One passion: Wine.

Perhaps it all started when, as a student, I went to France with the sincere intention of learning French.

Fate decreed that he would end up in a bucolic place surrounded by vineyards.

There is no winemaking tradition in my family, nor even a noteworthy fondness for wine, but there I was, in the heart of French Burgundy, doing an internship as a tourism student in a small Hôtel Château.

The people were wonderful, but my French was too rudimentary to guarantee smooth communication, and the day had too many hours. My host, a négociant-élever from the Côte de Beaune, suggested that bottling wine might be a good pastime for a newly arrived Spaniard, and that's how the word "bouchon" crept into my vocabulary long before "capsule.".

I returned from France with a much more acceptable level of French, and with the conviction that I had discovered my great passion.

Many harvests have passed, but wine for me is like that song lyric that stays in your memory the first time you hear it and never fails to move you every time you hear it again, even if a lot of time has passed.

It's like that irresistible sexual attraction I once felt that never went away. I confirmed it after many years, and the connection was even stronger.

Opening a bottle of wine is as magical a moment as those afternoons in the cellar, hand-dressing glasses with labels I didn't quite understand. Perhaps I held in my hands some oenological treasure I would die for today, I don't know, but I cherished each of those bottles as if they were newborns.

Sometimes I feel like a strain; I don't like easy things, and challenges bring out the best in me.

I can't imagine a happier moment than sharing a good bottle of wine with those I love and who love me, so I only hope that the big and small events of my life find me with a glass in my hand so I can toast to them.