Or rather, uncorking a memory of corked Coke was my arresting moment of time travel today…
But first I had to wake up to another day of resplendent sunshine and balmy breezes. And I wasn’t able to fully take it in until we had our morning cappuccinos on the Ribiera dock.
Ella pointed out that in order to get to WOW (World Of Wine where the Planet Cork made up part of the complex) we had to choose between walking over two different bridges spanning the Douro. One was low, an easy flat walk from the pier, the other, the Luis I, loomed higher, a dizzying distance from where we sat. Guide info said that the Luis I bridge was not for those who suffered from vertigo. I grumbled something to the effect that we could take the high bridge, but why bother? It was just another view. When it comes to breathtaking panoramas, there’s got to be a limit.
Then Ella mentioned that from the dock promenade to the top bridge was 210 steps. That cinched it. How could I resist? Over the Christmas holiday in 2017 when we were visiting the Greek port city of Nafpaktos, Ella once tested my arthritic hip by leading me up 960 steps to a castle lookout. But my hip was replaced 3 years ago, so why the hell not?
And, hey, the view from the Luis I bridge was, well, worth the climb.
The Cork Museum. Very modern, very interactive. We were the only visitors. I idolize Proust, and one of the details about his life that has always intrigued me is how, when he he was lying in bed finishing writing his masterpiece, he had his bedroom walls lined with cork to keep the sound out. Although it felt like we were in the sanctum Santorum of cork, I wasn’t genuflecting to anything Proust-related…until I came upon this “Hey, did you know” fact about the history of cork:
And suddenly it wasn’t the taste of a Madeleine, but the feeling of an ice cold bottle of Coke, its shapely thick glass slippery with droplets as I popped off the crimped metal cap in the iron opener attached to the cooler. I remember pressing my thumb inside the serrated edges of the cap to feel the cork lining before I took my first sip. This was in a faculty lounge at the University of Chicago. I must have been six or seven, so this was in the Fifties before Coke dispensed with the cork inner cap. Sixty-six years and this image has never occurred to me until now. So that’s it, my Proustian moment in Porto. Now, all I have to do is line my study with cork…
I have occasionally seen cork-lined bottle caps but I never thought much about why they might do that — to eliminate the metal taste. Makes sense. I thought it was to give a tighter seal.