bite, and pass the rest to me, almost unconsciously.

Then the heavier courses began to tumble out. There was a deep-fried fish, which we had whole, head, tail, and all. There was very tender octopus. Snails came in tomato sauce. I selected two small lamb chops from a platter. I tried to eat them with a fork and knife out of politeness. Doing so was impossible, given their size. I abandoned the silver when I saw the others using their hands. I attempted to skip the sausage and tomato when it came around, but the waiter insisted I try some. I forked up a portion. Then there was more lamb, this time in the form of grilled nuggets in a cream sauce. This was called
souvlaki
and served on very thin pita bread. With these dishes we had a local red, Xinomavro—“Casino-mavro,” Dick said to his glass, which he held by the bowl.

By dessert, I was full and ready to go back to the room and pass out. I was aware my trip's host and my surrogate guides from Boutari were watching me, and I didn't want them to think I wasn't having a good time (or tired), so I ate a slice of chocolate mousse cake. I also had several bites of
halvah
, the crumbly cashew pastry. In the States it was often found in dry and terrible versions, so I always avoided it in Greek restaurants back in Chicago. Here,
halvah
was quite desirable indeed.

The Greeks had abstained from smoking the entire meal, out of deference to our allergenic American temperament. Now they could no longer contain themselves. “Does anybody mind?” Constantine asked. Nobody objected.

Izzy caught me longingly eying their Marlboro Lights box. “When in Rome?” I said.

“You're not in Rome. You're in Greece.” She took my hand under the table. “Happy birthday, Hapworth,” she whispered.

I looked at my watch. “I don't even know if it still is. I like that I got to lose most of it in the time change.”

“What do you think of the pairings?”

“Everything tastes so good. It's like the food invented the wine, or the wine invented the food, you know?”

She looked pleased. “There's a reason for that. What grows together goes together.”

Izzy released my hand when Dick poked her shoulder. He wanted to show her an old wine bottle he'd pried from a display of plates and other decorative artifacts on the wooden shelves behind us. She laughed generously. I could tell she was uncomfortable with our new franchiser friend's third-grader propriety.

“What do you think of the wine, Dick?” Izzy asked.

He returned the bottle he'd taken to its shelf. He offered Izzy his empty palms. “It's good, I guess, I mean . . . You're the expert. You tell me.”

“Well, do you like the ones we've drunk so far? Do you like how they taste?”

“Sure,” Dick said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I don't know if that means they're good or not. I know retailing. I know how to set up a business. I don't know the first thing about wine.”

“You know what you like, right?” I asked. Dick exhaled through a partially closed mouth, flapping his lips. “So, you know the first thing.”

Dick looked at Izzy.

“He's absolutely right.”

Dick and Maddie let the Boutari people take them back to the hotel after dinner. Izzy, George, and I walked in the opposite direction. We went to an outdoor bar that overlooked the beach. Even though the space was small and crowded, the scene was still quaint, charming. The music was loud and the air saturated with smoke, but it wasn't unpleasant. George got us a round of ouzo shots. The small glasses of Greece's most famous anise-flavored liqueur arrived along with a bowl of almonds and tray of olives. “We didn't order this,” I said. The waiter didn't speak any English, but he seemed to sense something was awry. George shook his head at the waiter to signal that everything was fine. “That's how they serve drinks in Greece,” he told me.

We listened to the soundtrack—“All Out of Love,” “Get the Party Started,” “Show Me Love”—for a while because it was too noisy to talk. I was exhausted but tried mightily to stay awake. It was after eleven. I'd probably only had three hours of sleep in the previous twenty-four. And I was thirty-eight now, so, by default, elderly.

Saturday, March 22

Thessaloniki

Izzy and I had passed out promptly upon returning to our room.
We were a heap of limbs on a flat, unforgiving surface. I got up a few times during the night to piss and to drink handfuls of warm water from the bathroom faucet.

I stood and went to the phone when our wake-up rang. “
Kalimera!
” intoned a discrepantly fervent desk clerk. I thanked her and returned to bed and dozed off. It wasn't until George called, concerned we hadn't made it to breakfast, that we wrenched out from under the sheets. Despite my redoubtable engorgement last night, I was starving. We got dressed in a panic and raced downstairs.

George was waiting for us with the others in the lobby. His black hair looked even darker from post-shower wetness. He handed out bottles of water and led us to the tour bus. It was a sixteen-seat Mercedes Sprinter. Dick and Maddie were already on board. They sat together in the back. Izzy, in her sunglasses, took a row toward the front for us, on the driver's side. The driver, a taciturn Albanian who wore a coat and tie, had a long name only George knew and could pronounce. Izzy and I privately decided we'd call him Mike, after a waiter at Bistro Dominique with whom he shared a resemblance. Mike took off the parking brake, depressed the clutch, and put us in gear. The Sprinter stuttered under the weight of the passengers. As we pulled away from the curb, it began to gather momentum.

We were headed to Drama, in Macedonia. On the way out of Thessaloniki, we passed tenement apartment building after building. Laundry hung drying on their terraces. Boys who didn't seem to have jobs or school smoked sullenly on corners. Then we were on a highway, bordered by green. Twingoes and Honda Civics and motorcycles sped along with us. There were olive groves that looked like apple orchards. A body of water shimmered beneath the hills of Mount Falakro. If winter had been here recently, there was no sign of it having ever shouldered in. Izzy had her head on the window, her eyes shut. Dick also ignored the scenery. He prattled on about retailing without let.

I started to zone out. The highway landscape was meditative. Restaurant concepts began to take shape in the cognitive twilight of my receding consciousness, the vicinity of the most vividly imagined scenes. The sound of Izzy's voice soon returned me to the present. “I was thinking about what you said last night.”

I searched my mind for an apparent referent, but came up with nothing. “What did I say?”

She looked annoyed that I didn't recall instantly. “Your restaurant philosophy. It's like my wine philosophy.”