we call it quits here? We’ll get those last few on the next round. Plus whatever else comes in.”
“You’re in charge.”
He reached for the bottle of wine. I covered my glass with my hand, so he filled his own.
“You’ve got some nice wines. A few clunkers but I didn’t spot any outright fakes.”
“Can we talk about the Washington bottle?”
“Sure. Where is it?”
It was in a different bay, on its own. I retrieved it and set it on the table in front of him so it wasn’t in the direct beam of an overhead spotlight. The bottle, its contents dark and viscous as blood, gleamed mysteriously.
He picked it up like he was holding the Holy Grail. “Amazing.”
“You’re sure it’s real?”
“Let me give you a little history lesson.” He set the bottle down carefully. “Until the late 1600s, there was no such thing in France as a wine produced by a single château. They mingled the grapes harvested from different places, so what they produced didn’t have much connection with the land.”
“Château Margaux—which you’ve got here—was one of the first châteaus to make wine from vines grown solely in their own vineyard. That put them at the head of the curve in wine-making methodology and they stayed there.” He ticked off his fingers. “Two things. Glass and cork. By the time this wine was bottled, heavier glass suitable for aging wine and shipping it had come into use. Plus the French had switched from capping their bottles with a layer of olive oil and wax to using cork.”
He paused to fill his own glass with the last of the Cab. “What was I just saying?”
“Using cork instead of olive oil and wax.”
“Right. So now they could ship wine. By the eighteenth century the Portuguese—the primary suppliers of cork—had invented an elongated bottle with a short neck and a shoulder. Of course since every bottle was blown by mouth the shapes were slightly irregular.” He caressed the Washington wine from the neck down to the flared shoulder with the back of his index finger. “Anyway, the new shape meant the bottles could be stacked on their sides—instead of keeping them upright—so the corks would no longer dry out and the wine wouldn’t spoil. Good for long voyages, like crossing the Atlantic.”
He indicated the Margaux. “This bottle is perfectly consistent with what was historically available in 1790. Also, Thomas Jefferson always asked for his wines—especially his Bordeaux—to be shipped in bottles rather than casks.”
“Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to ship in casks?” I asked.
“Sure, but the odds of the wine he ordered and the wine he got being one and the same were slim to none.” Ryan drank more Cab, then pushed back his chair and hunched down so he was eye level with the broad-shouldered bottle. “If the French—especially in the south of France—hadn’t doctored the wine to fake Jefferson out and give him what he thought he’d ordered, then the men on the boats who brought the wine across the Atlantic or up the river drank their fill of his casks and topped them off with river water afterward so they were still full.”
I made a face. “That is disgusting.”
“Jefferson thought so, too.” He sat up again. “Eighteenth-century wine fraud. We’ve got no monopoly on it. Happened all the time. Which is why TJ insisted on bottles, especially for Bordeaux. And, as we know, not all of those bottles made it to Monticello or Mount Vernon. Like this one.”
“The wine in this bottle,” I said, “is not in very good condition.”
“Would you be in good condition if you were almost two hundred and fifty years old?” He brushed his finger lightly over the rough-etched lettering in the glass—1790, Margaux, and the initials, G.W. “Look at that color, though. Spectacular.”
“A lot of the wine is gone,” I said.
“Down to mid-shoulder.” Ryan said. “I don’t have a problem with that. You know you’re going to get seepage in a wine this old. The cork is slightly dry, but in excellent condition, considering.”
What he didn’t mention, though, was that the ullage—the space between the wine and the cork—was filled with oxygen. Just as too much oxygen can rust metal or turn apples brown, too much air kills wine.
“It’s a shame the châteaus didn’t keep records that long ago,” I said. “I guess we’re lucky Jefferson did.”
“Exactly.” Ryan drained his wineglass. “Here’s what you’ve got. The bottle is the right age. Mid-shoulder level is consistent with a wine that old. And here’s the clincher. When Jefferson came back to the United States after serving as ambassador to France, he wrote a letter in 1790 ordering a large quantity of Bordeaux for himself and George Washington. In that letter he specified that the shipments should be marked with their respective initials so they’d get to their proper destinations. You’re looking at one of the bottles he never got.”
I chewed my lip and stared at the initials.
“Why are you shaking your head?” he said.
I leaned closer to the bottle of wine. “I wonder what Valerie knew that we don’t.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Are you still on about her?” He threw up his hands and accidentally brushed against the bottle. It teetered and we both grabbed for it. I caught it.
“Jesus.” He looked stunned. “Wouldn’t that have been something, knocking it over right here?”
“I’ll just put this big boy back where he belongs for safekeeping. You sit tight.”
When I returned he was rolling the balloon of his wineglass between both hands, staring into it like he was looking into a crystal ball.
“You’re absolutely sure that it’s authentic?” I said. “Stake your reputation on it?”
He smiled wickedly. “Not 100 percent sure. But there is a way of finding out.”
“What’s that?”
“We could drink it.”
“Nice try.” I swiped his wineglass and put both of our glasses on a counter for washing in the morning. “Thanks for your time.”
“You’ll get my bill.”
I walked him to his car. “How well did you know Valerie Beauvais?” I asked.
“Well enough to know what a snake in the grass she was.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Gives me a motive for killing her, doesn’t it?”
“You need more than a motive,” I said. “What about opportunity?”
“Apparently I had that, too,” he said. “Two deputies already talked to me and they don’t like my alibi.”
“Which is?”
“Home alone in bed. I’ve got a witness but the dog doesn’t like officers of the law so he’s not talking.”
I smiled. “Did you do it?”
He looked startled. “Hell, no.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and tossed them in the air. As he caught them he said, “Guess I got lucky. Someone else beat me to it.”
Chapter 7
A beam of red light shone outside my kitchen window as I finished my dinner dishes. I watched it bob up and down as it moved past the rosebushes toward the summerhouse. When Quinn wanted to preserve his night vision he used a red flashlight. It was just after eight o’clock. Early for him.
Of all the surprising discoveries I’d made about my eccentric winemaker, the most unexpected was his passion for astronomy. Before he died, my father gave Quinn permission to bring a telescope to the summerhouse with its panoramic and mostly un-light-polluted view of the night sky from the valley all the way to the Blue Ridge. But Quinn and I had a falling out a while back when I thought he was turning the place into a love nest. In a fit of anger, he’d removed the telescope and his copies of
Maybe he’d brought the telescope back and forgotten our tiff. I pulled on a hooded sweatshirt that had been
