Dolfi Kuker & a Bottle of Torrontés Wine
Friday, June 28, 2019
Subject: Buenos
Desi Arnez
Dear Alex,
Today at the Mayne Island Trading Post I nearly purchased
a bottle of Argentine Chardonnay.
Marv.
My friend, Marv newland, that classical expert on old fashioned animation (free of
computers and using the elaborate and painstakingly slow method using cells) sent me the above email today. Anything related with Mr.
Newland will make anybody and particularly this guy smile. Newland could have a
second career in police departments abroad as a mediator to prevent people from
committing suicide.
Only someone who knows Newland intimately (I am not one of
them) could figure out the purpose of his communication or why it was he did
not purchase the Chardonnay.
Figuring out that Chardonnay thing is for me a tad more
difficult since I am not a connoisseur of drinking or of wines. I divide wines
into two categories. There are the ones that are acidic that make me shake and
those (watered down perhaps?) that do not.
The reference to Argentina and to wine immediately took me
to Buenos Aires in 1966 when I arrived to Buenos Aires for my conscription duties.
I “won” the lottery system and instead of getting 12 months in the army it was
to be 24 in the Armada República Argentina (the navy).
At the time my first cousin and godmother Inesita O’Reilly
had recently become a widow. She met and married the widower Dolfi Kuker. Between
them they had 8 children. They would sit at a Hollywood film style table (very
long) and accompanied by boyfriends, girlfriends and cousins. It was quite a
table. I remember that there were finger bowls and the women ate their oranges and bananas with the help of a fork and knife.
Immediately Kuker offered his services and influence (for a
while he had been the mayor of Buenos Aires) to prevent me from being sent to a post
in the Argentine Arctic or in some naval base where I would be at the mercy
from corporals up. He said that he could get me on the Argentine Navy training
ship ARA Libertad ( a lovely steel-hulled,
full-rigged, class "A" sailing ship). I told him that I suffered from
terminal seasickness and motion sickness from swings and trams to cars and
boat.
He then placed me as an aid and translator to the Serior US Naval Advisor
Captain USN Onofrio Salvia. This ultimately saved me (except for boot camp
refreshers) from those nasty corporals and I had a desk job with an Argentine/Irish
secretary called Edna Gahan. I was the only sailor in the Argentine Navy
allowed (or I simply got away with it) who smoked a pipe with imported
Edgeworth Tobacco.
In the late 80s I went to Buenos Aires for a Toronto based
magazine run by Malcolm Parry. Kuker got me access to everything including the
Jockey Club. He took me on a lovely boat trip on the Paraná River delta Tigre.
Always he was a warm, kind and soft-spoken man whom I quickly
learned to adore. Because Kuker was a staunch Roman Catholic and I had been
educated in a Catholic boarding school in Texas we had many a discourse on
Christianity. I remember giving him a copy of Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote
in my silly attempt to show how some men ultimately doubted their beliefs. It is only now that I have learned to appreciate tolerance and that was something that Kuker had in spades.
It was sometime in the early 90s that in another trip to
Buenos Aires, one evening Kuker told me, “I know you don’t like wine but I
think you will like this one. It is called Torrontés.” He offered me a glass of
a very cold Etchard Reserva Especial white wine. My first sip felt like I had just bitten
a mouthful of green grapes. He explained that the grape was brought to
Argentina and that nobody except Argentines used the grape.
So when I must offer friends and visitors wine I open a
bottle of Kuker’s Torrontés. Why?
In the New Testament Gospels (my fave is the King James Version)
Christ parts the bread at the last supper and says,”Do this in remembrance of
me.”
And so it is with the Torrontés. I remember that kindly man.
I would not know what to do with an Argentine Chardonnay.