Answer in a Fine Madeira by Dan Bieger

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SUMMARY: November flash fiction entry

He had the bottle of V. Sattui Madeira on the shelf above the stove, had it there for years waiting for the special occasion that would merit the ritual opening. Staring at it, feeling the returned stare from the inanimate bottle as if its contents were alive and aware of their impending resurrection, he reached up. "It's time," he muttered.
Placing the bottle on the counter, he retrieved his favorite wine opening utensils from their place in the cabinet. First, remove the tin foil top. The wheeled scissors grasped the bottle's topmost, his left hand held the bottle while the right hand wheeled it back and forth allowing the roller blades to pierce and sever the foil. Finished, a neat little lid fell from the sturdy bottle's top.
Now, he perched the opener atop the bottle, his left hand grasping the pincers to hold the bottle still, his right levering the screw down, then back up removing the cork from the bottle in the process. He unwound the cork from the screw, reset the opener in its case and put it away in the cabinet.
"Steinbeck," he muttered, "Fifty years of Steinbeck echoing the halls of my memory." Steinbeck described four friends and two gallons of wine, the moods that changed with the consumption. Tortilla Flats, that was the book but he was damned if remembered a whole lot more. Didn't matter. The effect of the wine was what counted.
He decanted Madeira into his favorite glass. Hell, it was a brandy snifter but who here was critiquing his performance?
The first sip, sweet, clear, ripe as if there was a special vine for just this purpose and the grape just plucked and mashed, a hundred years of ferment in a second, the only proper use for time traveling.
Walking his wine to his chair, the wood in the fireplace already burning nicely, the old man sat and thought, his eyes watching the flame but seeing nothing at all. Another funeral past, this morning on a bright winter day, temperatures near 70F. What kind of day was that for a burial? Still, there had been the burial and the burial brought it all down on him, for maybe the millionth time.
"What is a man?" the preacher had asked and then answered but the old man could not recall the answer given. The question had sent his mind far, far away from that cemetery to a hill in some Asian country, another winter afternoon, snow on the ground, four soldiers sitting around a starkly naked little tree, worrying a bottle of whiskey, and one in their number - the guy from Georgia, wasn't it? - asking what is a man?
The other guy from the desert immediately replied: "a dick in search of pussy" to instant agreement among the four. But, they were wrong. Well, they were correct but they hadn't taken it far enough.
"See," the old man thought, "see me sitting here. I'm not looking for pussy. I'm still searching for something but, hell, if I found a willing woman, not all that certain it would make any difference anymore."
There was the next answer that had come to him, probably a decade later: Maslow. By the goddess, old Abe had hit it right there.