This past fall my friend / colleague R and I were sent to Barcelona to install a display in a
department store. I was delighted to at last get the opportunity to travel for
work – until it dawned on us that, due to insufficiently devious planning on
our part, we would be staying in the city only 24 hours, and the nature of our
task obliged us to work through the night, denying us even a single night out
to explore the city, drink heavily, pee in the streets, wear funny hats,
solicit hookers, etc.
There was
nothing for it but to reflect, ruefully, that this is why it’s called work
travel.
Nonetheless,
after arrival and check-in at our hotel we had a solid six hours to kill before
installation of our company’s stand could begin, and I was hell-bent on packing
in as much questing semi-informed wine tourism as possible. Our first stop was
to Monvínic, a place my friend Cesar Pou of Terroirs Santo Domingo Imports had described to me as Barcelona’s premier wine bar, the ground zero
for wine geeks in the city. Aware of my tastes, he had warned me it was a
little futuristic – a disclaimer that, in the case of Monvínic, is like saying
the Vatican is religious-affiliated.
