by Maria Duenas
Soledad broke the hush.
“Shall we go inside?”
“Yes, forgive me, of course.”
Wake up you fool, he reproached himself as he ushered her through the dark wooden door, wiping his hands on the sides of his trousers in a futile gesture. Watch your manners: you may shun the society of humans, but you don’t want her to think you’ve turned in to a wild beast.
Inside the winery they were enveloped by a fragrant gloom that made her close her eyes and take a deep, nostalgia-filled breath. Grapes, wood, the promise of a full-bodied wine. As she did so, he took the opportunity to contemplate her fleetingly. There she stood, the being who had walked into his life on a fall morning, and whom he had thought he would never see again, now reencountering the smells and sights of the world in which she grew up.
They started to stroll amid the cool darkness, down long aisles flanked with wine barrels. The thick whitewashed walls kept the midmorning heat at bay; patches of mildew close to the floor revealed the never-ending humidity of the place.
They exchanged a few pleasantries as they walked over the wet yellow ground, aware of the muffled sounds of ceaseless activity around them. We’re lucky it hasn’t rained so far. We had a terrible heat wave in London in July. Your grandfather’s vines are promising a fine vintage this year. Until they both ran out of things to say, and he peered down at the beaten earth floor, scuffing it with the tip of his boot.
He said at last: “Why did you come back, Soledad?”
“To propose that we join forces once more.”
They came to a halt.
“The English market is being swamped with outrageous competence. Sherry from Australia, Italy, even from the Cape, for God’s sake,” she added. “Real sherry substitutes that are discrediting our Spanish wines and wrecking our business; it is downright intolerable.”
Mauro Larrea leaned against one of the old black-painted barrels and folded his arms across his chest. With the composure of someone who had thought all was lost. With the patient longing of someone who glimpses a crack of light through a shutter he thought had been closed forever.
“And where do I come into this?”
“Now that you’ve decided to become a bodeguero, you are part of this world. And when a war breaks out, we all need allies. That’s why I came: to suggest we fight together.”
A shudder ran down his spine. She wanted them to be accomplices again—partners—each bringing the weapons they had to the fray. She with her strong intuition, he with his few certainties, to overcome, side by side, future challenges, future hurdles.
“I hear that the postal service between here and Great Britain is excellent. It must be because we are so close to Gibraltar, I imagine.”
She blinked at him, puzzled.
“I mean, if you wanted to propose a business deal with me, you could have done so by mail.”
Soledad reached out a hand toward one of the barrels and his eyes followed it. She ran her fingers over it absentmindedly, gathering her strength until finally she was ready to reveal her truth in all its particulars.
“God only knows I’ve struggled hard with myself all these months to get you out of my head. And out of my heart.”
At the overseer’s harsh shout, the men working inside the winery gave a loud sigh of relief and stopped their toil: time for lunch and to wipe away the sweat, give their muscles a rest. What Soledad said next was largely lost amid the noise of tools being laid aside and the voices of the hungry men as they passed nearby.
Only a few words remained floating in the air amid the fragrant motes of old wine and fresh must. But enough for him to catch: Me with you here, you with me there.
And thus, among the towering racks of wine barrels, an enduring alliance was forged. What Mauro Larrea then told her, and how she replied, would soon become apparent in a future filled with comings and goings, and on the subsequent labels adorning the bottles that from that same month of September were to leave the winery year after year bearing the words Montalvo & Larrea, Fine Sherry. Contained inside was the essence of the fruit of that pale southern earth bathed in sunlight and tempered by a westerly breeze, mingled with the passionate tenacity of an emigrant forced to cross the ocean twice and a heiress in dire circumstances who reinvented herself as a merchant.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In an enterprise that crosses an ocean, travels in time, and delves into worlds with profoundly different local essences—most of which have ceased to exist—many people have lent me a helping hand in recreating elements of the past as well as ensuring language, setting, and plot accuracy and credibility.
In keeping with the geographical order of the novel itself, I would like first to extend my gratitude to Gabriel Sandoval, director of Planeta Mexico, for his prompt and generous assistance; to the editor Carmina Rufrancos, for her knowledge of dialect; to the historian Alejandro Rosas, for his documentary precision; and also to Fernando Macotela, director of the Book Fair at the former Palacio de Minería in Mexico DF, for allowing me free access to every part of that magnificent neoclassical building where Mauro Larrea one day set foot.
For revising the chapters set in Cuba with his acute eye and nostalgic sense of the old Havana, I wish to thank Carlos Verdecia, veteran journalist and former director of El Nuevo Herald in Miami, currently a collaborator on literary projects that I hope will bear fruit one day. I also thank my colleague Gema Sánchez, professor in the Department of Modern Languages at Miami University, for helping me to access the archives of the Cuban Heritage Foundation—and for inviting me to eat mahimahi in the balmy south Florida night.
Crossing the Atlantic, I would like to express my gratitude to Professors Alberto Ramos Santana and Javier Maldonado Rosso of Cádiz University, specialists in the history of the Jerez wine and sherry trade, for their wonderful research on the subject, and for agreeing to let me fire a thousand questions at them; and also to my friend Ana Bocanegra, publishing director at the same university, for facilitating the meeting with them over a feast of sea urchins and prawn omelet.
Venturing into the universe that perhaps once encircled the Montalvo family, I should like to extend my gratitude to a handful of people from Jerez who are connected to those mythical nineteenth-century winegrowers: Fátima Ruiz de Lassaletta; Begoña García González-Gordon, for her infectious enthusiasm and her wealth of detail; Manuel Domecq Zurita and Carmen López de Solé, for their hospitality at the splendid Camporreal palace; Almudena Domecq Bohórquez, for taking us around the vineyards that could very well have been home to La Templanza; Begoña Morello, for tracing literary journeys and keeping secrets; David Frasier-Luckie, for letting me imagine that his beautiful house belonged to Soledad, and for allowing us to intrude on it repeatedly. And a very special thanks to two people without whose help and collaboration the Jerez connection would have lost much of its magic: Mauricio González-Gordon, chairman of González-Byass, for welcoming us to his legendary vineyard both singly and en masse, for having agreed to be master of ceremonies at our first coming out in society, and for his wonderful kindness; and Paloma Cervilla, for enthusiastically arranging these meetings, and for showing me with her generous discretion that friendship comes before journalistic zeal.
Beyond these personal contacts, I have immersed myself in many written works and extracted both sweeping portraits and minute details with which to give the narrative its flavor. Por las calles del Viejo Jerez, by Antonio Mariscal Trujillo; El Jerez de los bodegueros, by Francisco Bejarano; El Jerez, hacedor de cultura, by Carmen Borrego Plá; Casas y Palacios de Jerez de la Frontera, by Ricarda López; La viña, la bodega y el viento, by Jesús Rodríguez; and El Cádiz romántico, by Alfredo González Troyano. Two classics on the subject of sherry’s remarkable international success have been essential to me: Sherry, by Julian Jeffs, and Jerez-Xérez-“Sherish,” by Manuel María González Gordon. I must also mention José Manuel Caballero Bonald,
the great writer from Jerez, and the evocations he traces with his magisterial prose—a delight for any reader. For their descriptions of atmospheres and settings viewed through female eyes, as avid (and almost as foreign) as my own, I must mention four volumes filled with wit and sensitivity, penned by four women from another era, who, like me, found themselves seduced by other enticing worlds: Life in Mexico, 1843, by Francis Erskine Inglis, Marquess of Calderón de la Barca; Viaje a La Habana, by Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, Countess of Merlín; Headless Angel, by Vicki Baum; and The Summer of the Spanish Woman, by Catherine Gaskin. Although I may inadvertently have overlooked mentioning some titles here, all are very much present.
Returning to reality, a nod as always goes to my family—those who are still with me in the day-to-day, as well as those who left our side while I was writing this novel, leaving a huge gap in our lives that we will never be able to fill. A nod is due also to the friends who accompanied me to various places during the writing; those who applauded when the corks popped; and all those whose names, backgrounds, or ways of looking at life I have borrowed to transplant them into my characters.
I am grateful to Antonia Kerrigan, who is already threatening to convert half the world’s readers into aficionados of the Jerez vintages, and to the wonderfully capable staff at her literary agency.
I find myself ending these acknowledgments only a few days after the departure of José Manuel Lara Bosch, chairman of the Planeta group, without whose vision and tenacity this novel might never have reached the bookshops—or, if it had, it might have arrived in a radically different way. In his memory, and to all those he trusted for nurturing hundreds of authors and their works, I extend my deepest gratitude. To the new editorial team who are looking after me: Jesús Badenes, Carlos Revés, Belén Lopez, Raquel Gisbert, and Lola Gulias, I say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kindness and immense professionalism. Over the telephone, in daily emails, beneath the morning light in Plaza de la Paja, in your offices in Madrid and Barcelona, during walks through Cádiz, Jerez, and Mexico City—even late at night in the wonderful night spots of Guadalajara—you have always been accessible, solid, dependable. Thanks to my splendid press officers Isa Santos and Laura Franch, for once again having turned what could have been an exhausting promotional tour into something more akin to a pleasure trip; to the magnificent design and marketing teams; to the sales networks with whom I shared a few surprises; to the painter Merche Gaspar for bringing to life Mauro Larrea and Soledad Montalvo with her wonderful watercolor.
To all my readers in Mexico, Havana, Jerez, and Cádiz who are so familiar with all the settings around which I have woven my tale, I express the hope that you will forgive the small artistic licenses and liberties I allowed myself for aesthetic purposes and in order to make the narrative flow.
Thanks to the magnificent Atria Books team, led by their wonderful captain, Judith Curr, for their enthusiasm and support for my novel: Paul Olsewski, Suzanne Donahue, Mirtha Peña, Melanie Iglesias Pérez, and the fantastic sales team; and to my editor, Johanna Castillo, Atria’s Latina force.
And, finally, thanks to all those in any way associated with mining and wine-making. Despite being a fiction from start to finish, this novel aims to pay sincere homage to the miners and wine-makers, small and large, of yesteryear and of today.
An Atria Reading Group Guide
The Vineyard
María Dueñas
This reading group guide for The Vineyard includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
INTRODUCTION
Mauro Larrea sees the fortune that he built after years of hardship and toil come crashing down on the heels of a calamitous event. Swamped by debts and uncertainty, he gambles the last of his money in a daring move that offers him the opportunity to regain his fortune. But when the unsettling Soledad Montalvo (Claydon by marriage), wife of a London wine merchant, comes into his life, her passionate intensity lures him toward an unanticipated future.
The Vineyard spans the diverse worlds of the young Mexican republic to magnificent colonial Havana, from the West Indies to the Jerez of the second half of the nineteenth century, when its wine trade with England turned the Andalusian city into a legendary cosmopolitan enclave. Replete with glories and defeats, with silver mines, family intrigues, vineyards, and splendid places whose grandeur faded with time, it is a story of resilience in the face of adversity, of a life forever altered by the force of passion.
TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How would you describe Mauro Larrea? How did his character change or stay the same throughout the novel?
2. Mauro travels from Mexico City to Havana to Jerez, but the events leading up to his arrival at La Templanza and meeting Soledad Montalvo are catalyzed by setbacks relating to the Civil War in the United States. How might Mauro’s and Soledad’s lives have unfolded without the circumstances that brought them together? How does Mauro’s journey show how interconnected the world was even then?
3. Tadeo Carrús built his wealth from the tribulations of others. How does this reflect Mexico’s sociopolitical climate during that time? How does it expose the way business was conducted in the young republic?
4. Gambling is prevalent throughout the novel when it comes to securing or regaining fortunes, regardless of whether they were inherited or earned. Name some instances of this in the novel. How does it work out for the characters in each situation? How does it alter the course of their lives?
5. Contemplate the tragedy that struck the Montalvos, and how severely it threw every member of the family off the paths they thought their lives would take. How would their lives have unfolded if young Matías hadn’t been killed? What path might Mauro’s life have taken if he hadn’t encountered Carola and Gustavo under those circumstances in Cuba?
6. Young love never ripened for Inés Montalvo and Manuel Ysasi nor for Soledad Montalvo and Gustavo Zayas—partly due to the introduction of Edward Claydon, but completely imploding after tragedy struck the heart of the Montalvo family. How did love’s misfortunes shape each of these characters? How did it alter their world?
7. After casting aside Manuel Ysasi in favor of Edward Claydon, then being spurned by Edward in favor of her sister Soledad, Inés chooses to take the veil and eventually assume the name Mother Constanza. Why do you think she chose that path? Why did she isolate herself completely from the surviving members of her family?
8. In spite of everything, Gustavo Zayas kept the family secret and suffered in silence in Cuba. What kind of life might he have led if he had told the truth or had the strength to return to La Templanza when he first learned he’d inherited his childhood home?
9. Soledad Montalvo and Carola Gorostiza are women whose fates are tied to their husbands, neither of whom can be trusted to look after the best interests of their wives anymore. Compare the actions Soledad and Carola have taken to secure their future by acting on their husband’s behalf or without their knowledge. How did each handle the situation? What was the outcome for each? Can either be blamed for her actions, especially at the end of the nineteenth century?
10. Though Mauro is furious with his son when he tells his father of his plans for the future, Nicolás Larrea is seeking to leave a mark on the world in his own way. Compare Nicolás; our perception of him through his father’s eyes at the beginning to when we meet him for ourselves; and Soledad’s stepson, Alan Claydon. How does Alan view the world and what it and his father “owe” him?
11. Mauro and Soledad are each thrust into chaotic situations by forces outside their control, triggered by business decisions they made—Mauro to expand his business and Soledad to secure her daughters’ futures. Each of them handles the events that
unfold in their own way. What do their actions reveal about who they are, how they’ve come up in the world, and how they’ve fought to retain what position and power they have? How do they complement each other?
12. In the end, Mauro and Soledad finally come together. Compare Mauro’s and Soledad’s pasts leading up to this point. Could they have joined at a different time in their lives? How did their experiences bring them together now?
ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB
1. Soledad Montalvo joins the ranks of female protagonists like Bathsheba Everdene in Far from the Madding Crowd and Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Read these two books with your book club and compare their protagonists and the settings in which they are determined to thrive.
2. Tour a local vineyard or attend a wine tasting with your book club as you discuss The Vineyard. Sample some sherry from Jerez, if possible.
3. To learn more about María Dueñas and her books, read reviews, find her on tour, and become a fan of her Simon & Schuster author page at SimonandSchuster.com/authors/Maria-Duenas. You can also follower her on social media or register for updates (in Spanish) on her website: MariaDuenas.es.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARÍA DUEÑAS holds a PhD in English philology. After two decades dedicated to academics, she broke onto the literary scene in 2009 with the publication of the New York Times bestselling novel The Time In Between, followed by The Heart Has Its Reasons in 2012. Both novels became international bestsellers and have been translated into thirty-five languages. The television adaptation of The Time In Between earned critical and international acclaim. The Vineyard is her third novel.