i.The Territory
In Spain, la hora del vermut is the hour before Sunday lunch, when people stand at a bar with a small glass of red vermouth and something salty. In San Sebastián the salty thing is often a Gilda: an anchovy, a green olive and a pickled guindilla pepper on a toothpick, invented in the city in the 1940s.
This plate records the moment a firmly held opinion about anchovies was tested at sea level.
ii.The Survey
Alex talked their way into a borrowed bar counter in the Parte Vieja for seven days, put Rosso Meridiano on tap straight from a small barrel, and served every glass with a Gilda made that morning from Cantabrian anchovies.
Salt cuts sweetness. A sweet vermouth that seems heavy on its own turns bright next to an anchovy. This is the whole thesis of the maker, and it held.
Over the week the counter poured 1,900 glasses and ran out of anchovies twice. On the fourth day a man in a beret drank three glasses in silence, then said it was good for a vermouth from a country with no sea near the middle. It was taken as a compliment.
iii.The Coastline Redrawn
The Gilda Hour came home. Every Sunday at noon, in Marfa, there is vermouth from the barrel and a plate of Gildas, and the anchovies come in tins from Santoña, which is the closest the desert gets to a coastline.
It also settled a question of doctrine. What had been a strong preference became the maker’s one fixed position, displayed on the front of this globe: anchovies are great.