Spanish Wine Vessel

A whole winter’s wine once lived in a jug like this. From Catalonia and dating to the 19th century, this great bulbous bottle was blown by hand, tinted a soft sea-green by the iron in the sand, its short neck finished with a thick, folded lip. A garrafa like it stored and carried the wine in a Catalan house, often cradled in a woven straw case so the glass would not break, and the bubbles and ripples running through it are the marks of glass blown by lung and not by machine. Sylvie stands it on the floor or a table just as it is, or lets a few long branches lean out of its neck.