Wine Tasters and Water Guessers

Author: Sinan Gudžević

Two years ago, I spent the last three days of July in a place called Chiesina Uzzanese, near the city of Pistoia in Tuscany. I was invited to a tourist-art event there. In the midst of an array of dishes and drinks, displays and performances, music and tasting, I found myself caught up in conversation with three elegantly dressed men, each around forty years old. Dark blue jackets and vests, white shirts and bow ties set them apart from the crowd dressed in summer attire on a scorching day. After exchanging several words, they told me that all three of them were sommeliers! They had just returned from a wine tasting, where they also discussed wines, an event which I hadn't attended - after all, one can't be everywhere at once. The sommeliers, the wine tasters, attracted both male and female gazes as if they were wizards or magicians. There was no trace of scorn, disdain, or ridicule for the idleness and mystification that, in our regions, is often directed at people who 'smack their lips' and 'purse their cheeks.'

In good spirits, without resistance, they set out to satisfy my curiosity and started describing the demands of their education and work. The profession of a sommelier is extremely demanding; the best sommelier schools are expensive, and the final exam is hard. To acquire the title commonly known as the sommelier, one must first pass a written exam, which includes questions on the finest wines from Europe, as well as from America and Australia. This is followed by the challenging classification of essential elements for naming wines by geographic origin, an endless geography of premier vineyards on the slopes from both sides of the equator, young wines and musts, the improvements of must, and even the aerodynamics of wine. One of the sommeliers described pairing a specific dish with the wine that complements it as an especially demanding part of the training (and the exam!). Then, two others mentioned pairing European wines with churrasco, and I remember how they both said in unison that the red wine Aglianico from Lucania and Campania pairs best with beef Stroganoff, provided it's marinated in white wine the night before cooking.
In a conversation lasting over an hour, I learned all about the wine bottle labels, what they must contain and how to read them properly, the essential oxidation process for wines aged in barrels, also known as decantazione in Italian, or wine decanting in English. All three of them also underwent the rigorous challenge of guessing and describing wines blindfolded.

One of them told me that he had even qualified in tasting and assessing water.  He had tried over fifty types of mineral water. He'd received offers from the Arab countries to go there and, for good money, recommend water in luxury hotels and restaurants. When he told me all this and then added that Ravenna was his hometown, a Martial epigram about wine and water from his birthplace came to my mind: 

Sit cisterna mihi quam vinea malo Ravennae, 
Cum possim multo vendere pluris aquam. 
(I'd rather have a well than a vineyard in Ravenna;  
I know I'd make far more money selling water than wine.) 

 When they heard this, the other two, to continue teasing their colleague, added that nowadays things have changed: in Ravenna there is neither quality wine nor water! They both then burst into laughter. In Martial's time, Ravenna had little drinking water but produced plenty of wine.

A few days after the Tuscan feast, my youngest brother Jakup called me from Zurich. He was in hospital; unexpectedly, the tendon we call Achilles ruptured in his left leg. To lift his spirits a bit after the surgery, I shared with him bits and pieces of the conversation I had with the three sommeliers, adding that one of them is also a sommelier for water. Jakup then told me that in our region there once lived the best water guesser, who was also a relative of ours, and his name was Adem Smajović. The name struck me as familiar, but in a moment of confusion, I couldn't associate it with anything, so I asked my brother how he knew about Smajović, to which he replied that he had heard about him from me! And he reminded me that it was our uncle Rasim Džanković, who comes from Draževići, who had told me the story about Smajović and that he, of course, knew the family well. My dear brother Jakup was never released from the hospital in Zurich and he left this world not even two months later. The rupture of the Achilles tendon was one of the consequences of the insidious microcellular lung cancer, which had gone undetected until late August.

I have heard the story of Adam Smajović twice from Rasim. Nowadays I feel very sorry that I did not write down or record the story on the tape recorder, given that there is no agreement on which Smajović was the water guesser. Even Rasim's sons, who have heard the story from their father on more occasions than I have, do not agree on that. One says that it was Adil and not Adem Smajović, while the other insists it was neither of the Smajovićs, but rather Mursel Mujanković, and so on. This is, however, the story as I remember it. 

In Draževići, a village on the edge of Pešteri, Adem Smajović fell ill one winter. Age weighed heavily on him, and he was confined to his bed. Each day, Adem was less able to eat, and each day, he was less able to drink water. His sons and other household members asked him if there was anything (anything at all, even just a little bit) he could eat or drink, so they could bring it to him. One afternoon, he told them he could drink a bit of water from Tetaja. Tetaja is a spring, a water fountain located southeast, more uphill than flat, about three to four kilometers from Adem's house. As soon as they heard this, the two young men - one of whom was Adem's son - jumped to their feet, quickly put their coats, scarves, and gloves on, grabbed a flagon, and rushed out of the house. Snow was falling, the cold had set in, and an icy wind howled down from Golija, swirling the snow and creating a blizzard. The two young men, accustomed to the snowdrifts and blizzards of Pešteri, hurried as fast as they could, but the storm pushed them back, urging them to make one step forward and one step back. The journey to Tetaja was prolonged; they wanted to reach it, but Tetaja did not yield. Somehow, they arrived at the point from which they saw the water fountain known as Bučanka. It is well known - Adem knows this too - that Tetaja and Bučanka share a common spring underground; one branch flows into Bučanka, while the other flows into Tetaja. The distance from Bučanka to Tetaja is no more than half a kilometer. This poses no obstacle for the young men in good weather, but in storm, it can be too much. One of the water bearers then suggested they take water from Bučanka, since it is actually the same water as Tetaja, and the patient might die while they struggle through the blizzard toward Tetaja. It was said and done; they laboriously reached the water from Bučanka, filled their flagon, and, panting, one behind the other, with the second stepping in the first's footprints in the snow, they rushed back toward Draževići. They arrived quite exhausted in Draževići, shaking the snow off their clothes and footwear before bursting into the room with their flagon where Adem lay on the mattress. As soon as he saw them, weak and hoarse, Adem said; 'Oh, cheers boys! I thought you would only just have reached your destination in this blizzard, and here you are already back!' A woman quickly jumped up, brought a glass, but Adem gestured that the glass was too large and asked to be given water in a spoon instead. So they filled a spoon with water for Adem and placed another pillow under him to make it easier for him to sip. They brought the spoon to his mouth, and he sipped the water from it. And he swallowed the water he had taken in,  and then said to the two water bearers: 
Mercy, you'll regret this! (Aman, jazuk!) Why did you bring me water from Bučanka instead of from Tetaja?

The word jazuk comes from Turkish and it signifies a pity, loss or harm, as well as the condition of someone who has suffered a loss. The expression 'jazuk ti bilo'  means: 'may you regret it', or 'may you bear the damage of what you have done'.

Thus, the water guesser Adem Smajović, in his final moments, knew and stated that the water he had drunk was not the one he had sought.

I have remembered this story for good, and I also recall that I shared it with Vasko Popa and Bora Radović in the Belgrade café Mala Moskva during the early eighties. They were captivated by Adem's words. Popa remarked, 'Even Tolstoy would envy this!'.