Translator: Translate TED Reviewer: Denise R Quivu
Good evening everybody, my name is Vera Bonanno,
I'm a wine steward,
and I talk about the only subject I know: wine.
I'm going to talk about the way we select wine excellence
so, the excellence it's a hard question.
Your mind starts thinking, racking, making connections.
It's hard to be wine chooser.
We feel nearly omnipotent
as if a spiritual voice asked us how we would make our choice.
We appeal to several knowledge and choice sources grapevine,
weather, territory, the producer and his philosophy,
product pleasantness, the difficulty or the easiness of drinking
so, after so many years of study, trips, and broaching bottles,
and all the objectivity I believe I learnt emptying out a glass of wine
I pour it, I put it on the table,
I wait for its liquid to flow along my legs.
It's a sensation that I know very well by now.
I wonder, I look at it, I observe it,
and I ask myself to transform that glass of wine into a human being,
a person I deeply want to know.
First game's rule: the truth! I want to drink truth.
Wine has to tell us a story,
that's why we choose one rather than another
because its history moves us
or it looks like ours so much as we want it to be our history.
We break the ice this way.
We make first step towards something before unknown and extraneous.
Wine we like has to be like us.
We must see in it our reflection, as in love, contrast or affinity,
and "Are antipodes attracted to each other?"
Wine has to have both possibilities,
we must be able to choose drinking to be comforted,
recognizing its taste and scent,
thinking that it was as we expected.
We were looking for it, the one that can grant our wishes,
the one who rocks us in that milky and maternal sensation
maybe after a long and disastrous day
where we wanted to meet only a close friend,
without risks, faultless, and without errors,
a rhythmic flow like an endless wave.
Well, I belong to the second category of the destabilization victims,
the enemies of Cinderella who always fall in love
with the damned handsome man who always goes wrong,
but pleasantly who stuns and blurs you, disorienting,
full of defects, and smears
but when he wants, and when it's him to decide,
he stands by you,
and after having lost all available patience and energy,
he holds your hand to tell you that everything is possible.
Now, that we are speechless. Love has already begun.
Why don't we come to our senses
to ask him all little questions we set before?
Where are you from? What about your family?
In the place where you live it's sunny or moist?
Do you like place where you live? Do you feel culturally tied to the land?
Are you deeply rooted? And how much?
How did you live your life seasons?
Is it expected a good year or a bad one?
Are you shy or an introvert, or cheeky and communicative?
He will be sunny and smiling or reserved and introvert?
He will ask us for more time before opening to us?
And he will be faithful during years spent together?
Or it will be a bluff?
And today positive energy will transform
in tomorrow crummy and empty plot?
Floods of questions interchange with the wine I drank.
The bottle is empty. Here is the only power of choice.
Time spent with it has passed quickly without realizing.
Everything has flowed in the fluid.
Could you swear on the fact
that I was talking about wine rather than my true love?
Are you really sure that adjectives and descriptions
used for the former are suitable also for the latter?
I believe there's no difference between them,
and maybe there's never been.
They merge with each other like beautiful aspects of life.
They flow inside us.
Blood and wine merge with each other and only then it's right to believe
that the excellence is the only expectation to aspire to,
and keep in mind that life
is just one and too short to drink shoddy wine.
(Applause)