The stones can keep rolling, but winemakers are the rockstars with longevity

Tuesday, 31 December, 2024
Harpers, Tim Atkin MW
In an interview for 60 Minutes in 2004, the journalist Ed Bradley asked Bob Dylan if there was anything in his early work that surprised him.

His Bobness looked pensive for a moment before quoting the beautiful opening lines of It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding). “I don’t know how I got to write those songs,” he said, “…they were almost magically written.” Did the muses still hum such poetry – the very stuff that earned Dylan the Nobel Prize for Literature – in his ear? Dylan shook his head. “You can’t do something for ever,” he replied. “I can do other things now, but I can’t do that.”

What other things can Dylan do? Well, earn money touring is one of them. If you’re tempted over the next month, you can hear him at the Uber Eats Music Hall in Berlin, the Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham or the University of Wolverhampton. Will he be playing any new material? Of course not. As the golfer Lee Trevino once said: “The older I get, the better I used to be.” Even if Dylan could write as he once did, fans want to hear the classic songs. As David Hepworth puts it in his new book, Hope I Get Old Before I Die, famous musicians become “human jukeboxes”. There’s a whole industry built on ageing rock stars performing their greatest hits. Sir Mick Jagger is 81; Sir Paul McCartney 82; Dylan 83.

During my recent trip to Ribera del Duero, I caught up with Mariano García, one of Spain’s finest winemakers. Now 80, he is still at the top of his considerable powers. He looks trim; his mind is alert, his palate discriminating. García was a legendary figure at Vega Sicilia, where he made the wines between 1968 and 1998, before leaving to set up Bodegas Aalto. Today, working alongside his sons Eduardo and Alberto, he oversees family projects in Toro (San Román), Bierzo (Valeyo), Rioja (Baynos), Ribera del Duero (Garmón) and Castilla y León (Mauro). For a man whose passions in life are “travelling and gastronomy”, García is in great shape. “My dad takes care of himself,” Eduardo told me. “He doesn’t eat or drink too much and he does pilates several times a week.”

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