by Edward Riche
“Rain is the only thing that can hurt us, Elliot. I have rough ideas about the sort of tonnage we can expect. The Syrah will be less than three tons an acre, so it’s probably not too early to begin thinking about the blend. Every variety is looking terrific, even the old Cinsault that was part of the field blend is killer, it’s a luxury I’ve never had before, so you . . .”
Walt’s speech was almost frantic by this point; he leapt from harvesting to fermentation, ahead to the blend and back again. Elliot wanted to listen. More than anything he wished to dream possible dreams with long-suffering Walt. But ahead was a large billboard with the message “It’s Happening in Soledad.” “It,” for his son Mark, was another four years in prison in a town called Loneliness.
He could not even think about attempting a visit, travelling as a former version of himself. It was as if, up there in Canada, he was reverting to an earlier draft, one abandoned for a page-one rewrite. And after all the trouble of reimagining the character, changing the setting and the storyline, the producer was deciding to go back to the original script, using some rationalizing hooey like “your first instincts are usually right.” But Elliot liked his own rewrite.
“. . . and despite what I’ve said, I agree with you.” Walt was still going. “If the wine is built like that, you probably aren’t going to know how it turns out until it’s been ten years in the bottle. We won’t live long enough to know how we should start, you know? Sometimes it’s a best guess.”
“You know what they say, ‘Nobody knows anything.’”
“Who said that, Randall Grahm?” Grahm was a fellow California winemaker.
“No, it was William Goldman. He was talking about the pictures.”
“Could apply to just about anything,” said Walt.
Elliot could now see the walls of the low-slung prison from the highway. Walls and walls and walls, punctuated with guard towers.
“It does, I’m sure.”
“What’s happening with Jasper Crabb?” Walt asked.
“Huh?”
“The dude from the Department of Agriculture, the suitcase clones?”
“That’s sorted.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I told you, no one wants to open that can of worms, too many brand names in Napa would be implicated. I told him they were legit and he was fine.” This was untrue.
They were passing the town of Paso Robles, taking exit ramp 230 off the 101, when they were overtaken by a short yellow school bus. Walt was forced to the shoulder by the speeding vehicle.
“What the fuck?” said Elliot.
“Goddamn Bread Heads.”
“That was Farinists?”
“They drive around in those short buses. They’ve been coming in from the Bay area and L.A., they’re having some kind of festival, some kind of unholy bake-off.”
“They seem pretty harmless. I mean, bread shoes . . .”
“That’s no cake shop up by the old mission, Elliot, it’s a fortress. And I see them in Paso: they’re crazy. It’s in their eyes.”
The tidy rows belonging to Haldeman Laboratories were an even green, in stark contrast to the leaves of Elliot’s vineyard beyond, with their yellow skirts and rusty veins. A giant circular sign, cut and painted to look like a medal, stood next to the Haldeman gate. “97 Points, Wine Advocate,” it said.
“I was talking to the General the other day,” said Walter.
“About?”
“He wants your Zin. It’s deadly this year. His . . . not so much.”
“Let’s sell it to him.”
“I’ll mention it. He also wanted to talk to Miguel about pickers.”
“Haldeman is getting none of our team.”
“We’ll be done two weeks before he starts.”
“Then by all means . . . Two weeks? Really?”
“Yep.”
“You really think we can go for it?”
“The grapes are mature, Elliot. Most of the stems are lignified. The phenolics there . . . and it puts armour on the juice. Maybe the wine will only come in at twelve percent alcohol, maybe people won’t know what to make of it, but . . .”
Walt turned the truck through the gates of 303 Locura Canyon Road. Elliot could see Miguel’s team coming up the hills toward the winery for lunch. Harvest was done for the day. The afternoon would see the grapes picked over, the busted, rotten, and raisined berries discarded along with the leaves and twigs and dirt. A select portion of the prize grapes that remained would be destemmed before they were placed into vats to commence their transition to wine. Already wild yeasts were beginning to consume the sugar in the berries. The end of the season was the beginning.
The midday meal was served under a long canopy, jerry-rigged from various flies and tarps. Every harvest, Bonnie put down her pen and cooked for the crews. Elliot needed her at her desk, but the seasonal KP detail was one of the few joys Bonnie found at Locura Canyon. And she was a terrific cook. She worked from a bounty of fresh veg from her organic farm. Today there were plates best described as heaps of sliced tomatoes and fresh goat cheese over which was poured herbed olive oil, and there were salads in infinite permutations of the green things she grew. There were at least three pork roasts, their heat lifting aromas of cumin and chile and garlic into the autumn air. There were pots of beans and rice.
Freed from the tractor beam of the computer screen, Bonnie was, every year, a new and better woman. Seeing Elliot, she hugged him.
“Prodigal boss.”
“Don’t think the fatted calf was killed on my account, but I’ll take it.”
“How long you here for?”
“Going to try to stay until the Mourvèdre is in.”
“Business in L.A.?”
“Nope. Staying here the whole time. Gonna pull out the camp cot.”
“I need to talk to you. Can we have a walk, or do you want to eat?”
“No, let’s walk.”
They headed out to the vines. At a judicious distance Bonnie produced a joint and lit it.
“I’m giving you notice.”
“No.”
“Not going anywhere soon. I knew you would need time to find someone else . . . so three months.”
“Please, Bonnie . . .”
“You aren’t going to be able to do this from up in Canada. You are going to have to stay, live the dream — or at least attend to it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. This is shaping up to be your first decent vintage, so it’s not going to be so hard getting another manager.”
“That’s bullshit, Bonnie, you run the operation.”
“And that’s not what I signed on for. Frankly I’m exhausted from fighting off the bank and the creditors.”
“I’m devastated, Bonnie. Naturally, there’s nothing I can do to make you stay . . . I’m just . . .”
“Elliot . . . have you ever thought that it doesn’t matter what’s in the bottle?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Something is always the new thing, right? Like Californian wines were the thing for a while and the French were in the shitter.”
“Yeah.”
“But those were fashions,” said Bonnie.
“No, they were tastes.”
“See . . .” She couldn’t find the words. “For the first few people, the ones who were looking for something new, or at least claiming they’d found something new, it might have been about taste. But for everybody else . . . they were just following.”
“I really don’t see what point you’re trying to make.”
“I understand your desire to make something special, but I don’t think you realize that most people don’t care.”
“You’re wrong,” said Elliot.
“Someone comes home from a long day at the office, fires up the barbecue, kicks off their shoes, puts up their feet, looks out over the backyard at all the other backyards, and enjoys a nice, freezing cold glass of blush Zin from the fridge.
”
“Yeah?’
“Is that experience any less pleasurable than you’d have drinking a glass of . . . what was it . . . Dettori?”
“No. Yes. Dettori is a bad example.”
“Why?”
“Its simplicity is too complex.”
“I remember the look of pain on your face as you drank it.”
“Yeah?”
“You said it was beautiful.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t be a snob, Elliot. Maybe simple pleasures are the best of all.”
“Even if I agreed with you, which I don’t, what difference would it make?”
“You could irrigate, throw in a few oak chips, and make a nice Zin. With some of the other grapes it might even be a little different. And as the Grenache and Counoise get older, you could sell that fruit to some idealistic new guy in the ’hood.”
Elliot couldn’t think what to say. Bonnie needed to fill the silence.
“You’re chasing this thing that’s really of interest to very few people. Not that that’s not a noble thing, but unless you are doing it at its best . . . Rather than failing at doing something great, why not just do something good for a bunch of people? What is wrong with making a few dollars making people happy?”
“Put a Zebra on the label, call it ‘Zebra Zin’?”
“That’s actually pretty cool, Elliot.”
“It was Walt’s idea.”
“And you could always keep trying to make that wine you imagine on the side.”
“Like a hobby?”
“Exactly.”
“Bonnie, you’ve been so good to me over the years, so patient.”
“Thanks. Don’t put off looking for someone for too long. You were always a Canadian, Elliot, no matter how many years you spent down here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not an insult, Elliot. You cling to things, good things that aren’t working out, hoping they’ll get better. Americans are quicker to change to the winning team, they forget any allegiance they had to the old squad. I mean, don’t you still have a king?”
“A queen.”
“’Nuff said.”
The trick was to get the grapes from the vineyard to the winery quickly and with as little handling as possible. Not only were the Mexicans faster at picking the grapes than Elliot, their fleet hands did less damage. Each time Elliot looked up, the distance between him and the hired pickers had increased.
By the end of the first morning, Elliot’s soft hands were bloody and sore; his secateur-wielding right was now, in the midst of the first pass at the Grenache, numb and swollen. His lower back was rusted rebar. He dropped to his knees and leaned backward to stretch. The early-morning sun was low and honey coloured and special delivery to Locura Canyon. There was camphor on the wind and orange rind and sage in the dust. God had a tumultuous relationship with this land, shaking it, baking it, burning it, and then, because it was so damn sexy, so irresistible, kissing it.
The pickers started singing “La Adelita.”
En lo alto de la abrupta serranía
acampado se encontraba un regimiento
They’d seen Bonnie coming, bringing them water and coffee and sweet, sticky buns. They were having a bit of fun, as if Bonnie were Adelita, the revolutionary heroine of the song.
y una joven que valiente los seguía
locamente enamorada del sargento.
To bottle all this, thought Elliot.
Elliot had fallen asleep in his clothes. His cellphone was in his shirt pocket, which was bunched near his chin. The ringtone entered his dream: an alarm of some sort at the Broadcast Centre, and he couldn’t get Hazel to leave her desk because they would have to escape by means of a plunge into the atrium. The vibration, felt in his lips, he took for electrocution, which woke him with a start. He smelled burning toast. Jesus, was he having a stroke?
“Hello?”
“Elliot, it’s Walter.”
“Yes, Walter?”
“You watching TV?”
“I try not to.”
“Cops are trying to get into the Faranista compound, shots have been fired. There’s a tank coming now, with one of them dozer blades attached to the front. What do they call those things?”
“Trouble?”
“Guess so.”
“This is . . . Why is this . . .”
“No, I’m calling to remind you to check the temperature of the Cunny. It was getting hot.”
“Right.”
“I’ve found if you open the bay doors on the west of the building and the garage door we use for the tractor, air races right through the place, and tonight, where it’s so windy . . .”
Elliot heard a distant umph.
“. . . it shouldn’t take long. If it stays up over eighty-eight . . . Shit! There’s been some sort of explosion at their compound. It was just on television.”
“I sort of felt it here. At what temperature should I start to get alarmed?”
“Ninety. It’s like a horse, you’ve got to hold on. It’s alive, remember; it’s not a machine. I swear when the Grenache fermentation got stuck there two years ago it was because the yeasts committed suicide. You can take all the measurements you want, you’ve got to look in there and size it up. That’s why I prefer just opening and closing doors to any cooling process, it doesn’t . . . Uh-oh. Shots.”
“I hear something. Is that what that is? That’s gunfire?”
“That’s gunfire.”
“So, ninety degrees. I’m on it.”
“Call me back if there’s anything weird. I’ll be up watching this shit go down on TV.”
Elliot went to the garage. The tractor was an antique that Miguel somehow managed to keep going. It was parked alongside the vineyard’s one truck, a 1989 two-ton Ford that urgently needed to be replaced. If this was a hobby, it was sure an expensive one. How many people with whom he worked at the CBC had ever signed the front of a payroll cheque instead of the back? None, he guessed. There was no one to catch you if you fell here stateside. Maybe Bonnie was right — maybe Elliot’s wine dreams were a delusion. He could have sold the land high in the boom years — he’d bought it for nothing — but he’d hung on. This vintage was finally going to produce a terrific wine — but was it too late? Without Bonnie to run interference, would he be forced to throw himself at the mercy of the bank, let them have it all? He would sooner do that than sell to the General.
He opened the garage doors. It was blowing hard. The brittle leaves were rattling on the vines.
That was the American way: you strove. Despite the mythology, few made it. It was a tougher society than Canada’s; it was Darwinian. Was it any better in the end? Had it created any more? Maybe not. Canada was probably a “better” place, more humane. There was less excitement north of the 49th but there came a time when one had had enough excitement. He set out for the other side of the building.
At first the vats of fermenting Counoise had filled the building with bready aromas; tonight other perfumes were coming on, a mix of fresh and stewed raspberry and, indeed, violets.
The bay doors had been installed to facilitate shipping and deliveries, but they were rather larger than necessary. When they swung open, they developed a good momentum. The air was cooler here than inside the winery, but it was still a hot night. Elliot climbed onto the bottom rail of the big door and let it carry him for the last course of its arc.
So brightly illuminated was the Faranist compound it was visible to Elliot for the first time. It was like a Tuscan fortalice. It was closer than he’d thought, just two hilltops away. How far? A mile? He’d definitely thought it was farther.
Tackatackatackatacka. The terse spittle of gunfire. Nothing like the movies. Automatic weapon, repeating firing, a machine gun. How far would a bullet from one of those things travel? Was he in danger of being hit by a stray? The bullets of the rifles they used for hunting moose back in Newfoundland could travel more than two miles.
> He was startled by a pair of deer bounding out of the vineyard, doubtless driven by the noise at the Faranist redoubt. They disappeared into the darkness. Peering into the gloom, Elliot thought he saw more of them out in the vines. Something was moving around out there, but he couldn’t be sure. Coyotes?
He went back inside to check on the fermentation.
There was a steady burble inside the concrete vat. Bubbles were fighting through the floating cap of grape skins, but with less fervour than the day before. The stuff was giving off a powerful fresh-fruit smell; it was lip-smacking. The wine this year would be irresistible; sips of it would compel you to fill your cheeks to indulge completely in the taste. He loved this Counoise, even if it was from illegal root stock. The contents of the tank were at eighty-nine degrees. Wasn’t that, in effect, ninety? He heard another thud from the direction of the Faranist compound as he dialled Walt.
“I love this Counoise,” Elliot said.
“Holy fuck, Elliot, can you see what’s going on from there?”
“What’s going on?”
“The Bread Heads must have had a fuel storage tank or something buried outside because there was this . . . Shit, man, there’s another one. I think they’re blowing themselves up.”
“The Old Testament has that effect on people . . . Now the Counoise, I checked and it’s —”
“Elliot.”
“Yes, Walter.”
“They’ve started a pretty big fire down there.”
“It’s their apocalypse, they want to do it up right. You can’t have a modest, low-key apocalypse. It’s driven deer up here.”
“Go have a look and call me back.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Elliot took the stairs down to the winery’s main floor. The still distant prospect of what the blend might be was starting to excite Elliot the way it had Walter. In every vintage to date, the blend had been forced on them as a way of minimizing damage. Now, if the Mourvèdre came in as well as all the other varieties, they would be working with impeccable ingredients. There was temptation to fashion a tête du cuvée, a premium wine composed of the best lots. But this went against Elliot’s belief that it was somehow a cheat, or mere marketing or pretence, to produce anything other than a bottle labelled “red table wine.”