CABERNET ZIN (Cabernet Zin Wine Country)

by J Gordon Smith

  “This is Martin. I hoped nine thirty isn’t too late to call?”

  “Martin, it’s twelve thirty. We’re on East Coast time here in Detroit. Three hours ahead of you.”

  “Oops. Sorry for waking you and your wife. I forgot you lived near Detroit. You’re from the future! I could really use some help out here if we want this investment to take off. Payroll is killing us. We have this line of credit but it’s a steep interest rate with the whole banking situation. They don’t give anything out in savings interest but they lap it up on the lending side – and that’s the side we’re grubbing our working capital from.”

  “No, it’s not good.”

  “I’m calling as many investors as possible, to see who can come out. I think if we do this in shifts with the number of investors we have we can cut this outlay significantly.”

  “You’re getting the smaller investors mostly?” Zack asked, rubbing his face and waking up.

  “Yes. The big investors have different cost to time values. They would rather we make a larger capital call and carry on. I’m already managing the winery for free, lucky my investments are ok elsewhere to fund my living costs but not for me to match the larger capital call either. So I’m as stuck as you are Zack.”

  “Martin. I understand. In some ways I’m lucky I have a somewhat flexible work arrangement. I can do most of my work from out there as easy as here. The hard part is I also take care of my kids.”

  “I understand. Can you think about it over the weekend and let me know?”

  “How pinched are you for help?”

  “I’m good until the beginning of next month.”

  “Then I’ll have a couple of weeks to plan and arrange. That’s good. I’ll talk to Lydia and see what we can work out.”

  “Let me know sooner rather than later. The management council and I are working on how to value the time compared with putting in more capital. Taxes. There is probably something with taxes to worry about so our CPA will have a chance to bill us, but better than surprises later.”

  Zack said, “Martin, I’ll talk with Lydia and let you know.”

  “Thanks, Zack.”

  Lydia’s voice filtered out of the bedroom, “What was that call about?”

  Zack carried the phone back to the bedroom and dropped it in its recharge cradle, “Martin needs my help at the winery. Probably a week each month through the end of the year.”

  “You can’t be serious? You’ll leave me with the kids every month? What about your work?”

  “Can you ask your mother to watch the kids when I’m gone?”

  Lydia said, “She’s retired and doesn’t want to have a job watching kids.”

  “I already know that. Could she make sure they get to school and then back home and watch them until you get home for a week a month?”

  “She might go for once every other month.”

  “See what she can do. Otherwise we’ll have to hire out for someone.”

  “She won’t understand why you’re gone out there so much.”

  “Protecting our investment.”

  “First we put money in, then we put more money in, then you have to start putting time in. When will it end and we start seeing earnings?”

  “You realize we are in a deep recession.”

  “If you had a job then we wouldn’t be worried about that mischief out there.” She sat up, “What are we going to do about flight tickets? Twelve trips to California will be a lot of money. Where are you going to make that money? Your job? How will you do what crazy job you do have?”

  “We can do it. Maybe the kids can come out with me once school is out.”

  “And who will watch them while you help at the winery? More plane tickets. I’ll bet most of the other investors live local that do this so they just drive over.”

  “I’m sure we can write expenses off against the investment.”

  “That assumes the investment is making money – it’s currently just a big hobby.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t believe you put that much of our money into that so-called investment.”

  “I put more money into paying off your college loans.”

  “You like to toss that at me all the time.”

  “Only because you have some of your own money ownership arguments. I worked until the kids became too much so we decided to split our focus.”

  “But that investment – now we’re stuck and have to struggle with not only our own stuff but protecting that money.”

  “You know, it may spin off enough cash eventually that we can afford the kids’ college.”

  “Or we keep getting sucked into working and thinking about it along with the capital calls and we never get ahead – so we still can’t afford the kids’ college.”

  “Since we set you up for the big career, you should be able to earn more and pay for it, perhaps?”

  “Always me. Work. Work. Work. You expect me to keep working – for how long?”

  “That’s what we signed up for when we made the children decision.”

  Grace strolled in, rubbing her eye with her little round fist, “Are you fighting over us?”

  “No Grace, just your Mommy and I are talking about adult things.” Zack hugged Grace, “We love the two of you.”

  Lydia said, “We’re done talking Grace.” She got out of bed and walked Grace back to her room. Zack saw the anger in Lydia’s back as she took the little girl to her room. Zack heard the creak of Lydia lying on Grace’s bed to help their daughter return to sleep.

  -:-:-:-O-:-:-:-

  “Hey, Harold,” Zack said standing at the entrance to Harold’s cube.

  “Oh. Hi Zack.” Harold motioned for Zack to take the single chair. “What brings you into the office today?”

  “I – I need to ask a favor. A big favor.”

  Harold paused.

  “This business I’m involved with in California. They need each of the investors to work out there to cut costs.”

  “Zack, this sounds like moonlighting.”

  “No, it’s my investment.”

  “An investment that makes you work? I thought an investment was supposed to have all those little dollars out huffing and puffing and pulling themselves along while they spilled pennies in your pocket?”

  “It’s an issue and I need to protect the money that is invested already. My kid’s college tuition. You can understand?”

  “Zack. This is hard. We have clients that need attention on their investment. I need your help here.”

  “It’s not like I’m not working on this job. I’ll be doing the same thing. Just in the spaces between I’ll be out spraying the vineyard against bugs, picking grapes, racking barrels, bottling, or sticking labels on bottles and cases.”

  “I want visual control of my department Zack. You’ve already stretched that with your work-from-home program. Honestly, if you didn’t save us a few times with your negotiating skills you’d either be full-time or out.”

  “Many of our clients are in the Carolina’s, Wisconsin, Indiana, China, and Mexico so it is all phone based anyway. I’ll have broadband and my conference software so it will be seamless to our customers.”

  Harold leaned in, “Zack, I know you’ve been a manager before and can understand. How do I know you’re working or not when you are way out there?”

  Zack said, “Check the output. How quiet the customer remains of complaints is the critical measure. You don’t hear anything then that means they are happy with my service. Have you been getting a lot of calls from the clients I work with?”

  Harold sighed, “No Zack. Yours are the quietest of any around here. Except when they call me to praise how you solved some problem for them.” He fidgeted in his chair. “But I want to know if you’re surfing joke sites.”

  “It’s not any different if I’m here in the cube next to you, or out there.”

  Harold leaned on his elbows on his desk and rubbed the back of his neck, “Zack, I want a lot of upda
tes on what you are doing. I want calls from our clients that you are being wonderful. Keep communicating with our department and me. If I see any faltering of anything you’re coming back here and we’ll discuss the telecommuting from home situation too.”

  “Thanks, Harold.”

  Chapter 4

  February

  The barrel cellar remained a constant temperature all year. Outside, the colder night air gave way to the heat the February sun provided the valley. Zack wore a flannel shirt over his white T-shirt and an old pair of blue carpenter jeans and steel-toed work boots. He slung the transfer pump over his shoulder and leaned into it to drag the equipment across the floor. He checked the barrel number with the folded paper in his pocket and then squeezed the bung between his finger and thumb to pull it and poke the end of the pipe into the barrel. The smell of wine floated up deliciously over the open hole. The new oak barrel gave it flavors and tannins that helped it age for the future. Zack said, “If you don’t get sipped before then.” He moved the filler hose into the empty older barrel that was now mild and would allow the wine to settle and age. Several other investors worked in the barrel room with him, one with the fork truck moving racks and others transferring contents from barrel to barrel as Zack did.

  “Making great progress, we’ll soon be done with all the transfers.” Zack stood and surveyed the underground wine cave and the disarray of barrels and racks. They would have to tidy up.

  “Did you see how active the sales floor is?” Frank asked. Frank was one of the earliest investors in the group. Darkly suntanned wearing a light blue, short sleeve, button down shirt open around a gold chain right from the seventies, which he was probably well into, Zack thought.

  “Too early in the day for that. It will get rocking by evening.” Zack spun an empty barrel off a rack and loaded another to fill. He marked chalk on the end of the barrels and flipped the pump switch.

  “How many more transfers do we have?”

  “Six more barrels. Then I think we grab a snack from the kitchen for lunch –”

  “Is Debra making those slab tuna sandwich squares used as tasting room appetizers? She’s a perk they didn’t mention when we signed up for this gig.”

  “Those are great. Even the experiments she tests on us before making them available to the customers.”

  “Looks like six more barrels,” their wine maker Tom said. “How about I watch that pump and you roll over the next barrel?”

  “Sure.” Zack grabbed the edges of the barrel and positioned it.

  Zack and Frank looked along the line of wine glasses arrayed on the table flanked by decanters half filled from different barrels of wine.

  Martin waved his hand at the table, “Tom finished all the lab quality tests and everything looks great. Since you are the first on the volunteer work program I think it only appropriate you get to have first cut on the blending.” He waved a small index card, “I marked the decanters with a secret code that I have on this lot card. See what you can come up with.”

  Frank said, “We won’t need the spit buckets.”

  Martin put his hand on Frank’s shoulder, “Frank, you’ll need to use the spit bucket. Otherwise the later blends will get cranky.”

  “Sometimes the best blends happen by accident.” Frank added, “I met my wife in San Diego when she tripped on an orange in the market and I caught her from falling. That was just after I got back from the Navy.”

  “Were you in any wars?”

  “Lucky, no battle. I got a great education and a few adventures. I swabbed the deck a lot though.” They all laughed and Martin excused himself to take care of payroll.

  Zack suggested, “We should start with just the straight wine from each decanter and assemble from there, what do you think?”

  “As good as any starting point. As long as you start pouring,” Frank’s eye twinkled.

  Two hours of filling the spit buckets and sitting before the row of wine glasses smeared with red tints Frank said, “I don’t know Zack. I think we leave the wines as a lot and not blend anything. These are all great wines on their own.”

  “I like the finish on this lot and the leather flavor of this one and that over there has the best cranberry taste I’ve had in a wine.”

  “Mix them again.” Frank swirled the glass in his hand and sniffed it. “The ratio is important.”

  “When I mixed these two the leather vanished.”

  Frank looked cross, “Do I want my wine to taste like leather?”

  “Close your eyes Frank. Think back when you were a kid, what did that baseball glove of yours smell like?”

  Zack splashed some wine from his favorite Cabernet decanters into Frank’s glass.

  “Musty. My father’s old glove ended up in a box shoved in the crawlspace storage under the basement stairs. When it came out it was musty and unpleasant. I had to oil the thing until August before I could bend it enough to catch anything.”

  “– Then what was your second baseball glove?”

  “That one was new. Tangy.”

  “And did you have any cars with leather seats?”

  “No. But this girl I lived with for a while in my twenties wore a leather jacket and these pants that I could hardly peel off her.”

  “Does this remind you of her?”

  Zack poured a few more splashes of wine in the glass and gave it to Frank.

  Frank smacked his lips, his eyes popped open, “Yes! I can see her jacket now, smell her enter our living room from the street. That was fifty years ago.” Frank looked at the glass as if it could be glowing with magic. “She was very pretty. We had fun that summer.”

  “Didn’t last?”

  “No. She got a pair of small movie parts. The movies didn’t go anywhere but she hung out with all those actors in LA and eventually got married and divorced and I lost track of her. Of course by that time I was married myself and busy with a family.”

  Zack swirled and smelled his glass. He put his nose into the glass until the rim pressed a line around his face. He pulled it back. “Still needs something. What was this one again?”

  “Oh, I didn’t care for that one. A little greenery in there, like the stems didn’t get taken out or were bashed up too much by the destemmer.”

  “Some of the stem bitterness will mellow. It has strong floral notes though.” Zack splashed six drops into his glass.

  “You know we have at least a whole barrel of that, don’t be stingy.”

  “I’m just looking for a touch from it.” Zack swirled and smelled. “And this one.”

  “That’s a good lot. A peppery Zinfandel.”

  Zack counted the drops into his glass. He swirled and smelled. Then a few more drops. He smelled, “Maybe.” He took a sip. He sucked in air over his tongue and the wine in his mouth. Slurping like a kindergartner on a juice box. “This reminds me of –” Zack was going to say something about the pleasantness of a freshly cut lawn on a warm summer day but the image of Claire popped unexpectedly into his mind. The jolt like catching her eye from across a crowded room. Like a time-machine, the memory of being upstairs walking with Rutger and Samantha and meeting Claire. When the wine flavor faded the images blurred.

  “So what does it remind you of? You look like you saw an angel with wings and everything.”

  “A time machine.” Zack took a fresh pair of glasses and carefully made the same blend. Frank saw his intense focus and stayed quiet. Zack swirled and smelled the first glass and then the other two. He nodded and pushed the glass to Frank. “Try this.”

  Frank swirled the wine and raised it, “I’m a taster, not a smeller.” He grinned. Then he sipped. “Whoa!”

  “Well?” Zack asked when Frank opened his eyes, seeming surprised that he had closed them.

  “A time machine – sure.” Frank carefully sat the glass down. “I hadn’t thought of that night in twenty years.”

  “What night?”

  “One of our friends got married by a lake when I was in my thirties.
A friend’s second wedding.” He looked at the glass of wine, “My wife wore a new perfume and during the reception my wife and I walked along the nearby lake. We sprawled among this huge reed bed. We were so happy then.”

  “Not later?”

  “Oh, you have ups and downs. I started a hardware business soon after and we struggled for some years. I eventually got it figured out and that business funded my investments in this place, college for the kids, and pocket money for retirement.” Frank nudged the foot of the wine glass a little. “You write that recipe down. We have to match what’s in these three glasses. Frank pulled out his phone. “Get writing Zack.” He punched in the number, “Martin, we have one blend. You should come down and taste this. Bring Debra too if she’s free.”

  Zack wrote his notes and then mixed up the additional glasses.

  Martin came with Debra behind, “Wow, you two made a mess of this place.”

  Frank stood and handed a glass to each of them. “You won’t care when you taste this.”

  Martin swirled and smelled. Then he pulled his nose away and swirled again working up a frothy twirl. He smelled and then quickly tasted. His eyes scanned both Frank and Zack, after spitting he said, “What did you two put in there?”

  “Yeah. That is sexy good,” agreed Debra. “Like a walk in the vineyard with a hot date sexy. Ooohh.”

  Frank said, “Zack mixed it up. I can’t believe it. The base wines are excellent. This. I don’t know. Zack you’re a mastermind.”

  Martin took another sip, “That is amazing.” He looked around for an empty decanter. Can you mix enough in this decanter that I can take it to the tasting floor and get customer feedback?”

  “Here are the notes. Best if you try blending to make sure I’m not doing something I forgot to put down.”

  Debra said, “Good idea. I don’t know how many recipes I’ve seen that some trick like the order was as important as the amounts listed.”

  Martin took Zack’s card and mixed the wines into the decanter.

  “Carefully count the drops.”