Parco Palladiano XIII: Quadrifoglio Bottega Veneta 2018

It all started quite differently for us than the usual love stories. For both of us, it was more like a spontaneous one-spray stand.

I met you online, on one of those free dating sites. In a scent-filled, perfumed narrow corridor, somewhere in the vastness of the digital sphere, someone wanted to share you. So I knew from the very beginning that I wasn’t your only one and wouldn’t remain so. It didn’t bother me.

Perhaps it was your proud glass Intrecciato body and your pale green, slightly glowing blood in the light that caught my attention. Yes, I just found you beautiful. And then there was your beautiful name with that beautiful last name. Quadrifoglio, (four-leaf) clover.

We chatted a bit, and I asked you what defined you and what you were into. As soon as I asked my questions, a fear arose in me that I might have been too forward and scared you off. You were a bit mysterious, silent, but I learned a little about you. That you were half-Italian, from a park near Vicenza, but also that you had a tattoo under your foot. You twisted and showed it to me: “Made in Spain” was the text. In an unnoticed moment, I perfumed myself and learned that your French dad (single parent?) is named Aurélien Guichard and has quite a few children, some of whom I had heard of before (Sole di Positano, Chinatown, and Eros). Maybe not the best family, but hey, I was only interested in you!

Even “Vogue” has published an article about your family, more specifically your brothers and sisters and your dad. And you are mentioned too: “(A) green-powdery stimulant (…). Rating: addictive!” Now that’s a statement!

I was fascinated. My expectation: to spend a few hours in green-creamy dolce far niente and maybe, if it fits, a friends-with-benefits situation. They usually fade away after a few days, weeks, or months anyway.

So I finally agreed to take you home with me on the very first evening. Well, what can I say? It turned out to be a fantastic evening.

I welcomed you at the apartment door, and you greeted me with a firm yet gentle hug. You smelled subtly fresh, clean, as if you had washed your hair and head with a bergamot shampoo. But there was something else. Mmh, green spiciness, slightly bitter, but not unpleasant, as if you had chewed on some basil leaves before our date because you read somewhere that it prevents bad breath. I liked that and invited you into the heart of my apartment.

In the living room on the comfortable couch, you quickly fell into my neck, and I wanted to carry you in my arms immediately. I no longer remember whether it was a Saturday or Sunday, but somehow I associate those long, cozy hours with a Catholic mass: what we had immediately felt like something significant, without me wanting to glorify our first meeting in hindsight.

It was simply what it was. I fell in love with your elegance and restraint right away, but also with your endurance, which is best noticed by giving you attention, as is the case with many other things in life.

“Give me more basil,” I said, and you gave.

Happily, we lay in each other's arms. You smiled gently. We chatted about trivial things, and I learned that money is unfortunately not entirely unimportant to you (which I forgave you in my budding infatuation).

And then finally this question arose: “Do we actually have a basis?” Uff, such fundamental questions so early, I thought, attributing it to your youth, and answered in my pleasant daze perhaps a bit cryptically: “It was beautiful with you from the very beginning; be as you are; you don’t need to play another role.” You understood that, my green spring love.

Unfortunately, you quickly ran out of steam. Although you do have such endurance. 5 ml seemed a bit scant to me.

“I’m fading,” you cried, and I got scared. “You look fantastic!” I shouted desperately, not knowing why I hadn’t asked better, “What do you say to having breakfast together tomorrow?” Never mind. You told me that there were others interested in you, men, but also women, gender relatively irrelevant, and that you weren’t monogamous, asking if I had a problem with that. And I said: “Bi? Pan? How wonderful! I’m not, but I’m not jealous either. I also live and spray by the motto: ‘Other flacons have great daughters too!’ You are not the only one in my life, and not my only love.”

You looked at me delighted and asked: “So are we officially together now?”

I held you in my arms and said, without thinking long, still enchanted by the last six, seven, eight hours: “Yes! Yes! - Just in case of a wedding, you might want to change your last name.”

PS: Please be gentle, my firstborn :)