The alpine cheese
Excellent, produced in quantities enough for twenty selections. It doesn't hold up across two hundred, and putting something in the catalogue that runs out halfway through the season is a way of upsetting people.
The panettone
Long leavening, homemade candied fruit, a fragrance we still remember. Too short a shelf life for a season that lasts six weeks.
The beer
Bottle-refermented, alive, unpredictable. After three days on a van it was no longer the same thing.
A catalogue isn't the list of good things: it's the list of good things that arrive intact.
