Sour Grapes, page 4
“Thanks, darling,” Natalie approved. “The Santiagos definitely know their way around a wine cellar.”
“How long has Rolando worked here?” I asked, “or do ladies not reveal that either?”
“Oh, you’re a quick one,” Natalie chuckled. “I think we’ll keep you.”
I smiled, privately pleased, and brought the wine glass back to my lips. Even if I tripped and bumbled through interactions with everyone else, I had a feeling that Natalie would be a soft landing place.
“I believe Rolando is going into his fortieth harvest this season,” she told me.
“Fortieth?” I gaped. “That’s practically longer than I’ve been alive.”
“He’s been married to this vineyard longer than most people have been married to their spouses,” she confirmed. “Speaking of wives, where’s yours?”
My throat constricted at the question. “Oh. Uh.”
“Sorry to put you on the spot,” Natalie chuckled. “Belinda is a good friend of mine. She called me up to warn me she’d epically failed yesterday when she misgendered your partner. She didn’t want me to make the same mistake.”
I licked at my lips. They tasted like wine. “Alex is … Alex … she, uh …”
God, why couldn’t I just say the words?
Behind me, I heard the barn door slide open. I took the interruption as an opportunity to avoid Natalie’s question. I turned on my barstool and saw one of the two men—Oscar or Carlos—I still didn’t know who was who.
“Carlos,” Natalie greeted, “what can I do for you?”
Carlos. I committed the name and the man’s face to memory. He’d been the smaller, but more muscled of the two men. I wondered if they were related to each other.
“I came to get her,” he said, nodding in my direction.
“Me?” I all but squeaked.
The man gave me a broad smile. “Can’t drink the profits all day, Jefa. It’s bad business. Ready to get your hands dirty?”
I looked from Carlos, back to Natalie, and then down to my barely touched wine glass. It seemed like such a waste of a very good wine, but I didn’t want them thinking I was lazy or was in this business for the wrong reasons.
I hopped down from the barstool. “Thanks for the history lesson, Natalie. I’ll be back another time for the rest.”
“Don’t let those boys work you too hard, June,” she advised me. “Remember who’s the boss.”
I tried to smile at the affable woman, but I was sure it looked more like a grimace. I certainly didn’t feel very boss-like.
I didn’t make it back to the farmhouse that night until after sunset. We were deeper into the spring season, with little fear of frost, so Carlos had tasked me with helping plant new vines in areas of the vineyard where older vines that no longer produced fruit had been removed from the earth. It had been hard work, and I’d certainly gotten my hands dirty. But despite how my knees and lower back protested being hunched over for the better part of the afternoon, my body felt satisfied from the day’s work.
I anticipated an early morning the next day. I needed to go into town for supplies—groceries and other essentials—but Rolando had promised to give me an overview of the wine-making process when I returned. I’d been a timid mess on my first day, but I was determined to be less awkward on day two.
An antique clawfoot tub awaited me in the upstairs bathroom, but until a general contractor could inspect the farmhouse, I didn’t want to risk filling an already heavy bathtub with gallons of water. If the front stoop hadn’t been able to handle the weight of my body, I didn’t want to test the limits of the second floor. My muscles and joints would have benefited from a long soak, but I opted for a hot shower instead.
Dinner consisted of macaroni and cheese out of a blue and yellow box. I discovered that only three of the electric stovetop burners actually worked, so I added that to my growing list of maintenance needs. I didn’t anticipate crafting gourmet meals that would require more than a serviceable microwave or hot plate, however. I forced myself to eat the uninspired meal at the table in the eat-in kitchen. I had no cable or internet service in the farmhouse yet, so it wasn’t like I could have watched brainless television to distract me from the one-pot meal.
As I sat at the kitchen table, shoveling elbow noodles into my mouth, I was struck by the silence of the farmhouse. It was so quiet, almost unbearably so. I’d become accustomed to condo and apartment living where the low murmur of a television show in the next apartment or the heavy steps of an upstairs neighbor could be heard. But the farmhouse had no discernable sounds beyond a few wooden creaks as the result of wind or the house’s foundation settling.
I still had cheesy noodles in the bottom of my bowl, but I called my best friend Lily in hopes of filling the silent emptiness of the night. The phone rang and rang and rang with no answer. I began to lose hope of connecting with my friend that evening, but Lily picked up just before the call could go to voicemail.
“Junie!” she exclaimed. She nearly sounded breathless. “How are you doing? Are you all settled in?”
I wanted to pour my heart out to my friend and describe each of my worries to her, but the sound of thumping base reverberated through the phone call.
“Where are you?” I asked instead. I pulled the phone away from my ear and winced. “It’s so loud!”
“I’m sorry,” Lily apologized, nearly shouting to be heard over the music. “I’m at a burlesque show in the Castro. Everybody!” I heard her call out, “say hi to Junie!”
I had no idea who ‘everyone’ included, but I heard a chorus of greetings in the background and not a few sentiments of people missing me and wishing I was there. I gripped my phone a little tighter as a wave of longing and regret crested over me.
What was I doing here? Why was I suffering, alone and disoriented? Why had I left the city and my friends?
“I miss you guys, too!” I managed to choke out.
Lily’s voice returned to the call. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’ve got to go. The show’s about to start, and I don’t want to be rude.”
I swallowed down my feelings of disappointment. “No, no. It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I was just calling to say hi.”
“Let’s catch up soon, okay?” Lily declared. “I want to hear all about how much ass you’re kicking up there.”
“Right,” I said weakly. “Totally slaying.”
CHAPTER THREE
Rolando held a small, dark berry between his middle finger and his thumb. He held it up to the morning sun like a jeweler inspecting a precious gem. ”This,” he announced proudly, “is a wine grape.”
I stood with Ronaldo at the edge of one of the tilled plots the next morning, not far from the tasting barn. After a brief run into town for groceries and other necessities, I’d returned to the vineyard for more of my wine education. Rolando plucked another leftover grape from the closest grapevine and handed it to me. I cupped the slightly shriveled berry in the palm of my hand.
“It looks more like a blueberry than a grape,” I noted.
“Wine grapes are different than table grapes,” he said. “They’re smaller and sweeter with seeds and thicker skin. The valley,” he continued, “is perfect for growing wine grapes. Hot summer days provide color and big berry flavor. Cool nights maintain acid balance and retention. And Calistoga has the highest percentage of volcanic soils which yield more minerals in the wine itself.”
I thought about the tiny shoots I’d planted with Oscar the day before. “How long does it take for a new plant to start growing fruit?”
“Fruit that you’d actually want to use?” he qualified. “Three years. Before that we either compost or find a buyer who doesn’t mind young grapes.”
“I knew wines got better with age, but so do grapes?”
Rolando nodded. “The quality of the berry increases, but older vines also produce less fruit. You really want to have a mix of young and old vines on the farm.”
“How old is the oldest vine on our property?” I asked.
“Close to fifty years old,” he replied. “But that’s about as old as you want. At fifty years, the vine is hardly producing any berries.”
“Huh,” I considered. “I don’t know why I had this picture in my head of ancient grapevines that were centuries old.”
Ronaldo rested his hand on one of the cut back vines. It looked like a low, twisting crutch. “These old rootstocks and canes might look like they’ve got no more life in them, but I promise you that in a few weeks, they’re going to amaze you.”
I let Rolando’s optimism influence me. If the head winemaker was confident, I had no reason not to be.
“Let’s head back inside,” he suggested, “and I’ll show you how the wine gets made.”
The tasting barn was empty when we returned; Carlos and Oscar were elsewhere on the property, and Natalie wasn’t scheduled to come in until later that day. I found the silence of the farmhouse in the evening to be off-putting, but the quiet of the barn was almost restorative. Offices were typically filled with the constant jangle of telephones, the erratic clicking of fingers against keyboards, and competing voices that filtered above the half walls of cubicles. The scent of microwaved lunches had always annoyed me; the vineyard’s barn smelled of cool concrete, dirt, and yeast. I surprisingly enjoyed the latter. It was like proofing bread in the moments before it went into a hot oven.
The barn was a wide open space under a corrugated metal roof and frame, divided into different sections. An employee’s only section consisted of the picnic table where Rolando drank his morning coffee and Carlos and Oscar gathered for lunch. A small office with a proper door and four walls was the economic center of the business and the only space with internet access. Natalie commanded another corner of the building as the start and finish point for guest tours. A few backless stools had been pulled up to a makeshift bar that was really only a few empty wine barrels tipped onto their sides. The rest of the barn was dedicated to the production of wine once the grapes had been harvested in September and October.
Ronaldo walked me through the barn’s impressive and expensive-looking machinery. Everything was turned off, but in late fall, a wide conveyor belt allowed workers to pick through newly harvested grapes. Leaves, stems, and berries that had become rotten or sun dried would be removed by hand. Anything that shouldn’t make it into the wine would be disposed.
The remaining grape clusters were then transported, very gently, on a second conveyor belt that reminded me of an escalator to be dropped into the crusher destemmer. The destemmer mechanically separated the berries from their stems. The stems were later composted and would go back into the vineyard.
After that, the berries went through a second sorting. A shaking table removed tiny bits of stems that the destemmer might have missed. Rolando told me it was a trick adapted from blueberry sorting; little horizontal slats allowed for tiny wooden stems to fall through. The whole apparatus reminded me of mining gold in the Klondike. But we were making liquid gold instead.
The final mechanized ride was another escalator trip that transported the berries to massive, stainless steel fermentation tanks, not unlike tanks one might find in a brewery. The separated grapes sat in the tanks for a specific amount of time, producing CO2 and alcohol, all carefully monitored by Rolando. The resulting fermented juices would eventually be divided into smaller oak barrels to be stored and aged in the subterranean cellar.
I took in everything—the silent, giant machines and currently empty fermentation vats. I tried to imagine the constant hum of machinery towards the year’s end and the organized chaos of harvest time.
“So it’s just you, Carlos, Oscar, and Natalie doing all of this work?” I asked. It seemed like a massive undertaking for such a lean team.
“For a little while longer,” Rolando confirmed. “We’ll take on more workers once the growing season begins and especially during harvest,” he told me. “But you don’t have to worry about that. I have a very good relationship with some seasonal workers who come back year after year, and they all bring at least one friend whom they can vouch for.”
I recalled the realtor, Belinda, and her earlier words about the vineyard. “It sounds like a well-oiled ship,” I remarked.
I should have been reassured, even relieved, by this fact, but I discovered only disappointment. Rolando and his tight-knit staff seemed to have everything covered.
Did I really need to be here? I silently lamented. What was I supposed to do? How could I make myself useful?
“Ahhh. Just in time,” Rolando approved. His eyes focused on something behind me. “Here’s our most valuable employee.”
I turned around, fully expecting to see another person—a fifth employee, perhaps—but a notched-ear barn cat slunk into view instead. The lean animal approached us with caution, one quick step in front of the other. It stopped and stared up at me with green eyes. Its fur was mostly dark grey, but its white chin gave the impression of having a beard.
“We have a cat?” I questioned.
“We do,” Rolando confirmed. “But you don’t have to worry about Gato,” he assured me. “There’s enough critters on the property that he stays better fed than the rest of us.”
My Spanish wasn’t very extensive, but I knew a few common words and phrases. “Wait. The cat’s name is cat?”
Rolando grinned, showing off two charming dimples. “We save the creativity for the wine making.”
I bent over and leaned closer to the cat who was currently rubbing his body against Rolando’s work boots. I wasn’t exactly a cat person—Alex had had allergies, so we’d never had a pet. “Hey, Gato,” I softly greeted. I reached out a tentative hand. “I’m June.”
I tried to pet between the cat’s ears, but Gato had other plans. He maneuvered away from my outstretched fingers and swiped at me with his right paw. I jerked my own hand away to avoid getting scratched, and the cat scampered away.
“Don’t worry,” Rolando assured me. “He’ll get used to you.”
I righted myself when the door to the tasting barn unexpectedly swung open. A figure, backlit by the day’s sunshine, stood in the doorway. “They sold us?!” The voice was shrill, but decidedly feminine. “I leave for a few months,” the newcomer seethed, “and they sell the place right from under our feet?!”
A woman strode aggressively into the barn, leaving the door wide open.
“Who is that?” I murmured for only Rolando’s ears.
“That is your assistant winemaker,” he returned.
“She doesn’t sound very happy,” I continued in my hushed tone.
“She takes a while to warm up to change,” he whispered back. “She’s like her mother in that way.”
I arched an eyebrow at his words.
Ronaldo shrugged. “She’s my daughter.”
Daughter?
“I wasn’t expecting you back so early,” Rolando called out to the fiery woman. “You’re usually not here until after bud break.”
“Carlos called me about the sale,” the woman all but growled. “I booked the first flight back.”
“Ven acá, hijita,” Ronaldo coaxed. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Can it wait?” The woman looked apologetic, but annoyed. “I’ve been traveling all day. My body doesn’t know if it’s night or day.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” he promised.
I heard her displeased grumble and the muttering of unintelligible complaints, but the woman crossed the barn to join us near the fermentation tanks. As she approached, her features came into finer detail.
She looked younger than me, but not by much. We were close to the same height with her a little taller. I noticed her high, sweeping cheekbones first and then her wide, serious mouth. Her complexion was lighter than her father’s, but they shared the same dark, expressive eyes and thick eyelashes. She had a high forehead, a long, narrow nose, and thick, but not unruly eyebrows. Her hair was long, straight, and dark; she wore it parted down the middle. Her figure was lean and angular. The scoop-neck t-shirt she wore hung low across her chest, revealing a mesmerizing clavicle. I tore my eyes away from the exposed skin when I realized I’d been staring.
“Lucia, this is June St. Clare,” Rolando introduced with his gentle, appeasing smile. “She just bought the vineyard.”
Lucia snapped her head in my direction. She pinned me in place with a pointed stare. “You?”
“T-technically,” I stuttered, “my partner Alex bought it; it’s her name on the mortgage.” I felt myself shrinking under the woman’s heated, incredulous scowl. “But I’m eager to learn the business and help out.”
“Learn?” Lucia sneered. “You bought a vineyard without knowing anything about viticulture?”
“I-I …” The venom and disdain in her voice took me by surprise. Rolando had only shown me kindness; why was his daughter so angry at me?
Rolando clapped his hands together. I flinched at the sharp sound. “I have a wonderful idea,” he announced. “Starting tomorrow, June, you’ll shadow Lucia. Lucia, you’ll teach June everything you know about making wine.”
“I’m not a babysitter!” Lucia hotly exclaimed. “I’m assistant winemaker!”
“Exactly,” Rolando confirmed. “And as assistant to the head winemaker, I’ve decided that you’ll show June the ropes.”
The glare Lucia gave her father suggested that the only ropes she wanted to introduce me to were the hangman’s noose.
I started to protest. “Rolando, I—.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” he said with finality. “Lucia will be in charge of your orientation.”
“I don’t have time to do my work and teach her,” Lucia bitterly complained.
“Do this thing,” Rolando bargained, “and I’ll consider giving you ten percent of this year’s harvest to make your own blends.”
Some of the animosity faded from her features. Lucia seemed to consider the offer. “Twenty five.”
Rolando chuckled, sounding amused. “Be satisfied I’m giving you any fruit at all, mija.”
“How long has Rolando worked here?” I asked, “or do ladies not reveal that either?”
“Oh, you’re a quick one,” Natalie chuckled. “I think we’ll keep you.”
I smiled, privately pleased, and brought the wine glass back to my lips. Even if I tripped and bumbled through interactions with everyone else, I had a feeling that Natalie would be a soft landing place.
“I believe Rolando is going into his fortieth harvest this season,” she told me.
“Fortieth?” I gaped. “That’s practically longer than I’ve been alive.”
“He’s been married to this vineyard longer than most people have been married to their spouses,” she confirmed. “Speaking of wives, where’s yours?”
My throat constricted at the question. “Oh. Uh.”
“Sorry to put you on the spot,” Natalie chuckled. “Belinda is a good friend of mine. She called me up to warn me she’d epically failed yesterday when she misgendered your partner. She didn’t want me to make the same mistake.”
I licked at my lips. They tasted like wine. “Alex is … Alex … she, uh …”
God, why couldn’t I just say the words?
Behind me, I heard the barn door slide open. I took the interruption as an opportunity to avoid Natalie’s question. I turned on my barstool and saw one of the two men—Oscar or Carlos—I still didn’t know who was who.
“Carlos,” Natalie greeted, “what can I do for you?”
Carlos. I committed the name and the man’s face to memory. He’d been the smaller, but more muscled of the two men. I wondered if they were related to each other.
“I came to get her,” he said, nodding in my direction.
“Me?” I all but squeaked.
The man gave me a broad smile. “Can’t drink the profits all day, Jefa. It’s bad business. Ready to get your hands dirty?”
I looked from Carlos, back to Natalie, and then down to my barely touched wine glass. It seemed like such a waste of a very good wine, but I didn’t want them thinking I was lazy or was in this business for the wrong reasons.
I hopped down from the barstool. “Thanks for the history lesson, Natalie. I’ll be back another time for the rest.”
“Don’t let those boys work you too hard, June,” she advised me. “Remember who’s the boss.”
I tried to smile at the affable woman, but I was sure it looked more like a grimace. I certainly didn’t feel very boss-like.
I didn’t make it back to the farmhouse that night until after sunset. We were deeper into the spring season, with little fear of frost, so Carlos had tasked me with helping plant new vines in areas of the vineyard where older vines that no longer produced fruit had been removed from the earth. It had been hard work, and I’d certainly gotten my hands dirty. But despite how my knees and lower back protested being hunched over for the better part of the afternoon, my body felt satisfied from the day’s work.
I anticipated an early morning the next day. I needed to go into town for supplies—groceries and other essentials—but Rolando had promised to give me an overview of the wine-making process when I returned. I’d been a timid mess on my first day, but I was determined to be less awkward on day two.
An antique clawfoot tub awaited me in the upstairs bathroom, but until a general contractor could inspect the farmhouse, I didn’t want to risk filling an already heavy bathtub with gallons of water. If the front stoop hadn’t been able to handle the weight of my body, I didn’t want to test the limits of the second floor. My muscles and joints would have benefited from a long soak, but I opted for a hot shower instead.
Dinner consisted of macaroni and cheese out of a blue and yellow box. I discovered that only three of the electric stovetop burners actually worked, so I added that to my growing list of maintenance needs. I didn’t anticipate crafting gourmet meals that would require more than a serviceable microwave or hot plate, however. I forced myself to eat the uninspired meal at the table in the eat-in kitchen. I had no cable or internet service in the farmhouse yet, so it wasn’t like I could have watched brainless television to distract me from the one-pot meal.
As I sat at the kitchen table, shoveling elbow noodles into my mouth, I was struck by the silence of the farmhouse. It was so quiet, almost unbearably so. I’d become accustomed to condo and apartment living where the low murmur of a television show in the next apartment or the heavy steps of an upstairs neighbor could be heard. But the farmhouse had no discernable sounds beyond a few wooden creaks as the result of wind or the house’s foundation settling.
I still had cheesy noodles in the bottom of my bowl, but I called my best friend Lily in hopes of filling the silent emptiness of the night. The phone rang and rang and rang with no answer. I began to lose hope of connecting with my friend that evening, but Lily picked up just before the call could go to voicemail.
“Junie!” she exclaimed. She nearly sounded breathless. “How are you doing? Are you all settled in?”
I wanted to pour my heart out to my friend and describe each of my worries to her, but the sound of thumping base reverberated through the phone call.
“Where are you?” I asked instead. I pulled the phone away from my ear and winced. “It’s so loud!”
“I’m sorry,” Lily apologized, nearly shouting to be heard over the music. “I’m at a burlesque show in the Castro. Everybody!” I heard her call out, “say hi to Junie!”
I had no idea who ‘everyone’ included, but I heard a chorus of greetings in the background and not a few sentiments of people missing me and wishing I was there. I gripped my phone a little tighter as a wave of longing and regret crested over me.
What was I doing here? Why was I suffering, alone and disoriented? Why had I left the city and my friends?
“I miss you guys, too!” I managed to choke out.
Lily’s voice returned to the call. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’ve got to go. The show’s about to start, and I don’t want to be rude.”
I swallowed down my feelings of disappointment. “No, no. It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I was just calling to say hi.”
“Let’s catch up soon, okay?” Lily declared. “I want to hear all about how much ass you’re kicking up there.”
“Right,” I said weakly. “Totally slaying.”
CHAPTER THREE
Rolando held a small, dark berry between his middle finger and his thumb. He held it up to the morning sun like a jeweler inspecting a precious gem. ”This,” he announced proudly, “is a wine grape.”
I stood with Ronaldo at the edge of one of the tilled plots the next morning, not far from the tasting barn. After a brief run into town for groceries and other necessities, I’d returned to the vineyard for more of my wine education. Rolando plucked another leftover grape from the closest grapevine and handed it to me. I cupped the slightly shriveled berry in the palm of my hand.
“It looks more like a blueberry than a grape,” I noted.
“Wine grapes are different than table grapes,” he said. “They’re smaller and sweeter with seeds and thicker skin. The valley,” he continued, “is perfect for growing wine grapes. Hot summer days provide color and big berry flavor. Cool nights maintain acid balance and retention. And Calistoga has the highest percentage of volcanic soils which yield more minerals in the wine itself.”
I thought about the tiny shoots I’d planted with Oscar the day before. “How long does it take for a new plant to start growing fruit?”
“Fruit that you’d actually want to use?” he qualified. “Three years. Before that we either compost or find a buyer who doesn’t mind young grapes.”
“I knew wines got better with age, but so do grapes?”
Rolando nodded. “The quality of the berry increases, but older vines also produce less fruit. You really want to have a mix of young and old vines on the farm.”
“How old is the oldest vine on our property?” I asked.
“Close to fifty years old,” he replied. “But that’s about as old as you want. At fifty years, the vine is hardly producing any berries.”
“Huh,” I considered. “I don’t know why I had this picture in my head of ancient grapevines that were centuries old.”
Ronaldo rested his hand on one of the cut back vines. It looked like a low, twisting crutch. “These old rootstocks and canes might look like they’ve got no more life in them, but I promise you that in a few weeks, they’re going to amaze you.”
I let Rolando’s optimism influence me. If the head winemaker was confident, I had no reason not to be.
“Let’s head back inside,” he suggested, “and I’ll show you how the wine gets made.”
The tasting barn was empty when we returned; Carlos and Oscar were elsewhere on the property, and Natalie wasn’t scheduled to come in until later that day. I found the silence of the farmhouse in the evening to be off-putting, but the quiet of the barn was almost restorative. Offices were typically filled with the constant jangle of telephones, the erratic clicking of fingers against keyboards, and competing voices that filtered above the half walls of cubicles. The scent of microwaved lunches had always annoyed me; the vineyard’s barn smelled of cool concrete, dirt, and yeast. I surprisingly enjoyed the latter. It was like proofing bread in the moments before it went into a hot oven.
The barn was a wide open space under a corrugated metal roof and frame, divided into different sections. An employee’s only section consisted of the picnic table where Rolando drank his morning coffee and Carlos and Oscar gathered for lunch. A small office with a proper door and four walls was the economic center of the business and the only space with internet access. Natalie commanded another corner of the building as the start and finish point for guest tours. A few backless stools had been pulled up to a makeshift bar that was really only a few empty wine barrels tipped onto their sides. The rest of the barn was dedicated to the production of wine once the grapes had been harvested in September and October.
Ronaldo walked me through the barn’s impressive and expensive-looking machinery. Everything was turned off, but in late fall, a wide conveyor belt allowed workers to pick through newly harvested grapes. Leaves, stems, and berries that had become rotten or sun dried would be removed by hand. Anything that shouldn’t make it into the wine would be disposed.
The remaining grape clusters were then transported, very gently, on a second conveyor belt that reminded me of an escalator to be dropped into the crusher destemmer. The destemmer mechanically separated the berries from their stems. The stems were later composted and would go back into the vineyard.
After that, the berries went through a second sorting. A shaking table removed tiny bits of stems that the destemmer might have missed. Rolando told me it was a trick adapted from blueberry sorting; little horizontal slats allowed for tiny wooden stems to fall through. The whole apparatus reminded me of mining gold in the Klondike. But we were making liquid gold instead.
The final mechanized ride was another escalator trip that transported the berries to massive, stainless steel fermentation tanks, not unlike tanks one might find in a brewery. The separated grapes sat in the tanks for a specific amount of time, producing CO2 and alcohol, all carefully monitored by Rolando. The resulting fermented juices would eventually be divided into smaller oak barrels to be stored and aged in the subterranean cellar.
I took in everything—the silent, giant machines and currently empty fermentation vats. I tried to imagine the constant hum of machinery towards the year’s end and the organized chaos of harvest time.
“So it’s just you, Carlos, Oscar, and Natalie doing all of this work?” I asked. It seemed like a massive undertaking for such a lean team.
“For a little while longer,” Rolando confirmed. “We’ll take on more workers once the growing season begins and especially during harvest,” he told me. “But you don’t have to worry about that. I have a very good relationship with some seasonal workers who come back year after year, and they all bring at least one friend whom they can vouch for.”
I recalled the realtor, Belinda, and her earlier words about the vineyard. “It sounds like a well-oiled ship,” I remarked.
I should have been reassured, even relieved, by this fact, but I discovered only disappointment. Rolando and his tight-knit staff seemed to have everything covered.
Did I really need to be here? I silently lamented. What was I supposed to do? How could I make myself useful?
“Ahhh. Just in time,” Rolando approved. His eyes focused on something behind me. “Here’s our most valuable employee.”
I turned around, fully expecting to see another person—a fifth employee, perhaps—but a notched-ear barn cat slunk into view instead. The lean animal approached us with caution, one quick step in front of the other. It stopped and stared up at me with green eyes. Its fur was mostly dark grey, but its white chin gave the impression of having a beard.
“We have a cat?” I questioned.
“We do,” Rolando confirmed. “But you don’t have to worry about Gato,” he assured me. “There’s enough critters on the property that he stays better fed than the rest of us.”
My Spanish wasn’t very extensive, but I knew a few common words and phrases. “Wait. The cat’s name is cat?”
Rolando grinned, showing off two charming dimples. “We save the creativity for the wine making.”
I bent over and leaned closer to the cat who was currently rubbing his body against Rolando’s work boots. I wasn’t exactly a cat person—Alex had had allergies, so we’d never had a pet. “Hey, Gato,” I softly greeted. I reached out a tentative hand. “I’m June.”
I tried to pet between the cat’s ears, but Gato had other plans. He maneuvered away from my outstretched fingers and swiped at me with his right paw. I jerked my own hand away to avoid getting scratched, and the cat scampered away.
“Don’t worry,” Rolando assured me. “He’ll get used to you.”
I righted myself when the door to the tasting barn unexpectedly swung open. A figure, backlit by the day’s sunshine, stood in the doorway. “They sold us?!” The voice was shrill, but decidedly feminine. “I leave for a few months,” the newcomer seethed, “and they sell the place right from under our feet?!”
A woman strode aggressively into the barn, leaving the door wide open.
“Who is that?” I murmured for only Rolando’s ears.
“That is your assistant winemaker,” he returned.
“She doesn’t sound very happy,” I continued in my hushed tone.
“She takes a while to warm up to change,” he whispered back. “She’s like her mother in that way.”
I arched an eyebrow at his words.
Ronaldo shrugged. “She’s my daughter.”
Daughter?
“I wasn’t expecting you back so early,” Rolando called out to the fiery woman. “You’re usually not here until after bud break.”
“Carlos called me about the sale,” the woman all but growled. “I booked the first flight back.”
“Ven acá, hijita,” Ronaldo coaxed. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Can it wait?” The woman looked apologetic, but annoyed. “I’ve been traveling all day. My body doesn’t know if it’s night or day.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” he promised.
I heard her displeased grumble and the muttering of unintelligible complaints, but the woman crossed the barn to join us near the fermentation tanks. As she approached, her features came into finer detail.
She looked younger than me, but not by much. We were close to the same height with her a little taller. I noticed her high, sweeping cheekbones first and then her wide, serious mouth. Her complexion was lighter than her father’s, but they shared the same dark, expressive eyes and thick eyelashes. She had a high forehead, a long, narrow nose, and thick, but not unruly eyebrows. Her hair was long, straight, and dark; she wore it parted down the middle. Her figure was lean and angular. The scoop-neck t-shirt she wore hung low across her chest, revealing a mesmerizing clavicle. I tore my eyes away from the exposed skin when I realized I’d been staring.
“Lucia, this is June St. Clare,” Rolando introduced with his gentle, appeasing smile. “She just bought the vineyard.”
Lucia snapped her head in my direction. She pinned me in place with a pointed stare. “You?”
“T-technically,” I stuttered, “my partner Alex bought it; it’s her name on the mortgage.” I felt myself shrinking under the woman’s heated, incredulous scowl. “But I’m eager to learn the business and help out.”
“Learn?” Lucia sneered. “You bought a vineyard without knowing anything about viticulture?”
“I-I …” The venom and disdain in her voice took me by surprise. Rolando had only shown me kindness; why was his daughter so angry at me?
Rolando clapped his hands together. I flinched at the sharp sound. “I have a wonderful idea,” he announced. “Starting tomorrow, June, you’ll shadow Lucia. Lucia, you’ll teach June everything you know about making wine.”
“I’m not a babysitter!” Lucia hotly exclaimed. “I’m assistant winemaker!”
“Exactly,” Rolando confirmed. “And as assistant to the head winemaker, I’ve decided that you’ll show June the ropes.”
The glare Lucia gave her father suggested that the only ropes she wanted to introduce me to were the hangman’s noose.
I started to protest. “Rolando, I—.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” he said with finality. “Lucia will be in charge of your orientation.”
“I don’t have time to do my work and teach her,” Lucia bitterly complained.
“Do this thing,” Rolando bargained, “and I’ll consider giving you ten percent of this year’s harvest to make your own blends.”
Some of the animosity faded from her features. Lucia seemed to consider the offer. “Twenty five.”
Rolando chuckled, sounding amused. “Be satisfied I’m giving you any fruit at all, mija.”
