Love on Tap

by Karis Walsh

  And then what? Berit would fall in love with this area and want to stay forever? Tace sighed and accepted the inevitable. Berit would leave and Tace would stay. Once she sold the brewery and got back on her financial feet, she’d still have the mountains and hiking and solitude to help her through the boring workweeks. She’d show Berit around the town and the local area, but she didn’t need Berit’s presence imbued in the mountains where Tace sought peace, or she’d never find that peace again.

  “I should have told you about it. In the spring when it’s warmer, it’d be a nice place for you to study. There’s an aviary and some easy paths along the river.”

  Tace loved to sit in the park and read, but she’d always avoided it when she saw kids from Whitman there. She’d skirt around them, in their sweatshirts with Greek sorority or fraternity letters and their backpacks full of textbooks, and find a quiet corner. She’d been shocked today when she’d felt comfortable having Diana and her friends helping haul Berit’s boxes upstairs. She’d walked through Olin Hall—the first time she’d ever set foot in one of Whitman’s buildings—with an honest-to-God famous scholar and her students. She’d helped decorate a professor’s office, although putting out a few knickknacks hardly counted as decorating.

  She’d even delivered her first and only lecture on a college campus. Tace smiled to herself. She’d been able to see through Berit’s constant protests about how much she hated her teaching job. At first, Tace had been unsure if she was right about Berit’s reasons for being so upset by her lack of success in teaching, but then she’d watched as Berit listened to her and seemed to be realizing the truth in what Tace was saying. Berit really did care about the students and what they were learning from her.

  Why had Tace been able to understand what Berit was going through? She certainly didn’t have any experience with professors or higher education. Tace moved her shoulders against the driver’s seat as she felt an uncomfortable tightening in her shoulders. Maybe she’d understood Berit’s situation because she was feeling some of the same emotions as she walked through those quiet, carpeted halls. Tace had spent most of her life avoiding the campus and disliking the students and anyone associated with them. Was there any basis to her dismissal of the entire Whitman population? Or was she, like Berit, avoiding the fact that she really did see meaning in education and wished she’d had the chance to go someplace like Whitman? Sour grapes. Tace ran a hand over the nape of her neck, massaging the tense muscles. She didn’t mind telling Berit to face her true feelings, but she was uncomfortable doing the same thing herself.

  She should have been mortified when Diana recognized her from the store—and she would have been, if this had happened only a few weeks ago—but she hadn’t sensed any judgment from the students. Had it been there in the past, but wasn’t present in this particular case? Or had she always been so prepared to encounter condescension and judgment that she saw it even where it didn’t exist? Had the students changed, or had she? She was different now, or at least her situation was. She had ties to the college community through Berit and Joseph. She had a dream of her own, albeit a temporary and financial one, of turning her brewery into a profitable business.

  “Look at the field over there.” Berit broke Tace out of her ruminations and pointed out the passenger window at some rows of frilly plants. Waist high, the delicate green fronds had tinges of pastel shades of lilac, muted orange, and pinks. “How beautiful.”

  “Those are asparagus plants,” Tace said.

  Berit leaned toward the window as if trying to see better. “Do the asparagus stalks grow on the plants? I can’t see any.”

  Tace laughed. “No. The spears are the stalks of the plants. If they aren’t harvested and are allowed to go to seed, they look like these. During the spring and early summer, you’ll see fields full of single pieces of asparagus sticking out of the ground, like someone stuck them in the dirt one by one. It’s interesting to look at, but backbreaking if you have to harvest them.”

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” Berit said. She leaned back in her seat again. “Do you grow them in your garden?”

  Tace grimaced. “Not a chance. I love to eat asparagus, but I spent too many springs picking them for money. I’m still sore from all the bending.”

  “What other jobs have you had?”

  Tace thought back and tried to remember all of them. “I picked asparagus in the spring and berries in the summer. I was driving combines in the wheat and pea fields before I was old enough to get my license. I had to beg the farmers to hire me even though I was underage, but the money was great.”

  “It sounds like a dangerous job for a young kid. Aren’t those machines huge?”

  “Yes, and the hills in the fields can be steep. The combines are designed to be stable no matter how unleveled the terrain, but sometimes you’d get the angle wrong and they’d tip. Mostly, though, it was boring driving around in circles all day.”

  Berit reached over and caught Tace’s hand in hers. She turned it over and traced the lines on Tace’s palm. Tace thought her heart would pound right out of her rib cage at the tentative touch. “You don’t have calluses, so you must not do much farmwork anymore. My hands are rough from the tools I use in the field.”

  Tace rubbed her fingers over the calluses on Berit’s hand, and then gripped it with her own. “Be careful, or Whitman will make you soft. You’ll have hands like a baby after months holding nothing more than a pencil.”

  “Yet another reason to go,” Berit said, but her voice held more question than statement, and she replaced Tace’s hand on the steering wheel. “What else did you harvest?”

  Tace glanced over, wondering what Berit, with her degrees and her international career, was thinking about Tace’s farm-girl childhood. She was looking at Tace with an interested expression, probably studying her like a specimen of primitive human.

  “I’ve picked apples and pears on small farms, and I worked in the cornfields for a few years. I used to help harvest Walla Walla sweet onions every summer, too. I’d smell like an onion for weeks after, but no one noticed because even the air around town has the same odor during the peak of the season.” Tace paused and thought back to her youth. While most kids’ lives had revolved around the school year, hers had been tied to the seasons for harvesting and planting. “I had to start working in junior high to help my dad support me, Chris, and Kyle, and agricultural jobs were the highest paying. More interesting than any other work a kid could get, too.” More interesting than working at Drake’s. “I liked being in tune with the rhythms of the world around me. I hadn’t realized it until now, but I guess that’s why I got the idea to create four seasonal beers for the brewery. I’ve always been connected to local, seasonal produce whether through cooking on a tight budget or finding good-paying jobs.”

  Berit looked out the window again. “I never had that kind of experience, of being connected to the land around me. We usually ate food my mom brought home from the casino’s restaurant when I was a kid. And now I travel so much and I’m usually in such remote desert areas on digs that I eat more canned food than anything. Sometimes we’ll get fresh fruits and vegetables for a treat, but it depends on the country we’re in. I like trying the local cuisine whenever I get a chance, though. Mmm…”

  Berit paused, and when Tace glanced at her she saw the kind of dreamy smile on her face that good memories tended to cause.

  “I think the only time I really ate with the seasons was when I was in Greece with my grandfather,” Berit continued. “We’d have fresh-caught seafood with nothing but lemon on it. Yogurt that had just been made, mixed with honey straight from the hive and figs we picked moments before. I’ve never tasted anything so wonderful and…hey, look! Did we drive to Italy while I was talking?”

  Tace had been caught up in Berit’s story and hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going. She recognized what a revelation those trips to Greece must have been for a young girl who’d been raised ami
dst the artificiality of Las Vegas. A loving grandfather to introduce her to real food, the preserved and honored past, a connection to her own history and to the land where her ancestors had lived. Tace broke out of her reverie and saw what had captured Berit’s attention. A few acres of leafy vines followed the arch of a small hill. A driveway lined with wild roses led to a large stone building. Tace parked in the lot next to a garden area with ornate wrought-iron furniture where a clematis wove around a trellis, making a canopy of dusky green leaves and vivid purple blooms. The garden must be a riot of color in the spring, and even now in early fall it was still gorgeous.

  Tace got out of the car and looked around. She had been proud of the work she’d done around her brewery, reclaiming the land from the weeds and tall grass, but this place put hers to shame. How could she compete with this? She hadn’t even gone inside or tasted the wine yet, and already she had been captured by a spirit of elegance and permanence. She’d expect to pay a fortune for a bottle of wine here, and she had no doubt it would be worth it—all because of the atmosphere of the place. People coming to her brewery would be convinced her beer should cost a dollar a bottle, if her own landscaping was doing the selling. She was beginning to think this tasting trip wasn’t a good idea. She was already intimidated, and she hadn’t yet stepped inside.

  Berit seemed as thrilled by the winery as Tace was devastated. “I’ve read about Walla Walla being compared to Tuscany, but I thought it was a joke. This place really does look like vineyards I’ve seen in Italy.”

  Tace held the heavy wooden door open for her and they entered through it, out of the autumn warmth and into the air-conditioned coolness of the tasting room. The huge area had wine barrels and bunches of fake grapes everywhere. Photos of the wine-making process along with placards explaining them adorned the walls. Shelves were lined with things for sale—apparel, crackers and biscotti, bottles of wine. A large oak bar spanned the length of an entire wall, and about twenty tourists were standing in front of it, swishing and sipping from delicate, large-bowled wineglasses. Several elegantly dressed servers stood behind the bar and poured small amounts of wine at a time. Yeesh. Tace pictured herself and Joseph standing behind a card table with a keg and filling plastic cups with beer. Not quite the same effect.

  One of the servers noticed them and beckoned for Berit to come to one end of the bar so she was able to see behind it easily.

  “I’m Angela. Welcome to Campton Estate Winery. Our tasting is twenty dollars for three samples and a complimentary wineglass. If you’d like to try our reserve wines, those are ten dollars per sample.”

  Tace wasn’t sure how a twenty-dollar wineglass was supposed to be complimentary, but she handed Angela forty dollars. She was given a tiny sip of wine in a glass etched with the vineyard’s name. She’d pictured the drawing Joseph had done on a beer glass, but now she had serious doubts about the dreams she’d had.

  “This is our chardonnay,” Angela said. She handed them each a piece of paper with tasting notes, and Tace let the cool teaspoon of wine warm on her tongue while she read the notes. Damn it, she really did taste the fruit-forward pear and apple flavors and the lingering finish of oak and sweet vanilla.

  “Is this your first time at our vineyard?”

  “Yes,” Berit said. “This is delicious. I didn’t realize what high-quality wines this region produces.”

  “We’re quickly becoming a world-class wine region. Here’s our cabernet.”

  Tace swirled the wine in her glass. She had come here for research, not just to taste. She’d never before identified herself—either internally or to anyone else—as a serious brewery owner, but she had to start sometime. “I recently bought the Bike Trail Brewery, and I’m interested in having a tasting room on-site. I know we’d never be able to compete with the business you do at a place like this, but I’d appreciate any suggestions you might have for me.”

  “Move to Seattle?” Angela said it with a playful, questioning intonation, and a smile, but Tace felt the patronizing truth behind her words. “Seriously, this area draws wine connoisseurs from around the globe. They come here for the total experience of being immersed in an Old World atmosphere and drinking fine, European-style wines with five-star cuisine. Microbrews are more successful in larger cities in the Northwest. Portland, perhaps. Although I suppose you might find some customers in the college crowds. You can cater keggers.”

  She laughed and rinsed their glasses. “Our most popular wine is our merlot. It pairs well with most dishes, but my favorite is prime rib served with wild huckleberry glaze.”

  Tace drank the wine but didn’t really taste it. She was humiliated by Angela’s dismissal of her chances, but she really wasn’t saying anything Tace hadn’t already told herself. She thought about the fancy dish Angela had described. Tace had grown up cooking hamburger steaks with ketchup, so what did she know about sophisticated food and wine pairings?

  That’s not fair. She stopped her self-destructive line of thought while Angela wrapped their precious glasses in tissue paper. She had cooked plenty of meals as classy as prime rib. She thought of Joseph’s porter. If they tweaked the recipe and enhanced the mild toffee notes? Maybe added some juniper berries and coffee beans to the wort for a floral richness? She’d match it with Angela’s prime rib without hesitation.

  In her mind, at least. In reality, who would ever have a chance to try the combination she could almost picture on her tongue?

  “Here you go,” Angela said, handing Tace a gift bag with the Campton Estate label emblazoned on it. “Be sure to stop by our booth if you come to the balloon festival this weekend. We’re selling raffle tickets for a chance to win a trip to Napa Valley.”

  ❖

  “What a pretentious prig,” Berit said when they were back in the car. She seemed cheerful, though, and unaffected by Angela’s prediction of Tace’s failure. “What’s a balloon festival? Does someone walk around town making balloon animals for the kids?”

  “Speaking of pretentious. You have an amusingly low opinion of our town.” Tace was still feeling the shame from having her beer considered a lower class of beverage and her voice was sharper than she intended it to be. Berit hadn’t been the one to insult her craft. And when had she started to consider it her craft? She was only a surrogate, until a rich but foolish buyer could be found. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. The festival is for hot-air balloons, and people come from all over the country to fly here. I forgot it was this weekend, since it used to be in the spring. I think they changed it because there’s a better chance of good weather in October. I used to take Chris and Kyle every year.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Berit said, with a sort of wistful sound. Tace had a feeling she was about to be wrangled into driving Berit to the park for the festival.

  “Fun? Not really.” Tace remembered the stress of bundling two complaining kids onto their bikes and down to the fairgrounds every year. Kyle would complain about the early morning, and Chris would cry at every food stand until Tace bought her something to eat. Not exactly Tace’s idea of a good time. “It’s an amazing sight, though. All those brightly colored balloons lifting off the ground and floating away. They seem so light and graceful. Weightless.”

  Tace had stood at rapt attention until the balloons were out of sight, while two kids pulled on her arms and begged to go. “You know, Kyle hated getting up early, so I never could get there in time to see the pilots laying out the balloons and filling them. Chris whined about being cold or hot or hungry, depending on the moment. I always told myself I was going through the effort for them, and once they were out of the house I stopped going, but I was really the one who loved being there. I’ll take you if you want to go.”

  “I promise I’ll get up as early as you want, and you won’t hear a peep from me, no matter how cold or hot it is,” Berit said with a grin, and Tace had the sudden desire to be holding her hand again. “I’d love to go. Now, where’s the next winery? We still need to research these tasting rooms fo
r your brewery.”

  “Okay, but I’m done tasting. I’ll just be the designated driver from now on.” Maybe Tace could just sit in the car and wait for Berit. She didn’t have any desire to bring up the brewery again. Angela’s pronouncement had hurt, but Tace believed she was right. Beer had no place out here among the wineries. She could supply some kegs to local pubs and restaurants and hope to make a small profit over the cost of supplies and Joseph’s salary, but she shouldn’t dream beyond those boundaries. All she’d find on the other side would be disappointment.

  She pulled onto a driveway leading to yet another picture-perfect winery. “Back to the delightful world of Tuscany,” she said. And another step away from the reality of her life in Walla Walla.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Even after Berit had accompanied Tace to ten different wineries, she still hadn’t come close to feeling buzzed from the samples she’d consumed. She’d had the equivalent of perhaps a glass and a half of alcohol, but between them, they’d spent enough money to have bought twenty full bottles of decent wine. She had collected a mismatched assortment of glasses and had eaten a meal’s worth of crackers to cleanse her palate. Most important, she had managed to spend the afternoon not thinking about teaching classes.

  On the disquieting side, her mind had been consumed by Tace. She was constantly surprised by her. Tace’s observations about her hidden feelings for the job at Whitman were astute and probably correct—although Berit was avoiding any real contemplation of them until they had a few days to simmer inside her. The image of Tace riding a combine and working in fields was arousing and persistently in the front of her thoughts. Suntanned and strong, laboring in the elements just like Berit was used to doing on digs.