On our remaining day in town, we stopped into a Taiwanese espresso store referred to as Laïzé. As we ordered, the barista defined that the Taipei mix could be floral, whereas the Tainan mix would style fermented, like wine. Stockholm-syndromed from the blur of Champagne tastings, I ordered the latter, curious to see how espresso might style like wine. We sat in the commercial, cream-colored stone cafe, and after my first swallow, a clear sensation of pungent tofu crammed my mouth. “Do you taste that?” I requested rapidly, handing Dan my cup. “On the finish?” Meaning clogged my throat; my father, who was born in Taiwan, had beloved that fermented tofu dish.
Dan tried it, however shook his head. He’d eaten pungent tofu earlier than, however nonetheless couldn’t find what I had discovered. “It means that there’s something on your palate that I don’t have. It reminded you of something that I don’t know the same way.”
I’ve all the time felt barely ashamed that I wasn’t fond of pungent tofu. But I preferred no matter remnant of it was resurfacing now, lingering on my tongue after every sip.
I had felt like I used to be pretending as we’d tasted wines many times in the nation, attempting to tug peach from cherry. But I had discovered one thing sudden: the right way to entry an imagistic attain into the previous. Maybe that was why Dan had requested not what I tasted, however what it jogged my memory of—a query framed in reminiscence, which isn’t static, however could be sparked, in addition to constructed.
What does Champagne remind me of now? It’s the basement chill of the wine caves. The delicate electrical energy of the bubbles. And the 2 of us, holding wine glasses in the rain, simply a couple of months into marriage, wavy hillsides throughout.