The other night as I gazed adoringly at Mila’s new wall to wall wine room, Ana dropped this epiphany bomb on me: this is your man cave. A beautiful, swanky room with 1000 or so bottles of wine? Indeed a wine cave was my man cave.

I have long since understood the importance of having a personal retreat, a quiet place to escape for a moment and just be. Usually, for me, this is my bedroom. After a day away from home, I slither into the love seat in our room or lay on our smooth, silky comforter and retreat into my thoughts for (fingers crossed) half an hour – I’m usually discovered before that. It works. It isn’t a man cave, but if I did have a spare room to luxuriate in my alone thoughts, it would include wine.

I would live among the greats. Walk from row to row and slide my fingers across the beautiful labels of wines that graced my delicious walls. I would travel the world each night. Tonight Chile. Tomorrow Italy. Next weekend Australia. Maybe I’d visit Portugal and France in the same night. The cave might not be stocked for very long but I would savor each sip and, obviously, drink the whole bottle.

On this specific night at Mila, in the private wine-filled room, I traveled to España, to tour Fuentespina, a winery in Santuiste, Spain. It was an intimate event hosted by El Catador, Fuentespina’s distributor in the Dominican Republic, and was made more authentic when we sat down with the winery’s owner, Don Fernando Vegas and his wife, Ana – both as delightful as the wine they bottled.

It was the kind of evening that deserves a place on a bucket list; an evening of exquisite morsels served up on silver trays and of fine wine tasting with winery owners from the world’s top leading countries for wine. Surrounded there by wall to wall wine, I could have lived a happy life there. In my woman wine cave. Boy is my family lucky we don’t have a swanky, spare room.