I cooked salmon last night. Grilled it hard, charred the skin, poured a mountain red from the Alps that had no business being as good as it was. Serious eats. Then I did the thing I always do, mostly out of self-preservation. I put on my shoes and went outside to move my ass.
Here's the situation, in case it's not obvious. I've worked in wine daily for nearly four decades. Let that land for a second. Nearly four decades where the job has always come with a glass in hand — tastings, dinners, "let's open one more, just to compare." Nobody hands you a fitness plan when you spend your life in the wine trade. They hand you a glass. Then another. Then a cheese plate "for context."
So no, I don't walk with a goal — although I desperately need to create one for every health metric I'm currently pretending not to track. I walk because the alternative is becoming a cautionary tale at my own tastings.
The Italians have a word for this. The passeggiata. I call it move my ass, which is less poetic but more honest about the stakes.
Whole towns out at dusk — grandparents, kids, the street moving at the pace of conversation. Beautiful. Civilized. Nobody is exercising. Nobody is chasing a number. They walk because the day is ending, and walking is how you set it down gently.
Here's what took me an embarrassing number of years to understand, though. The walk isn't punishment for the dinner. We're very good in this country at the burning-off — the treadmill the morning after, the penance, the grim little math of "I'll earn this." The Italians don't do penance. They eat well, they pour well, and then they walk, because the walk is the last course. Not the apology for the meal. Part of it.
I'm not going to pretend I've cracked weight and wine. I haven't. It's an ongoing negotiation, and the wine has a very good lawyer. But the walk is the one thing I never regret. It moves the blood, settles the serious eats, and buys the brain twenty minutes with no screen and no decision to make.
So tonight — cook something worth cooking, pour something worth pouring, and then move your ass. Leave the phone inside. Walk until the day goes quiet.
The food sits better. So do you. And the metrics I'm not tracking? Slightly less alarming.
Todd B. Alexander
Nearly four decades in Italian wine, and still translating it for the rest of us. Founder of Vendemmia and The Italian Wine Report. Drinks simply, and saves the good stuff for the good stuff.
