THE WINES OF EARTH
Joe da Valora grew wine in the Napa Valley. The growing of premium wine is never especially profitable in California, and Joe could have made considerably more money if he had raised soybeans or planted his acreage in prunes. The paperwork involved in his occupation was a nightmare to him; he filled out tax and license forms for state and federal governments until he had moments of feeling his soul was made out in triplicate, and he worked hard in the fields too. His son used to ask him why he didn’t go into something easier. Sometimes he wondered himself.
But lovers of the vine, like all lovers, are stubborn and unreasonable men. And as with other lovers, their unreasonableness has its compensations. Joe da Valora got a good deal of satisfaction from the knowledge that he made some of the best Zinfandel in California (the Pinot Noir, his first love, he had had to abandon as not coming to its full excellence in his particular part of the Napa Valley). He vintaged the best of his wine carefully, slaved over the vinification to bring out the wine’s full freshness and fruitiness, and had once sold an entire year’s product to one of the “big business” wineries, rather than bottling it himself, because he thought it had a faint but objectionable “hot” taste.
Joe da Valora lived alone, His wife was dead, and his son had married a girl who didn’t like the country. Often they came to see him on Sundays, and they bought him expensive gifts at Christmas time. Still, his evenings were apt to be long. If he sometimes drank a little too much of his own product, so that he went to bed with the edges of things a bit blurred, it did him no harm. Dry red table wine is a wholesome beverage, and he was never any the worse for it in the morning. On the nights when things needed blurring, he was careful not to touch the vintaged Zinfandel. It was too good a wine to waste on things that had to be blurred.
Early in December, when the vintage was over and the new wine was quietly doing the last of its fermentation in the storage containers, he awoke to the steady drumming of rain on his roof. Well. He’d get caught up on his bookkeeping. He hoped the rain wouldn’t be too hard. Eight of his acres were on a hillside, and after every rain he had to do some reterracing.
About eleven, when he was adding up a long column of figures, he felt a sort of soundless jarring in the air. He couldn’t tell whether it was real or whether he had imagined it. Probably the latter. His hearing wasn’t any too good these days. He shook his head to clear it, and poured himself a glass of the unvintaged Zinfandel.
After lunch the rain stopped and the sky grew bright. He finished his noon-time glass of wine and started out for a breath of air. As he left the house he realized that he was just a little, little tipsy. Well, that wasn’t such a bad way for a vintner to be. He’d go up to the hillside acres and see how they did.
There had been very little soil washing, he saw, inspecting the hillside. The reterracing would be at a minimum. In fact, most of the soil removal he was doing himself, on the soles of his boots. He straightened up, feeling pleased.
Ahead of him on the slope four young people were standing, two men and two girls.
Da Valora felt a twinge of annoyance and alarm. What were they doing he re? A vineyard out of leaf isn’t attractive, and the hillside was well back from the road. He’d never had any trouble with vandals, only with deer. If these people tramped around on the wet earth, they’d break the terracing down.
As he got within speaking distance of them, one of the girls stepped forward. She had hair of an extraordinary copper-gold, and vivid, intensely turquoise eyes. (The other girl had black hair, and the two men were dark blonds.) Something about the group puzzled da Valora, and then he located it. They were all dressed exactly alike.
“Hello,” the girl said.
“Hello,” da Valora answered. Now that he was near to them, his anxiety about the vines had left him. It was as if their mere proximity—and he was to experience this effect during all the hours they spent with him—as if their mere proximity both stimulated and soothed his intellect, so that cares and pettinesses dropped away from him, and he moved in a larger air. He seemed to apprehend whatever they said directly, in a deeper way than words are usually apprehended and with a wonderful naturalness.
“Hello,” the girl repeated. “We’ve come from”—somehow the word escaped Joe’s hearing—“to see the vines.”
“Well, now,” said Joe, pleased, “have you seen enough of them? This planting is Zinfandel. If you have, we might go through the winery. And then we might sample a little wine.”
Yes, they would like to. They would all like that.
They moved beside him in a group, walking lightly and not picking up any of the wet earth on their feet. As they walked along they told him about themselves. They were winegrowers themselves, the four of them, though they seemed so young, in a sort of loose partnership, and they were making a winegrowers’ tour of—of—Again Joe’s hearing failed him. but he had the fancy that there would never be any conflict of will among the four of them. Their tastes and wishes would blend like four harmonious voices, the women’s high and clear, the men’s richer and more deep. Yet it seemed to him that the copper-haired girl was regarded with a certain deference by her companions, and he thought, wisely, that he knew the reason. It was what he had so often told his wife—that when a lady really likes wine, when she really has a palate for it, nobody can be at her judgment, so the others respected her.
He showed them through the winery without shame, without pride. If there were bigger wineries than his in the Napa valley, there were smaller ones too. And he knew he made good wine.
Back in the house he got out a bottle of his vintaged Zinfandel, the best Zinfandel he had ever made, for them. It wasn’t only that they were fellow growers, he also wanted to please them. It was the ’51.
As he poured the dark, fragrant stuff into their glasses he said, “What did you say the name of your firm was? Where did you say you were from?”
“It isn’t exactly a firm,” the dark-haired girl said, laughing. “And you wouldn’t know the name of our home star.”
Star? Star? Joe da Valora’s hand shook so that he dribbled wine outside the glass. But what else had he expected? Hadn’t he known from the moment he had seen them standing on the hillside? Of course they were from another star.
“And you’re making a tour…?” he asked, putting down the bottle carefully.
“Of the nearer galaxy. We have only a few hours to devote to Earth.”
They drank. Joe da Valora wasn’t surprised when only one of the men, the darker blond, praised the wine with much vigor. No doubt they’d tasted better. He wasn’t hurt; they’d never want to hurt him—or at least not much hurt.
Yet as he looked at the four of them sitting around his dining table—so young, so wise, so kind—he was fired with a sudden honorable ambition. If they were only going to be here a few hours, then it was up to him, since nobody else could do it—it was up to him to champion the wines of Earth.
“Have you been to France?” he asked.
“France?” the dark-haired girl answered. So he knew the answer to the question.
“Wait,” he told them, “wait. I’ll be back.” He went clattering down the cellar stairs.
In the cellar, he hesitated. He had a few bottles of the best Pinot Noir grown in the Napa Valley; and that meant—nobody could question it—the best Pinot Noir grown in California. But which year should he bring? The ’43 was the better balanced, feminine, regal, round, and delicate. The ’42 was a greater wine, but its inherent imbalance and its age had made it arrive at the state that winemakers call fragile. One bottle of it would be glorious, the next vapid, passe and flat.