Between Time & Age
There is a minute yet colossal difference between Age and Time. It’s true, you can’t have one without the other – they’re siblings from the same womb, forged from the same genesis, pieces of the same hourglass carried by the same reaper. But even though their movement is inseparable and their existence is one, they are not quite identical.
Time is the quick, nimble bookkeeper, barely there but always present in numbers, paces, and breaths. It’s descending. It’s a countdown on your night stand, it’s a buzzer beater over your head and a shadow on your heels; it’s measuring your moments in sunrises and sets. But then there is Age — Time’s manifestation, its younger and more beautiful twin, born just a few moments later.
Age is Time’s loyal messenger, a runner, an entirely different animal let loose to collect on Time’s leases. Age is the sun and scars on your brow; it’s the tears in your muscles and calluses on your heels. It’s your purple-stained hands rocking babies on porches; it’s dirt tilled and blossomed and tilled again; it’s those same babies now older, running barefoot through that same tilled dirt. And together, Age and Time harrow their dunes, steadily weighing and casting their sands to blunt the mortal.
But between Time and Age is a thin thing, miraculously created by man, so weightless and seemingly insignificant that it’s invention was a perfect accident. It’s a tool – the only tool – with the power to sift and sway the sands to its liking, reversing the decay of Time and Age. It acts as a binding barrier graciously allowing Age and Time to coexist, but as two beings instead of one – pulling them just far enough apart to control their powers but close enough not to weaken them. And no matter how hard the twins yearn and fight to reunite as one, the thing remains impenetrable. The “thing”… the force keeping the ruin of Time at bay while allowing the wise beauty of Age to seep in and make its mark… is the cork.
Here at Donelan, we honor the timeless bond among wine and cork that lives between time and age, and we do it with all natural corks produced by Porto Cork. They’ve dedicated years of work and research to craft cork that leaves zero traces of TCA, allowing the surreal power of the cork to age wine to perfection.