I was in a restaurant full of dripping clocks, floating heads, flying fish and wild colors. Mr. Vino and I were having dinner at Dali’s, a new surreal Spanish restaurant named in honor of the great Spanish painter.

The restaurant itself was a dreamscape, featuring murals that were composites of Dali paintings, commissioned by the restaurant’s owners, Mary Melons and Talley Ho – supermodels, masters of wine and obvious Dali fans. The restaurant had no right angles, and the ceiling was painted to resemble a sky full of spring clouds. The tables were fashioned to look like painters palettes, streaked with a rainbow of colors. The dining chairs were smiling, crimson-colored lips. The idea was to dine within the dream, the lovely Mary told me.

The cover of the menu featured a formal portrait of the handlebar-mustached artist in his 70s with the caption: “What is surrealism… surrealism is myself” – Salvador Dali. The wine list was a leather-bound diary with a lock.

Dressed in their black tuxedos, the wait staff lent the dining room a strange air of formality. In the corner sat an ancient man in a black beret playing classical guitar.

Mr. Vino and I sat sharing a plate of Gambas al Ajillo (prawns with garlic) and a bottle of sparkling cava – Cristalino brut. We were waiting for Mary and Talley to join us. They were running late at their Victoria’s Secret lingerie photo shoot, but they had called ahead and told us to start without them.

I asked Mr. Vino what he thought about the restaurant.

“It’s worth all the millions the girls spent on it,” he joyfully exclaimed. “What a palace for food, wine and art! The prawns are delicious, and well complimented by the cava.”

We ordered some more tapas, Champinones en Escabeche (marinated mushrooms) and Buñuelos de Patatas con Chorizo (potato puffs with chorizo).

“I know you think of wine as being an art form, but do you think of it as fine art, like painting?” I asked Mr. Vino.

“I often think of wine in terms of its aesthetic nature,” Mr. Vino began. “But wine has such a varied nature. It has so many uses in so many ways, just like water. Wine was used as an anesthesia and antiseptic as late as the latter part of the 17th century. Wine can be a simple companion to your frozen pizza or complex enough to compliment any gourmet dish thought up by the renowned Chef Kenny. Superb wines are great art, and with that there is no question but what kind of art?”

He paused to take a sip of his cava, grinned and continued: “Wine has been with us since prehistoric times. But throughout much of its history, wine’s chief attribute has been its alcohol content. By modern standards, wine tasted just awful back then. The ancient Greeks had to add honey, herbs and even seawater to make it drinkable. Despite the ancient poems praising wine, our ancestors drank to get intoxicated, no matter how bad it tasted. The chief problem back then was oxidization – as you know, oxygen over time can turn even the greatest wines into vinegar.

“In the 16th century, the glass bottle and the cork changed wine forever,” he explained. “It created a vessel that mitigated the effect of oxidization. Wines could develop in the bottle and become better, rather than worse, over time. The glass bottle turned wine into art.”

I interjected, “Granted, wine can be an art, but it’s like painting, too – there are specific styles, like impressionism, baroque and even surrealism, like Dali.”

Mr. Vino gave a small laugh. “If you look closely into a glass of wine, you will see a myriad of colors. Tip the glass and you will see fine gradations. That is the beauty of color. If you swirl the glass and expose the legs and body, you will see that wine has texture, like oils on canvas.”

But where wine is most like fine art, he continued, is in its bouquet and finish. “The aromatics of a great wine is its true beauty,” he said. “It is like a visit to a perfumery, and is almost as intoxicating as the wine itself. The finish is like viewing a master work of art – the effect lingers.”

Mr. Vino sighed. “But wine drinkers are in too much of a hurry to enjoy these subtleties, or they’re egotistically concerned with only drinking 92-point wines.”

I expounded upon my earlier theory: “I find most old-world wines to be impressionistic, while new-world wines are expressionistic because of their higher alcohol content and emphasis on fruit. I find old Bordeaux to be classic, because of its emphasis on symmetry. But old Sauternes is surreal because of the insanity of its million flavors.”

Our conversation ended at that point with the arrival of the supermodels, both wearing long, low-cut evening gowns – Mary’s dress virgin white and Talley’s eclipse black.