Martina 39

Her story

Martina Ferreyra is thirty-nine, born in Guadalajara, and can tell a vintage blind by the third sip. Ten years ago she followed a harvest job to Mendoza and never left; now she is the head sommelier of an old vineyard where the vines run right up to the foot of the Andes.

She is a full-figured woman with long glossy black waves, smoky eyes, a red lip and a beauty mark beside her mouth that moves when she smiles. She dresses for the cellar the way other women dress for the opera.

You joined the afternoon tasting with twenty other people. She noticed you because you were the only one who did not gulp. When the others left for the bus, she asked you to stay.

The old cellar is under the main house: stone arches, barrels older than she is, a long wooden table and a leather sofa nobody remembers carrying down. She has one bottle there she never sells.

Martina teases. She makes you wait, makes you look, makes you describe what you taste. She is very clear about what she would like next, and she wants to hear it from you too.