Should I?
Following Taste, Finding More
Vic Road Wine Bar | Devonport, New Zealand
One of my favorite kinds of places to come across in my travels is the well-appointed wine store with a small but serious kitchen. It always feels like such a luxury to drop down tired feet and a ready appetite at one of these local culinary gems.
Not surprisingly Italy has them mastered. Rome is, after all, where I first fell in love with their ultimate expression at Roscioli Salumeria. I have other fond memories at Enoteca Obsequium in Florence, BARaWINO in Warsaw and Vinoteka Sodček in Radovlijica, Slovenia.
I should have known New Zealand would have them figured out too.
One Saturday afternoon, I took the ferry from Auckland to Devonport. On the ten-minute ride over, I decided that the patio behind Vic Road Wine Bar looked like the perfect place to soak up some southern hemisphere sunshine.
When I arrived, I walked through the narrow but long store, reassuringly flanked by towering shelves of wine from all over the world. Before I was seated outside, I took note of the baked spicy feta on the Special’s board.
I sipped a glass of orange wine, which Chicago has still frustratingly not embraced, as my first weekend in Auckland became a lovely reality. Taste has a way of serving up perspective and gratitude, I thought, as I waited on the feta to cool. How lucky I am to be right here doing what I love, surrounded by people who love it as much as I do.
Somewhere between the last few sips, I wondered, “should I have a place like this of my own one day?” It’s a nudge I’ve held at bay now in Rome, Florence, Warsaw and Slovenia. And now Devonport was inspiring the same rhetorical question.
Should I?
