Vintage

by Olivia Darling

Making love to Greg—her first lover since the divorce—felt like the end of something. The end of her attachment to her perfect Hollywood marriage perhaps? But it felt like a beginning too.

  CHAPTER 41

  It was September, and Kelly Elson’s second harvest at Froggy Bottom was a rather different affair than her first. This time the friends who turned up for the Froggy Bottom Fandango, as it had become known, were well briefed in the duties they would be expected to perform before the party started. Tents were set up in the bottom field, equipped with proper camp beds so that, when they were able to sleep, the workers would be able to sleep properly. A Portaloo was placed in the vineyard. Kelly and Hilarian drove to the nearest cash-and-carry and loaded Hilarian’s Land Rover with enough food and tea bags to keep an army going.

  This time the harvest went like clockwork and the after-party was all the better since it felt as though everyone involved really deserved to cut loose.

  As she busied herself around the farm, making sure that everyone was comfortable, well fed and, most importantly, pulling his or her weight, Kelly reflected on a year that had changed her life. She certainly looked different. The hairdo was long gone. As were the clubbing clothes. Kelly had given up the war paint and the acrylic nails. She had given up on the hair-straighteners too. Her hair had lightened naturally after a summer spent working in the vineyards. It fell to her shoulders in loose waves.

  It wasn’t just the way Kelly looked that had changed. Ironically, the thing that had frightened her most, the thought of going back to school to learn about winemaking, had given her the most enormous confidence boost. Those frightening-looking books that Hilarian had ordered from Amazon turned out to contain whole chapters that Kelly could understand already based on her experiences at Froggy Bottom. The residential course at UC Davis itself added a whole new dimension, not least because it was Kelly’s first-ever trip overseas.

  The idea of flying to the States alone was terrifying. Guy drove Kelly to Heathrow and practically marched her to the check-in desk. For eleven long transatlantic hours Kelly gripped the armrest of her seat. And then there was the prospect of the university itself…

  Even as she finally found herself standing outside the classroom, she considered that she might have made a big mistake.

  Her class was a real mix. Many of the people in the lecture were quite a bit older. “Second-lifers” as they referred to themselves, they had given up lucrative jobs in the financial or media industries to become boutique farmers.

  At the first session the tutor asked everyone to introduce themselves and talk a little about their vineyards. They weren’t all local to California. There were winemakers from Oregon, the East Coast, wealthy retirees planning estates in Italy or South Africa.

  “Think we’ve just about covered the world,” said the tutor. “Anybody who hasn’t introduced themselves yet?”

  “I’m Kelly from Froggy Bottom, England,” raised a laugh and several eyebrows.

  “Can you grow grapes in England?” someone asked archly.

  “Doesn’t it always rain there?”

  “Actually,” Kelly piped up, “we grow very good grapes. At Froggy Bottom we have pinot noir and small plantings of chardonnay and pinot meunier.” She said it perfectly this time. “The terroir is similar to that of the champagne region in France.”

  “Exactly,” said the tutor. “Which is why all the big French houses are buying up land in the south of England. Welcome to the United States, Kelly.”

  It was an odd feeling. There was no sense whatsoever that anyone on the course thought that Kelly shouldn’t be there alongside them. She could follow everything the tutor said and as the week progressed, she surprised herself by asking a question that prompted the tutor to say, “That’s a very good point, Kelly. I’m glad you brought it up.” Kelly was almost too shocked to hear his answer. She was so used to teachers barking, “If you’d been listening you wouldn’t have to ask.”

  By the time the course was over, Kelly’s confidence had grown so much that she might have flown home on her own wings.

  Back in England, Kelly continued to take her wine studies very seriously indeed. She gave up smoking weed. Or smoking anything at all, for that matter.

  “My sense of taste is much too important to me,” she explained to Gina.

  Hilarian approved. Kelly had all but decimated Dougal’s cellar and so he was determined that what remained would be properly appreciated. He insisted that Kelly attend every tasting he hosted, and Kelly was surprised to discover that she really could tell her sauvignon blanc from her chardonnay. Not only that, she could pin down not only the varietal but also the vintage and the vineyard almost as often as Hilarian could.

  Her palate had become so refined that Hilarian decided that this year Kelly would be allowed to give her opinion on the blending of Froggy Bottom’s latest vintage. Guy agreed without hesitation.

  And so the three of them sat down around a portable picnic table in the winery one afternoon and tasted still wine straight from the barrels and when Kelly spoke, everybody listened.

  Kelly had also come to appreciate the place where she lived in a very different way. Sunday afternoons that would have been spent lolling around the house in semi-darkness, smoking weed and listening to the kind of music that defied the word were long gone. Now Kelly was just as likely to be found taking a walk through the fields. And, in her very own pair of Hunter wellies (a birthday present from Guy), it no longer mattered to her if it was raining or the fields were full of mud.

  Hilarian came out to the farm as often as he could. One Sunday afternoon, while Guy was up in London visiting a South African friend in the UK on holiday, Hilarian turned up to take Kelly for lunch at the pub. And after lunch, a walk.

  “Need to watch my waistline,” said Hilarian, patting his ample stomach. It was a long time since Hilarian had seen his own feet.

  Kelly was in a good mood. She was much better company than she had been. She talked knowledgeably about Hilarian’s latest column in Vinifera.

  “That Odile Levert, though.” Kelly whistled through her teeth. “Such a snob.”

  Hilarian smiled. “She has her opinions but she’s a very fine woman.”

  After that, they talked a bit about how Kelly was getting on with her studies. She had lots of questions for Hilarian regarding the subject of her dissertation. Faced with a barrage of technical terms, Hilarian had to admit defeat.

  “In my day, people didn’t do all these exams. I got into wine the old-fashioned way.”

  “By getting drunk every night?”

  Hilarian shrugged. “It takes a long time to develop a palate like mine. I took my studies very seriously indeed.”

  “Ha-ha. I never quite know whether you’re joking or not,” Kelly observed. “In fact, I don’t know a lot about you, full stop.”

  Hilarian shook his head. “Not a lot to know,” he said.

  “I don’t believe it. Come on, Hilarian. Spill the beans. I know you were married once. What was the story? I want you to tell me everything.”

  Hilarian’s story? It wasn’t a happy one.

  It had been once. He’d had a wife and a child. They’d been the center of his world. His beautiful wife, Jenny, and their daughter, Helena. And then he lost them.

  Hilarian knew that people thought he was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. He was, luckily, an affable drunk and not a maudlin one. And fortunately, most people didn’t ask about his past anymore. For perhaps two years after the crash, he caught the pitying glances. People asked if he was OK and watched closely when he was tasting to see how much he swallowed. But after that, things went back to normal. Old rivalries were resumed. It was because he had married again. People thought that had fixed it. Little did they know.

  His second wife, Amanda, had been a receptionist at Mackesy’s, the wine merchants. She was the archetypal Sloane Ranger. At twenty-seven, she dressed just like her mother. A velvet Alice band held her medium-brown hair off her face. She wore
pearls during the day, discreet diamond studs at night. They were from the same stock, Amanda and Hilarian. Her people knew his people. In the eyes of everyone else, she was a worthy successor to Jenny and when she bore him a son and then another, Hilarian knew he was supposed to be fully healed. But he wasn’t.

  And eventually Amanda realized that despite what she saw as her heroic efforts to make his life better, Hilarian wasn’t getting any happier.

  His daughter, Helena, would have been thirty this year. Perhaps she would even have been a mother herself by now. Hilarian often wondered what she would have been like. His two sons were so much like Amanda and so little like himself that occasionally he wondered whether they were his at all. But if Helena had turned out like her mother, that would have been just fine.

  From time to time, he also asked himself whether he would have been a good father to a girl. That afternoon, with Kelly, he thought perhaps he might not have been so bad after all.

  “So,” Kelly pressed him, “are you going to tell me all about your misspent youth or not?”

  Not, Hilarian decided. At least, not yet. Kelly would get the abridged version for now. Hilarian had her in stitches while describing Estranged Amanda.

  “I am so happy here,” Kelly confided in him when they got back to the farmhouse. “I feel like everything in my life is going right.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Life felt pretty good for Madeleine too. Having made a definite decision to throw herself into life in Champagne, Madeleine felt strangely relieved and relaxed. Her promotional trip to London had paid off in a fantastic way. Waitrose markets were stocking her father’s last non-vintage Brut. The best of Britain’s wine merchants were eagerly awaiting Madeleine’s own first Clos Des Larmes.

  Meanwhile, Madeleine was finding other ways to make money from the mess her father had left to her. She decided to open the maison to private parties. She made useful contacts in the best of the local hotels. They sent their guests in her direction and before long she found she was entertaining a couple of groups a week, taking them on an exclusive tour of the house and the chalk caves beneath, explaining every step of the champagne production process as they went.

  The processes that she took for granted fascinated Madeleine’s guests. Riddling or “remuage” is the process by which sediment is removed from bottles of champagne. It’s said to have been perfected by la Veuve Clicquot herself. The champagne bottles are placed into holes in a wooden frame that holds dozens at a time. Over the course of weeks, the bottles are taken from the horizontal to the vertical, upside down, in a series of tiny adjustments. Slowly, slowly, so that all the sediment gathers in the neck of the bottle, forming a plug, which is carefully removed before the cork is put in. Like most of the houses in Champagne, Arsenault had been using mechanized riddling pallets for years, but a couple of old riddling frames remained in the crayères and now Madeleine pressed them into service.

  She had been taught how to riddle the bottles by her grandmother. It didn’t take much practice before the technique came back to her. Her guests were amazed by the speed with which she worked.

  “You should have seen my grandmother,” Madeleine told them. “She could turn ten thousand bottles in a day.”

  The crowd was suitably awed.

  “But that was nothing compared to some of the top riddlers in the big houses. Sixty thousand bottles a day is the fastest I’ve ever heard of.”

  After that, she allowed the guests to have a go at it themselves. It resulted in the odd broken bottle when someone tried to show off and ended up knocking the frame over, but it was worth it. Almost every guest left with a crate of Champagne Arsenault’s non-vintage Brut.

  Madeleine’s second harvest was another good one. Once again, she sold the bulk of her grapes to a bigger house but kept the fruit of the Clos Des Larmes for herself. She made the most of the friends from London who came out to help (the same girls as before plus a couple more), guessing that she could rely on their enthusiasm for just one more year at the most. Then all of them would know that there’s nothing romantic about spending seven days without sleep in order to get the harvest done.

  Still, the second harvest was a more cheerful affair than the last. Lizzy was still living with the new man, who treated her like a princess.

  “It’s taking some getting used to!” she said. They were even talking marriage.

  Likewise the other girls’ circumstances all seemed to have taken a turn for the better and the Clos rang with their laughter.

  “This year we’ll make a Clos Des Rires,” said Madeleine.

  Meanwhile, the first series of The Villa garnered rave reviews. Unlike many of the so-called supermodels, with their exotic backgrounds, and frankly outlandish looks, Christina Morgan was a model that most people in the United States could relate to. Her looks were all-American. She played the part up by dressing for the show in pure classic American sportswear: Ralph Lauren chinos and crisp pink and white shirts. She wore her long blond hair in a swishy ponytail. Her makeup was kept natural. The makeup girl even added a couple of artfully placed freckles to the bridge of Christina’s nose for that “just come in from the fields” look. At Greg’s suggestion, Christina played up her background too. When she spoke about her childhood in lowa on the show and in press interviews, her words conjured up wide-open fields, farm animals, good wholesome fun. They said nothing of the reality of her childhood. How boring it had been. The desperate longing to escape.

  The public loved it. Christina was soon getting fan mail by the ton. She had to take on an assistant to wade through it, sending out signed photographs to those who included a self-addressed envelope and, of course, making sure that none of them were the kind of letters that might signify a future stalking problem.

  Christina’s newly raised profile also had the effect of reviving her modeling career. Guilty Secrets tried to woo her back to their catalog. Marisa vetoed that. “Lingerie isn’t the kind of work we’re looking for anymore,” she explained. Marisa did however advise Christina to jump at the chance to be the face of Aspire, a big international cosmetics line. The media made much of the fact that Christina was replacing a model ten years her junior.

  “Beauty is ageless,” gushed the director of Aspire Cosmetics, as though Christina were sixty-three rather than thirty-six. “Women all over the world can relate to Christina Morgan. Her experiences have only made her more beautiful.”

  There were changes at the Villa itself too. Prior to the series, the Villa Bacchante had not been open to the public. It was Greg who suggested that it was time to change that. There was a small area of land near the gate that wasn’t suitable for growing vines. With Greg’s help, Christina applied for permission to build a tasting room with a picnic area. The design of the building echoed the faux Tuscan architecture of the main house. It was surrounded by a garden planted with fresh herbs, like rosemary and lemon verbena, which filled the air with a fabulous scent, mingling with the roses that were a vineyard tradition. From the tasting room she sold Villa Bacchante’s wine and other local produce that had been featured on the show.

  It was wonderful. Christina had to admit that she got a kick out of the tasting room. Far from being “the great unwashed,” most of the people who visited her property in Napa were interesting folk, eager to know about wine rather than coming just to gawp at her home. From time to time, Christina even helped out with pouring glasses. She enjoyed chatting with the wine aficionados and felt exceptionally proud when even the biggest snobs grudgingly admitted that the Villa Bacchante made good wine. Sales went through the roof.

  Meanwhile, Christina kept up her involvement with ISACL. Rocky persuaded her to hold a fund-raising dinner for the charity at the Villa Bacchante. It was sponsored by Greg’s cable company, who were only too pleased to pay for the catering in return for some footage of Christina’s glittering guests. The theme was Bacchanalia, of course. Fancy dress. All the staff (handpicked by a Hollywood casting agent for their suitably gorgeous Roman
looks) were dressed in short white tunics. Christina wore a costume originally made for Saffron Burrows in her role as Andromache in Troy. It seemed suitably goddesslike.

  Greg wore a simple tunic and a wreath of vine leaves. He was a little self-conscious until he’d had a couple of glasses of wine. It wasn’t just because he was wearing a skirt, it was also because it was the first time Christina and Greg had gone public with their relationship. As they danced to a slow song at the end of the evening, Christina didn’t care who saw them together. She just lay her head on Greg’s shoulder and let him waltz her around the room. She was completely, perfectly, happy.

  Her happiness continued the next day as she filmed the first segment in her winery for season two. Bottles filled with wine from her very own first harvest were about to get their corks. Christina donned protective specs and stood in front of the production line as the necks of her bottles were dipped in liquid nitrogen, freezing the sediment that had been shaken down by the gyropalettes so that it expanded and popped out.

  “This process is known as ‘disgorgement,’ ” Christina told her viewers.

  The bottling machines had rattled into life again in Sussex too. And there were changes afoot. Hilarian suggested that a new look was needed to persuade potential customers that Froggy Bottom had moved on from the days when Dougal might as well have been making sparkling vinegar. Kelly was delighted to take up the challenge of designing a new label.

  Everyone agreed that you can’t be called “Froggy Bottom” and not have an amphibian somewhere on your bottle. Kelly spent half a day on the Internet looking for a book her mother had read to her when she was a child. Those bedtime stories formed some of her happiest memories. She ordered the book in secret, then, when it arrived, she proudly presented the book and her idea for a label image to Guy and Hilarian.

  The book was The Wind in the Willows. The illustration that she wanted to copy was a tiny picture of an open-topped classic car sailing over the brow of a hill. At the wheel …