The wine is opened an hour before anyone sits down. This is not a rule. It is just how it is done, by anyone who has waited for something.

Aristides, the paper's wine critic, is a very large gorilla with very long fingers, and he does all of it. He holds the bottle to the light. He reads the label as though it might have changed. He pours a little, tilts the glass away from himself against the tablecloth, and looks at the edge, where the color thins and tells you the age. He swirls. He waits. He breathes it in with his eyes closed, the way you listen to somebody you have decided to hear out.

The meat is on the grill. The cigar is for later. There is time.

Across the table sits a young visitor, who is explaining. The visitor has a great deal to explain: what is unfair, what is hard, what nobody understands, what somebody said. The visitor is not wrong about all of it. The visitor is talking fast, and a little high, and is not eating.

Aristides listens to all of it. He does not interrupt. He sizes the visitor up the way he sizes up anything that has been poured for him: not unkindly, not kindly either, just closely, with the whole of his attention, to find out what it is and what it will become.

When the visitor stops, Aristides lifts the glass. He drinks. He holds it in his mouth a moment, and smacks his lips, once.

"Ah," he says. "Now that's a young wine."

The wine was eleven years old.

The visitor did not understand this for some years, which is the correct amount of time. Some things are not ready when they are opened. They are not bad. They are tight, and loud, and all edges, and they have not yet become what they are going to be. You do not pour them out. You set them aside, and you wait, and you pay attention.

Aristides is still waiting. He has a good cellar. He is in no hurry.