Ellen Crosby - The Sauvignon Secret

“Quite a view, isn’t it?” he said finally. “Can’t you just imagine Gianni getting off the boat from Italy a hundred and fifty years ago and seeing this place, standing right here? Dreaming about the promise of what this land could be?”

I nodded and the knot in my stomach tightened. That he loved it here was clear, this land with its big skies, fertile valleys, and rugged mountains. That he belonged here was becoming even clearer. It was the reason he’d brought me to this place: to show me, so he wouldn’t have to tell me.

“It’s magnificent,” I said.

“I knew you’d fall in love with it.”

My heart felt like he’d attached a stone to it. “Yes.”

“There’s one more stop,” he said. “Something else I want you to see.”

We took the corkscrew road down the mountain until he made a sharp left onto another road that led to an abandoned-looking field-stone building set in a clearing surrounded by woods.

“Gianni’s original winery,” he said.

Quinn helped me climb down steep steps past a weed-filled garden. Above the arched stone lintel, the year 1886 had been carved into a piece of rose-colored granite.

“Should we be doing this?” I asked.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Sanábria’s vineyard manager is a good buddy of mine. I come here a lot.”

He lifted a heavy wooden latch and pushed open the door, flipping on the lights. Inside, the old winery looked bigger than it had from the outside. A few bare bulbs glowed like small moons among the crossbeams, casting murky shadows on the wide plank floor. Someone had attached rows of white Christmas lights to the exposed studs along the walls.

In the dim light, the sepia-tinted room smelled of history and ghost barrels of fermenting wine. For a moment I almost heard voices laughing and shouting and cursing in Italian, a few notes of Verdi sung with gusto. Quinn leaned against a wooden pillar in the middle of the barn, hands in his jeans pockets, and watched me.

“What do you think?” His voice echoed off the rafters.

“I think it’s fantastic,” I said.

He smiled. “Me, too.”

“I wonder what it was like to make wine back then, before everything was mechanized. Maybe they didn’t even have electricity or refrigeration when they built this place.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “There’s another floor above us that was probably used for crushing and fermentation. They would have been able to take advantage of gravity to drain the wine off the skins into settling tanks down here. That huge door you saw on the upper level was possibly the way they got rid of the pumice. Just shoveled it out to the ground and carted it off.”

I pointed to the Christmas lights. “Someone still uses this place.”

“Tastings for special clients. My winemaker friend got married here. Stuff like that. Eventually they’d like to get it on the National Register of Historic Places.”

“It would be wonderful to get married here. I’ll bet it was really romantic.”

It slipped out, an easy response to his comment about his friend’s wedding. But Quinn’s reaction—stunned silence—was like a curtain slamming down between us. He realized it, just as I did.

“Yeah, they had a nice ceremony. Real pretty.” His voice was flat, deadpan.

“Oh, come on, Quinn. It was just a simple remark. I wasn’t implying anything.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Then why are you acting like I yelled ‘fire’ in a crowded room, and you’re looking for the nearest exit?”

“Now you’re the one reading into things.”

“I’m not.”

It ended right there in the old winery, the magic of the past two days. We were like guests who overstayed their welcome at a party, forgetting to leave while everyone was having a good time. A gust of wind blew through the open doorway, skittering a puddle of dry leaves across the floor. Quinn roused himself from his post.

“We should get going,” he said. “What time is Brooke expecting us?”

“When we get there,” I said. “Mick told me she was pretty laid-back about it. She gave him her cell number and said I should call before I wanted to come. She’d be there.”

“Then let’s grab lunch in Calistoga,” he said. “You can call her from there.”

We barely spoke on the drive back to Napa. But when he turned off Petrified Forest Road onto 29, I spotted a sign that said ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON STATE PARK, 9 MILES.

“What’s that?”

“Stevenson spent time near Calistoga back in the late 1800s,” he said. “I thought you knew the story. The park is on the site of an abandoned mine where he camped out one summer. Spent his honeymoon there, with a married woman he’d fallen in love with, after she got divorced, of course. He wrote a book about it. The Silverado Squatters . Talked about the Napa wine he drank, calling it ‘bottled poetry.’ You know that quote.”

“I didn’t realize this was the place,” I said. “And I’d forgotten it was his honeymoon.”

He gave me another look like I’d just lighted the fuse to a stick of dynamite.

“Maybe we should change the subject. Maybe I should call Brooke.” I got out my phone and thumbed through the contacts.

He pulled into a parking space on the main street of Calistoga in front of a restaurant called Café Sarafornia. “You did tell her I’m coming, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. I haven’t talked to her yet. Mick made the arrangements. I told you that.”

“So she has no clue?”

“No, she doesn’t. Why, is it going to be a problem? She might not sell me the wine if you’re involved?”

I shouldn’t have baited him like that, but he asked for it. He got out of the car and slammed the door.

“Don’t do that,” I said. “Don’t slam the door like that. And if you want to go with me, fine. If you don’t, I’ll get a cab and go myself.”

I picked up my cane as he opened my door.

“This isn’t the big city, sweetheart. You don’t just step out into the street and wait for a taxi to pull over.” His voice was curt.

“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out, just like I always do,” I said. “If you’re going to walk out on me.”

I didn’t say “again,” but I might as well have done.

“That was low,” he said. “And if you don’t want me to come along, it’s no skin off my nose.”

“You know, I don’t care what you do anymore. You don’t want to commit to this, either, suit yourself.”

“What ‘either’?”

“You know damn well what ‘either.’ I’m talking about everything. Us. The vineyard. Virginia. All of it.” By now I was practically shouting at him.

An elderly couple passing by swiveled their heads and gave me reproachful looks like I’d been talking in the middle of the church sermon. I lowered my voice. “I’m done asking, okay? Do whatever you want, but just make up your damn mind and let me get on with my life.”

“What the—?”

“I’m calling Brooke.” I punched the button to my phone. “And telling her I’ll be there and maybe I’ll have someone else with me, or not.”

He clenched his jaw and I knew he was biting back something that would only throw more gasoline on the fire.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll come. But don’t blame me if this blows up when she sees me and shows us the door.”

“I thought she had a mad crush on you.”

He shot a look at me and something dark simmered behind his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, finally. “She did.”

Brooke Hennessey’s vineyard was easy to spot from the main road, even without the hand-painted sign. On either side of the gated entrance a pair of Don Juan rosebushes bloomed profusely, their espaliered masses of velvety red flowers brilliant against a white brick wall. Quinn turned down a drive lined with silvery-green olive trees that ended in a small, new-looking parking lot. A fresh coat of white paint gleamed on a post-and-board fence separating the parking lot from an orchard of apple and peach trees.