most fabled wines like Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, or Chardonnay—all of which we grew at the vineyard.
Maybe Jacques had been a bit of a purist, just keeping us in top-drawer French wines, but in his defense, Virginia’s climate is a lot like Bordeaux where he came from and those were the vines he knew best. Still, Quinn was right. Maybe we should try something new.
I ignored the implied jab at Jacques’s abilities as a winemaker and said neutrally, “Where were you thinking of doing this?”
“I’ll show you,” he said. “Come on.”
“Aren’t you going to finish your breakfast?”
“I’ll take it with me.” He held out half the sandwich. “Want a bite?”
“No, not really.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.” He wrapped the napkin around it. “I brought the Gator over here. My car wouldn’t start this morning. I’ll get the field test stuff in the dining room and meet you outside in a minute.”
He left and I cleaned up. Then I got two bottles of water from the refrigerator and retrieved Eli’s old New York Mets cap from the floor of the front hall closet. The sun would boil us like lobsters out in the fields.
Quinn was waiting in the Gator with the motor running by the time I joined him. I set my cane on the wagon bed and climbed into the passenger seat. There was no sign of the sandwich, just a crumpled napkin shoved in the open glove compartment.
“When are you going to work things out with your brother and sister?” he asked, as he shifted into first gear and we motored down the driveway toward the winery.
“I own the house,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to work out.”
“It didn’t sound like that to me.”
“We’ve been over this. Why don’t you run the vineyard and let me handle my family, okay?”
As we pulled into the parking lot next to the winery, he said, “I heard you sold your clock and some other furniture to raise the cash for the destemmer motor.”
“How I got the money is none of your business.”
“Your brother and your father were a whole lot easier to deal with.”
“I was just thinking the same thing about Jacques.”
“You know, one of the reasons I came here is because this place is so underdeveloped and there’s a lot I could do. No offense to your buddy Jacques, but he was resting on his laurels,” he said. “I could put this winery on the map. I could produce some award-winning wines that would give the Californians a run for their money. I could get us noticed.”
I, I, I. I like a man who’s comfortable in his skin. Quinn seemed a bit oversized for his, like the Michelin Man untethered, to be precise. Could he really do all that? Or was he just blowing more hot air?
“Jacques was a very skilled enologist,” I said.
“If you lived in the nineteenth century. Honey, this doesn’t have to be a cottage industry.”
“I’m not looking to mass-produce plonk in a six-pack with screw-top bottles, Quinn,” I said. “
He put the Gator in gear and we roared out of the back of the parking lot, climbing onto the rougher terrain leading toward the vineyards. I held on to the edges of my seat with both hands.
“Look,” he said, “let’s get something straight. When your father hired me, he said he was a hands-off manager and he’d let me do the job the way I saw fit. If you’re going to big-foot every decision I make, then we’re not going to get along and I need to be looking for another job.”
I hate ultimatums or being backed into a corner. My first instinct was to take him up on his offer to move on. Surely I could find someone equally qualified who would be more pleasant to work with. How hard could it be to find a winemaker who didn’t have the personality of Dirty Harry and dress in Salvation Army couture?
Though, of course, it was possible he actually could deliver on those boasts. What if he were good enough to make us into a first-class vineyard, like he said? He was ambitious, like I was. Actually, he was pushy. But we both wanted the same thing.
Too bad Leland wasn’t the best judge of character. Eli said he’d hired Quinn because he came cheap. But why would Quinn sell himself short if he thought he was so good? It was possible he’d left California, the Mecca of American wine making, to come to Virginia because the potential here appealed to his maverick side. But it was also possible he’d left for another reason and Leland hadn’t bothered to inquire about it.
I couldn’t afford to have Quinn walk out now, just before harvest. But I wasn’t going to let him run the place as blindly as Leland intended, either.
“The difference between Leland and me,” I said, “is that he wasn’t interested in the vineyard. I am. Just like my mother was.”
“Meaning?”
“My mother and Jacques worked together, as a team. He made the call about when to pick, when to blend, when to press…all those decisions. But he consulted with her on everything and she had her own opinions.”
“I assume she knew something about what she was doing?”
“I’m not a novice,” I said. “Give me some credit. I grew up here. Jacques taught me and I paid attention. The summer before I…before my accident, I worked here full time.”
“A hobby,” he said, “is not the same as a profession.”
“It was my mother’s life’s work! My family’s name is on every bottle of wine that leaves here. It is not a hobby. It is a
He was silent, but he’d shifted the Gator back into first gear so now we’d slowed considerably as we approached the beginning of the Chardonnay block.
“Besides,” I continued, as his silence grew into a substantial void, “unlike Leland, I’d sell every piece of furniture we own to finance the expansion you’re talking about.”
That unstuck his tongue. Money. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll listen to what you have to say, but I run the show. Completely. We’ll see if it works. If it does, I’ll stay. If it doesn’t, I’m gone at the end of harvest.”
“Fine.”
The end of harvest could be anywhere from six to eight weeks away, depending on the ripening of the different varietals of grapes. We’d know each other pretty well by then. There would be days when we’d be working together practically around the clock.
He looked sideways at me. “I’m not kidding.”
“Me, either.”
He banked the Gator hard to the right and headed down an aisle of Chardonnay. I held on to the edges of my seat again as we now were driving along the contours of a steep slope. The vines were planted in rows eight feet apart, just wide enough for the Gator or our tractor to navigate. We puttered slowly down the aisle, examining the heavy clusters of translucent green-gold grapes.
I had forgotten how churchlike the vineyard was, silent but for the cicadas’ song, muted by the dense canopy of vines, and the soporific buzzing of honeybees drunk on fermenting grapes. Every so often a crow cawed, and I saw the shadow of its wingspan as it wheeled and turned above us.
It was probably at least the tenth time someone had looked over these vines since the last harvest. Pruning, spraying for pests, tending the trellises, overcropping if there were too many buds, and general fretting over the state of the grapes and the date to harvest were all reasons warranting a visit. Quinn shut off the motor, climbed out of the Gator, and clipped a cluster of grapes with the pruning shears. I joined him after retrieving my cane.
Grapes used in wine growing are smaller than table grapes and densely packed together in bunches. They’re also much sweeter because it’s the sugar that makes the alcohol. Quinn ate a few from the bunch he’d picked and gave me the rest. Although the drought was devastating for crops, gardens, and livestock, it was a blessing for a vineyard since the parched conditions meant the vines worked harder to find water, adding flavor and complexity found in the deeper mineral-rich soil. The longer they hung on the vine once the ripening process, or
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