The Chardonnay Charade

“I’ll see you when you get back from the airport.”

Before I went to the grocery store, I stopped off at the winery to check in with Quinn. The design for the compound, which was based around an ivy-covered villa, had come from a sketch my mother had done. She’d hired an architect who added the semi-underground barrel room, connecting the two buildings by a horseshoe-shaped courtyard with a porticoed loggia and graceful arched stone entrance. A large tasting room and our offices were located in the villa; we made and stored wine in the barrel room. The place still looked much as it had when my mother was alive, except the trees and bushes she’d planted twenty years ago were now fully mature and the ivy that branched gracefully over the windows was full and thick. I parked my car in the gravel parking lot alongside Quinn’s El Camino.

Even after all these years, I still sensed my mother’s spirit every time I opened the front door to the villa. Across the room, late afternoon sunshine streamed in through four large sets of French doors that opened onto a cantilevered deck and a view of braided hills covered in vines. The sunlight made gold stripes on the tile floor and picked out some of the colored stones in the grapevine mosaic on the front of the bar so they glowed like jewels. Someone had left a pretty bouquet of red roses on the carved oak table we used for wine tastings. Sera, no doubt. She must have cut the flowers from her garden to keep them from freezing.

Quinn and I had our offices off a small wine library that adjoined the tasting room. The wrought-iron door that led to the library had been one of my mother’s treasured finds from an architectural salvage shop. The library itself had evolved from our previous winemaker’s interest in Virginia’s four-hundred-year effort to develop a wine industry, dating from the Jamestown settlement. At first Jacques left the books he’d read scattered throughout the villa so visitors could read or borrow them. But when the piles grew too high, my practical mother had bookshelves built in the alcove, adding two leather barrel chairs and a reading lamp on an old wine cask.

Beyond the library, a short photo-lined corridor led to the offices and a back door to a small kitchenette. I walked by the vineyard’s lone award—the Governor’s Cup, won twelve years ago by my mother and Jacques. If Quinn and I agreed on anything, it was our determination that one day this wall would be covered from floor to ceiling with awards.

I found him bouncing a tennis ball off a wall in his office.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Besides making scuff marks on that wall.” When it had been Jacques’s office, the room had looked like a small museum. Now it reminded me of a locker room.

“I’m not making scuff marks. I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

“The Chardonnay. It’s driving me nuts. I’m going back to the lab to do some more blending. Want to come?”

“More blending? There won’t be anything left to bottle if you keep experimenting. I thought we agreed on that sample last week.”

He made a face. “Nah. Too fruity. I’ve got some new ideas.”

Last year at harvest we put some of our Chardonnay into oak barrels and left the rest in stainless-steel tanks. Barrel-fermented wine gains an added complexity from the taste of the oak—like adding spice to a sauce—though too much oak will overwhelm, or even dominate, the flavor. On the other hand, wine fermented in refrigerated steel tanks tastes fruitier and brighter. What he was trying to do now was figure out the ratio of oak and steel that would produce a wine we both liked. From this point on—now that the fermentation process had ended—everything we did was about taste and aroma. And the only way to get the perfect blend that suited us was to experiment, tasting the results.

“Look, you know in Virginia we don’t like it too oaked or too sweet,” I said. “So I hope that’s not what you’ve got in mind. I’m not trying to rush you, but don’t you think we’d better get it bottled soon? We can’t afford any spoilage, especially after losing the grapes from the old vines last night.”

“We won’t have any spoilage,” he said, “so stop worrying. And I’m still going to do some more sampling.”

“Well, use the two-hundred-fifty mil beakers, then. Surely you don’t need to make a half liter of everything you try.”

“You know, Dom Pérignon used to start blending before the grapes were even pressed. Grapes, not juice. He got ’em from everywhere, too. Different blocks. Other vineyards. So it wasn’t the goût du terroir that made his wines world-class. It was the grapes themselves. I’ll bet the Benedictine abbot at Hautvillers didn’t jerk a knot in his chain when he needed more time for blending.”

The goût du terroir literally means “the taste of the land” and it is that indefinable x factor that gives a wine its distinct taste. But Quinn was right. Dom Pérignon knew some magic the rest of us hadn’t figured out. And he used his own rule book.

I reached out with the hooked end of my cane and swatted at his tennis ball as it sailed past me. The cane connected with the ball and sent it back at him so it hit his arm and bounced under his desk. He grinned and ducked to look for it.

“My mother told me that as a bedtime story,” I said. “Dom Pérignon also had a very delicate palate. All he ate was cheese and fruit. He didn’t even drink. You still need to use the two-hundred-fifty mil beakers or we’ll have nothing left.”

“Why don’t I get those little mouthwash cups the dentist uses? They’re even smaller. Man, you are really tight with a buck, you know that?” He looked disgusted and held up a sheaf of papers. “The order for the new rootstock. I need a certified check for fifty percent so they’ll ship it. We ought to start planting next week.”

“We’ve got to get the tarps off the new fields first.”

“It’s done. Crew took care of it after lunch. Tomorrow they’re going to clean up those steel belts from the tires when we’re sure they’re good and cold.”

“That was fast.” I took the papers. “Can I get you the check tomorrow? I’m going to the bank anyway to pick up the cash to pay the crew.”

“Sure, fine. But I have to have it tomorrow.”

I flipped through the papers he’d handed me. “I forgot how many new varietals you wanted to grow. Petit Verdot, Syrah, Malbec, Seyval, Viognier, Cabernet Franc, and Norton.” I glanced up. “You sure this isn’t too ambitious?”

He threw the tennis ball up in the air and caught it. “I told you I’m going to put this place on the map. You gotta be bold, Lucie. Take a few risks.”

“It might be too much—” I began.

“Look,” he interrupted, “I did the soil samples and we talked about all this. Don’t get cold feet on me now.”

“After what happened last night I’m wondering if we shouldn’t be more cautious. There’s not a single grape on this list that we’ve grown before. What if none of them take, despite the soil samples? Why couldn’t we put in more Pinot Noir? We know that does well. Or more Riesling?”

“Look, if you’re going to second-guess me…”

“I’m not! You say that every time I have a different opinion from yours.”

“Let me run this place, Lucie. I’m good. I know what I’m doing. If we stay with the safe wines you’ve always made, we’ll be stuck in a rut. I can’t work like that. I’m talking about wines with different labels, wines we market more aggressively. Wines that will win awards.”

“You want to change our labels?”

“Honey, I want to change everything.”

“I can’t let you have carte blanche. We have to work together.”

He pointed to the papers. “I want to order all of this. Yes or no?”

I have never liked ultimatums and I can be stubborn, too. “I guess so,” I said stiffly. “I’m late. I’d better get going.”

“Yeah, and I’m heading down to the lab.” He stood up and added sarcastically, “By the way, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

I left without responding.

With the June primary election only two weeks away, you couldn’t swing a cat in Loudoun and Fauquier Counties without whacking someone’s vote-for-me roadside campaign sign. Actually, you’d be more likely to take