Beginnings

It all started with me standing on a kitchen chair at the wet bar in my father's Fifties-era den. I would methodically open the various gold-wrapped and tassled thousand-year-old cream sherries and blended whiskeys, mix them in small glasses and then incline my infantile proboscus to study the scent. Short of a wee nip while preparing a hard brandy sauce for my English grandmother's plum pudding, I can't recall ever imbibing. Likewise, I guess as any curiosity-propelled tot, I opened the various bottles displayed at my grandmother's makeup vanity: Coty's Emeraude stands out in my mind.