A Good Year

him in an embrace that threatened to crack his spine, whirled him off his feet as if he were no heavier than a sack of fertilizer, and kissed him on each cheek.

“Steady on, Claude,” said Max. “Put me down. I’d better call Charlie and tell him the good news.”

The rest of the summer passed under blue skies, with only the traditional mid-August storm as a temporary relief from the heat. There was hard, unremitting work in the vines and in the cave, with Fanny providing food and sweet consolation at the end of each long, blistering day. Max learned to drive a tractor and, as the shining season of autumn came, to pick the grapes and sort them according to size without bruising them. His face and arms turned the color of a pickled nut; his hands developed a thick carapace of rough skin; his clothes became dusty and faded; his hair grew shaggy. He had never been happier.

Madame Passepartout took enormous pleasure in the postcards that arrived regularly from London, particularly those featuring members of the royal family. It appeared, to her great satisfaction, that Christie and Charlie were carrying on what had begun under her very eyes in Saint-Pons.

It became a litany. “I should never be surprised,” she would say to Max without fail every time a new postcard arrived, “if this doesn’t end in something more permanent. A ceremony at the Mairie would be most appropriate, non? I must think of something to wear. Of course, Monsieur Max, you will be the temoin de mariage.”

And even taking into account his friend’s past success at avoiding matrimony, Max was inclined to agree.

He and Roussel, with the help of a loan arranged by Maurice at the local Credit Agricole, were planning to uproot the tired old vines during the winter and replace them with Roussel’s Cabernet and Merlot mixture. Working with a cousin in the building trade, they had made much-needed changes to the cave, scrubbing it out, whitewashing the ceiling and walls, and installing a simple stone bar just inside the door. They leveled the track that led to the barn and put up a plain but handsome sign on the road for passers-by who might want to stop for a degustation.

As for their pride and joy and hope for the future, the wine from the stony patch, it was no longer called Le Coin Perdu. Instead, they had decided to use the name of the property, with a presentation suitable for an exceptional wine. The corks were long, the capsules were lead, the bottles were feuille morte, that particular and expensive type of glass that prevents the penetration of harmful ultraviolet rays. And the label was a model of classic understatement: Le Griffon. Vin de Pays du Vaucluse. M. Skinner et C. Roussel Proprietaires. Their ambition was to join that other distinguished vin de pays, the Domaine de Trevallon, as one of the very few non-appellation wines worthy of a connoisseur’s consideration.

These were early days, of course, but the indications were encouraging. Several good restaurants, one as far away as Aix, had agreed to put Le Griffon on their lists; this despite its price, which was very high by Luberon standards. Next year, when May came around, Max and Roussel planned to enter the wine at Macon, to see if it could win a coveted medal. But already the word of mouth was good, and growing.

Unfortunately, it had not yet reached the group of Americans who came to the cave one bright October morning while Max and Roussel were in the back, stacking cartons ready for delivery. Roussel went to greet the visitors at the bar, setting out a line of glasses, pouring the wine and wishing them a bonne degustation before returning to his cartons.

Max couldn’t resist eavesdropping.

“Hey, this is pretty good.” There was a murmur of agreement from the other members of the group. “You know, it’s got that Bordeaux taste. I bet there’s some Cabernet in there somewhere.”

“Do you think they ship?”

“Sure. Everybody ships.”

“Where are the prices? Oh, right, this little card here. It’s about one for one with the euro, isn’t it?”

A moment of silence. Then: “Jesus! Who do these guys think they are? Thirty bucks a bottle!”

“For a minute or two,” said Max, “I thought they were going to try to haggle. But then they had a whip-round and bought a couple of bottles between them. That’s when I began to think the vineyard motto ought to be Get Rich Slow. Actually, it was a historic moment, because it was our first American sale. Mondavi had better watch out.”

He picked up his glass and looked past Charlie at the faces around the long table that had been set up under the plane tree in front of the house. When Fanny had learned that Christie and Charlie were coming over from London for the weekend, she had offered to close the restaurant and cook her specialty for lunch: she would make the first cassoulet of autumn. The guest list reflected her opinion that one needs a crowd for cassoulet-as well, of course, as the correct weather. And in this, she couldn’t have asked for better: October was coming to an end with a series of spectacular, Indian summer days-cool in the morning, cool at night, warm enough in the middle of the day to eat outdoors, but not too hot to stifle the appetite.

In fact, jackets were already coming off as the guests paused after a first course-nothing serious, in view of what was to come-of quails’ eggs spread with tapenade, brandade de morue on toast, and crudites. The Roussels were there, with daughter and dog. Madame Passepartout, in dazzling autumnal hues of red and gold, had brought her special friend, Maurice, his shaved head, silver earring, and tattooed forearms marking him out as one of the region’s less conventional bank managers. Fanny had invited her chef and his wife, and, to make up a round dozen, young Ahmed, who helped in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Charlie had turned away from Max to resume his efforts to pass on to the Roussels some of the basic curiosities of the English language. “There is no sex in English, you see,” he was saying, “no le and la, which makes life much easier. Plus facile.”

“No sex,” repeated a thoughtful Roussel. “But much cricket, non?”

Max left them to plunge ever deeper into the thickets of English grammar, and followed his nose into the kitchen, where Christie and Fanny had just removed from the oven a vast, deep-sided earthenware dish. It sat on the kitchen table, the size of a cartwheel, with a golden crust of bread crumbs covering the top.

“Voila,” said Fanny, “le vrai cassoulet de Toulouse.” Max looked at her and smiled. He couldn’t imagine any other woman who could look desirable while wearing oven gloves. She took them off and ran her fingers through her hair.

Max bent over the dish and breathed in the heavy, rich aroma, humming with the promise of cholesterol. “God, that smells good. What did you put in it?”

Fanny started to count off the ingredients on her fingers: “White beans, confit of duck, garlic sausage, salt pork, breast and shoulder of lamb, duck fat, baby onions, loin of pork, saucisses de Toulouse (of course), tomatoes, white wine, garlic, a few herbs…”

“Max,” said Christie, “stop drooling and do something useful.” She gave him Fanny’s oven gloves. “Careful when you take it out. It’s heavy.”

The dish was greeted with a round of applause when it reached the table, and Christie was given the visitor’s privilege of making the first ceremonial incision in the crust, releasing a fragrant sigh of steam. Plates were passed and filled, the wine was tasted and admired, the cook was toasted, and then, as frequently happens when cassoulet is served, silence descended on the table.

Madame Passepartout was the first to recover her voice. Emboldened by her second-or even her third-glass, she stretched over and tapped Max on the shoulder. “Well?” she said to him in a whisper that carried the full length of the table, nodding toward Christie and Charlie, “when are they going to announce it?”