by J. C. Eaton
“Good question. Unlike mistakes that can happen at the wineries while the grapes are fermenting, this kind of loss depends on the contractual terms between the winery and the distributor. Bear in mind, wine distributors aren’t transport companies, so the laws differ. Usually, the loss is split and the insurance companies duke it out. And, by loss, I mean, the actual loss, no mark-ups. Would you like me to review your contractual terms?”
“Uh, that’s okay. I can pull up the information and call you if I have any questions. I guess I just wanted some reassurance our wines will be safe.”
“No one can give you that kind of reassurance, but I can tell you this much, our company takes its business seriously. Your losses are our losses.”
“Uh, yeah. About what you said a minute ago. Fermenting mistakes? I take it that means the winery is in deep you-know-what.”
“Hey, you didn’t hear this from me, but my boss tends to look at that type of thing differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“If a winery loses a substantial amount of its product, but not all of it, then they can jack up the prices to compensate. Nothing like creating one’s own supply and demand, according to him. Of course, we’re talking varietal, not blends.”
“Um, yeah. Right. By the way, the news said something about the stolen wines all being red wines. Was that because the truck carrying the wine only picked up cases of red wines? Or maybe the red wine cases were more easily accessible for the thieves?”
Miller paused for a moment and tapped his teeth. “I’m not sure about accessibility. The state police are delving into that. But I can tell you all four wineries involved in the incident loaded white and red varieties onto the truck.”
“Where do you think that stolen wine went?” I asked.
“My guess, and it’s only a guess, is black market distribution. Seedier outlets in the big cities. I do know the police are trying to track down the product. Unless someone alters the labels on the bottles, it shouldn’t be too hard. The year is on the label and we’ve only now started to move the products along.”
“What a nightmare.”
“It may seem that way, but it’s a small enough loss. It’ll be absorbed.”
“Like the lower compensation rates for selling our wine to your company for distribution? I only found out about that this week.”
If Miller Holtz was a dog, his haunches would be up. “Compensation rates depend upon the market. We’re not out to gouge our customers. Your success is our success.”
Put it on a T-shirt and call it a day. “I imagine that didn’t sit well with too many of your customers.”
Miller gave a quick nod. “I’ll admit, some of our long-standing customers were, well, shall we say, a tad upset, but they’re business people. They understand how prices are set. Right now, the safe transport and sale of your wines is all that matters.”
“I can’t argue with that. Er…maybe this is none of my business, but do you make a profit on the lower compensation rates?”
“Huh? NO! Absolutely not. I get paid on commission. Number of cases sold to our outlets—restaurants, bars, etc. The case rate does vary according to the wine, but the amount that wineries are paid by the distributor has no bearing on my salary. I’m the salesperson/wine representative, not the distributor. Think of me as the conduit between the winery and the consumer.”
“But it would result in more profit for your boss, wouldn’t it?”
“I can’t argue with you on that. Hey, speaking of my boss, I know for a fact he’ll be attending your event this weekend. Our office secretary told me she ordered two tickets for him, but chances are he’ll come alone.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, this may sound strange, but Arnold always buys an extra ticket in case a business opportunity presents itself.”
“That doesn’t sound as if it’s going to be much fun for him. It’s the party atmosphere everyone enjoys.”
“Arnold Mowen’s not attending this event for the atmosphere. It’s all business as far as he’s concerned. He likes these events because the huge crowds allow him to sample the wines inconspicuously. Later, when he makes his purchasing decisions, he’s one step ahead. Oh, and lest I forget, the man never shies away from gourmet food.”
“What does he look like?”
“Sixties. Rotund. Bald dome with white frizz around the edges. Double chin. Used to have a moustache but got rid of it a few years back. If I were you, and you do spot him, please don’t tell him we had this conversation.”
“I doubt I’ll see him. Unless his ticket lists Two Witches as his starting point, he’ll be swept up into the crowd. Attendees are assigned starting point wineries where they pick up their complimentary grapevine wreath and our recipe cookbook. If we didn’t do that, the crowds would be unmanageable and, worse yet, we’d have lots of downtime in between tastings.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah, the Seneca Lake Wine Association really organizes their events quite well. Anyway, thanks for driving over here. I know you must have a busy schedule.”
“Never too busy to meet with one of our customers. We’ll be in touch. Nice meeting you.”
“Likewise.”
Miller put on his coat and pulled the zipper up in one quick motion before leaving the office. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. He didn’t seem like a hustler and I never expected him to be so candid about his boss. What did strike me was how defensive he got when I asked about his commissions, although I probably did cross a line.
I stood and glanced out the window. It was a “teaser” snowfall, warning us that winter was a lot closer than we thought. Heavy snowfalls. Icy roads. Winds. White-outs. Power outages. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about running a winery. Then there was Miller’s cavalier attitude about the wineries absorbing their losses from that hijacking. Wasn’t he concerned that they would incur a loss, too? If I had to wager a guess, I’d say it was an inside job, but maybe Miller knew that all along.
Chapter 3
I promised Cammy I’d help with “Deck the Halls around the Lake” the next morning. Saturdays were notorious for drawing large crowds, and this one was almost a sell-out.
For all of us at the winery, it was going to be a busy day. The vineyard guys would do their winter pruning. The winemakers had a full schedule as well. Alan told me they were going to begin the final bottling of the barrel-aged Pinot Noir. They planned to start at seven. Yeesh. I planned to be viewing the inside of my eyelids at that ungodly hour. After all, Cammy didn’t need me until ten, when the first stampede arrived.
I got the rundown of delicacies that our neighboring wineries were serving. Honestly, if I didn’t have to help out, I would’ve made it a point to trot off to the different wineries and sample the stuff myself. Theo and Don from the Grey Egret were serving pork and chestnut in puff pastry with cranberry sauce. I told Theo to save three or four of them for me. In return, I’d let them taste our Pinot Noir truffles.
Stephanie Ipswich said she had a marvelous recipe for lemon shortbread cake. Rosalee Marbleton was sticking to one of her favorites—sun dried tomatoes and olives in phyllo baskets. I also got word there’d be artichoke and prawn canapes as well as beef tenderloin on black bread.
The time on my laptop read 11:22 p.m. and I could barely keep my eyes open. A Soft Breeze at Dawn would have to wait until I was done with this round of “Deck the Halls around the Lake.” Charlie was already spread across the bottom of my bed when I made it upstairs and pulled back the covers to get in. That was the last coherent thing I remembered doing before the sharp ring of the bedside phone disrupted my brain cells.
The room was pitch black and, except for a fuzzy digital clock a few feet away, I couldn’t see anything. My hand reached across the nightstand and I picked up the call. I couldn’t even recall how many times it rang but the caller sure did.
“Norrie, thank God you answered. I was going to hang up on the sixth ring.”
The voice sounded familiar, but nothing was registering. “Um, uh, what’s up?” And who are you?
“I’m at the winery. On my cell phone. This isn’t good. Franz is—”
“Oh my God! Dead? Franz is dead?”
Suddenly, it was as if I got jolted by a Taser. I was up, I was thinking, and I was panicked. The voice on the cell phone was Herbert’s, and he wouldn’t be calling me at seven in the morning to pontificate on the nuances of fermentation.
“Whoa. What? Dead? No, no, he’s fine. Well, not fine. I think he’s having a breakdown. Alan isn’t doing so well, either. It’s the Pinot Noir…the barrel…it’s been—oh, heck, Norrie, you need to get down here. And it’s freezing. Wear an extra sweater or something.”
The call ended before I could say another word. I grabbed the first sweatshirt I could find in my chest of drawers. After a record-time shower, I tossed on jeans and my ski jacket. There was plenty of water in Charlie’s bowl, so I poured out some kibble, snatched my keys from the counter, and raced to my car. Herbert was right. It was cold—cold enough for my car to turn over slowly. Forget about the heater—I’d be down the driveway and at the winery before it came on.
It was a good hour away from sunrise, but there was ample outdoor lighting at the back of the winery building, where some of our stainless steel and oak barrels were kept. As I approached the concrete slab that housed the barrels, I heard Franz spewing out the same word over and over again—catastrophe. Herbert motioned for me to come closer, but there was no sign of Alan.
I walked past two of the stainless steel barrels and stood directly in front of Franz, who was holding a wineglass in his hand. In the shadowy light, he looked like one of those silhouettes on the cover of a crime magazine.
“What happened?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“It’s a disaster. A catastrophe.” He kept shaking his head, swirling the red liquid around in his wineglass. “Smell this.” He thrust the glass at me. “The Pinot Noir’s been tampered with. The oak-aged Pinot Noir. Ruined. Utterly destroyed.”
Herbert, thankfully, positioned himself closer to one of the outdoor building lights so I could see him. He rubbed his hands together and cleared his throat. “Alan’s in the lab now, testing a sample. It shouldn’t take him very long.”
“How did this—I mean, when did this—oh hell! Does this mean all the cases of wine already bottled are destroyed too?”
And no, Miller, this cannot be “absorbed.”
Franz inhaled and exhaled at least three times before he spoke. “We’re fanatic about testing the wine. Everything we bottled was fine. Once we start the process, the barrels are under tight supervision. We finished yesterday at a little past four. After that, we cleaned the bottling machine and closed up. Whoever sabotaged our wine must’ve gotten to the barrel after we left for the day.”
I looked at the other barrels on the concrete slab and felt momentarily numb. “Um, did you check the other outdoor barrels?”
“We did,” Herbert said. “They’re fine. No sign of tampering. Only the one oak barrel with the remaining Pinot Noir was tainted.”
“I thought we set up security cameras and an alarm system.”
Franz, who finally managed to breathe normally, pointed to the edge of the roof. “We do. The alarm system was functioning perfectly when we arrived at six thirty. But look closely at the security camera on the roof’s overhang. Either yesterday’s wind dislodged it, or someone knew exactly what they were doing. They could have easily hugged the building without being caught on camera, using a pole or something to knock it out of kilter. This was no accident. This was sabotage.”
“I don’t think the choice of barrels was any accident, either,” Herbert said. “The oak-aged Pinot Noir carries a much heftier price tag than the others.”
“A heftier price tag for a superb vintage,” Franz added, “much of it lost.”
“Um, I don’t suppose you know how many gallons of wine that was, do you? Or how that translates into bottles? I mean, some of our oak-aged wine was already bottled so those are okay, right?”
I was desperate to get the answer I wanted. And terrified I wouldn’t.
“It’s relatively easy to calculate,” Herbert said. “Our oak barrel was standard size—two hundred twenty-five liters or approximately fifty-nine gallons. With the standard seven hundred fifty ml bottles, that equals three hundred bottles or twenty-five cases. I’ll pull up the bottling information, do a little subtraction, and let you know the damage. I was planning on getting that information to Franz when we were done here.”
“As I said earlier,” Franz added, “the wines we’ve already bottled are all right.”
Unless they’re doomed for the black market, like those on the east side of the lake.
“We might as well go inside,” he said. “My hands are getting numb, and there’s nothing more to do out here. We’ll need to dispose of the tainted wine and thoroughly prepare the barrel for future use.”
The three of us walked inside the winery building, past the lab and barrel room, to the small office that the winemakers shared. I caught a glimpse of Alan’s back as we moved along the corridor. He was hunched over a table that reminded me of my eleventh-grade chemistry class.
“Alan shouldn’t be too much longer,” Franz said. “He’ll be able to discern what the vandals used to destroy our wine.”
I plunked myself at Alan’s desk, since he was still in the lab. Herbert walked over to their coffeemaker and asked if I wanted a cup.
“Make it a gallon. It’s not even eight and this is going to be one long hell of a day.” From the small window across the room, I could see hints of daylight on the horizon. Black had turned to murky grey, and the sky matched my mood. “So, both of you agree this was sabotage and not something that inadvertently happened to our wine while it was, well, you know, aging and all that.”
“Trust me. It was sabotage,” Franz said. “Wine doesn’t simply spoil on its own.”
No sooner did he utter those words when Alan walked into the room and gave me a nod. He looked as if he had just buried his childhood dog. “Calcium carbonate. Someone knew what they were doing, all right. Not an amateur. They poured enough of the stuff in the barrel to ensure the wine would be undrinkable.”
“Poured it how?”
“Easily, I’m afraid. All they had to do was pull the plug on the bung hole and pour in the chemical.”
“That knob on the top?”
“Yeah, it has an official name. Along with chimes, hoops, and staves. I’ll save that for another time.”
I bit my lower lip and stared at the Keurig. No amount of coffee was going to set this day right. “So…sabotage. That’s a crime—no different than if someone broke into our tasting room and made off with our goods.”
Franz alternated between rubbing his hands and his chin. For a moment, I was afraid he’d develop a tic. “A crime, yes. And a catastrophe.”
“And a call to the sheriff’s department. That’ll be another catastrophe if they send Deputy Hickman. He and I aren’t always on the best of terms,” I said.
That was a diplomatic way of me saying the deputy thought I was a meddlesome busybody who got in the way of his murder investigations. In fairness, he was partially right. I did do a bit of sleuthing on my own, but even he had to admit I wound up identifying the killers in two recent murders.
I dug in the pocket of my jeans for my cell phone and suddenly stopped. “Uh, I need to make another call. I have a hunch about something, but I sure hope I’m wrong.”
Herbert handed me a hot cup of coffee with a splash of cream. “I’m going to log into my computer and see exactly how many cases of the oak-aged Pinot Noir we bottled. Easier than traipsing over to the barn to start counting.”
Don answered my call on the second ring. “I’ve heard of early starts for ‘Deck the Halls around the Lake,’ but this is ridiculous. What’s up?”
“Our Pinot Noir’s been tampered with. Someone put—hold on a second.” I shouted to the winemakers, “What was that chemical? Calcium something?”
“Carbonate!” they all answered at once.
“Did you hear that? Someone put calcium carbonate in the oak barrel we used for aging our Pinot Noir. We bottled some of it earlier in the week and it was fine, but sometime yesterday someone put that stuff in the barrel and now the rest of our wine is useless. The stainless steel barrels are fine. The winemakers checked. Those things are enormous. Too hard to tamper with, I suppose, but the oak barrels are smaller and, oh my gosh, I really called to tell you and Theo to check your barrels. You have wine aging in oak barrels outside, don’t you? My God, I’m rambling on.”
“Take a breath, Norrie, and try to calm down. You said only one barrel was tampered with?”
“Uh-huh. The Pinot Noir. The oak-aged Pinot Noir, not the stuff with those flavored chips. Herbert’s going to figure out exactly how much wine was left in the barrel. Oh, geez, I’ll have to call the insurance company, won’t I? I know we’re covered for all sorts of farming accidents and product loss due to natural disasters, but this is an out-and-out crime. Oh, yikes. I’ve got to call the sheriff. I just wanted to make sure you and Theo check your barrels.”
“We’ll get right on it. Listen, call the sheriff and alert him. One of us will stop over as soon as we can, okay?”