I, I, I. I like a man who’s comfortable in his skin. Quinn seemed a bit oversized for his, like the Michelin Man untethered, to be precise. Could he really do all that? Or was he just blowing more hot air?
“Jacques was a very skilled enologist,” I said.
“If you lived in the nineteenth century. Honey, this doesn’t have to be a cottage industry.”
“I’m not looking to mass-produce plonk in a six-pack with screw-top bottles, Quinn,” I said. “Vin de ramassage, Jacques used to call it. Wine from the bottom of the barrel.”
He put the Gator in gear and we roared out of the back of the parking lot, climbing onto the rougher terrain leading toward the vineyards. I held on to the edges of my seat with both hands.
“Look,” he said, “let’s get something straight. When your father hired me, he said he was a hands-off manager and he’d let me do the job the way I saw fit. If you’re going to big-foot every decision I make, then we’re not going to get along and I need to be looking for another job.”
I hate ultimatums or being backed into a corner. My first instinct was to take him up on his offer to move on. Surely I could find someone equally qualified who would be more pleasant to work with. How hard could it be to find a winemaker who didn’t have the personality of Dirty Harry and dress in Salvation Army couture?
Though, of course, it was possible he actually could deliver on those boasts. What if he were good enough to make us into a first-class vineyard, like he said? He was ambitious, like I was. Actually, he was pushy. But we both wanted the same thing.
Too bad Leland wasn’t the best judge of character. Eli said he’d hired Quinn because he came cheap. But why would Quinn sell himself short if he thought he was so good? It was possible he’d left California, the Mecca of American wine making, to come to Virginia because the potential here appealed to his maverick side. But it was also possible he’d left for another reason and Leland hadn’t bothered to inquire about it.
I couldn’t afford to have Quinn walk out now, just before harvest. But I wasn’t going to let him run the place as blindly as Leland intended, either.
“The difference between Leland and me,” I said, “is that he wasn’t interested in the vineyard. I am. Just like my mother was.”
“Meaning?”
“My mother and Jacques worked together, as a team. He made the call about when to pick, when to blend, when to press…all those decisions. But he consulted with her on everything and she had her own opinions.”
“I assume she knew something about what she was doing?”
“I’m not a novice,” I said. “Give me some credit. I grew up here. Jacques taught me and I paid attention. The summer before I…before my accident, I worked here full time.”
“A hobby,” he said, “is not the same as a profession.”
“It was my mother’s life’s work! My family’s name is on every bottle of wine that leaves here. It is not a hobby. It is a passion! They’re different.”
He was silent, but he’d shifted the Gator back into first gear so now we’d slowed considerably as we approached the beginning of the Chardonnay block.
“Besides,” I continued, as his silence grew into a substantial void, “unlike Leland, I’d sell every piece of furniture we own to finance the expansion you’re talking about.”
That unstuck his tongue. Money. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll listen to what you have to say, but I run the show. Completely. We’ll see if it works. If it does, I’ll stay. If it doesn’t, I’m gone at the end of harvest.”
“Fine.”
The end of harvest could be anywhere from six to eight weeks away, depending on the ripening of the different varietals of grapes. We’d know each other pretty well by then. There would be days when we’d be working together practically around the clock.
He looked sideways at me. “I’m not kidding.”
“Me, either.”
He banked the Gator hard to the right and headed down an aisle of Chardonnay. I held on to the edges of my seat again as we now were driving along the contours of a steep slope. The vines were planted in rows eight feet apart, just wide enough for the Gator or our tractor to navigate. We puttered slowly down the aisle, examining the heavy clusters of translucent green-gold grapes.
I had forgotten how churchlike the vineyard was, silent but for the cicadas’ song, muted by the dense canopy of vines, and the soporific buzzing of honeybees drunk on fermenting grapes. Every so often a crow cawed, and I saw the shadow of its wingspan as it wheeled and turned above us.
It was probably at least the tenth time someone had looked over these vines since the last harvest. Pruning, spraying for pests, tending the trellises, overcropping if there were too many buds, and general fretting over the state of the grapes and the date to harvest were all reasons warranting a visit. Quinn shut off the motor, climbed out of the Gator, and clipped a cluster of grapes with the pruning shears. I joined him after retrieving my cane.
Grapes used in wine growing are smaller than table grapes and densely packed together in bunches. They’re also much sweeter because it’s the sugar that makes the alcohol. Quinn ate a few from the bunch he’d picked and gave me the rest. Although the drought was devastating for crops, gardens, and livestock, it was a blessing for a vineyard since the parched conditions meant the vines worked harder to find water, adding flavor and complexity found in the deeper mineral-rich soil. The longer they hung on the vine once the ripening process, or véraison, began, the richer and fuller the wine and the higher the alcohol content.
Unfortunately véraison didn’t last forever. At temperatures over ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit, the grapes shut down and stopped ripening all together. Today it was well over one hundred. I looked at Quinn, who was frowning as he chewed. It would be his call when we harvested, a nerve-wracking decision somewhere between a crap shoot and a matter of scientific judgment.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Let’s test Brix.”
He got the refractometer, a beaker, and a small piece of equipment that looked like a garlic press. Brix measured sugar content of the grapes, probably the most important factor in deciding when they were ready to pick. He crushed several grapes until a straw-colored liquid dripped into a beaker. Dozens of tiny black flies swarmed around us, coating the hood of the Gator like an ink spill. Yellow jackets, excited by the newly released sugar liquid, dive-bombed us and strafed the vines.
“These grapes have had plenty of hang time,” Quinn said swatting a bee, as he swirled juice in the flask. “I don’t think we ought to leave it any later than the day after tomorrow to harvest.”
He poured a few drops onto the refractometer and he closed the top. Then he pointed it at the horizon and looked through the eyepiece.
“Read that,” he said, handing it to me. I squinted toward the light.
“Twenty point eight. Or point six.”
“That’s what I got.” He shook his head. “If this heat keeps up, it could go to twenty-two in the next day or so. It’ll be too high for a Virginia Chardonnay. You don’t have the sunshine California does. Out there we got too much sugar to deal with. I prefer a wine on the drier side like you get here.”
“What if Bobby still has us shut out of the winery?” I swiped at more buzzing insects.
“I’m working on it.” He pulled a pair of half-glasses from the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and put them on. I watched while he did some calculations, then I got the two bottles of cold water I’d taken from the refrigerator. They were already tepid. I handed one to him and opened the other for myself.
“You got any idea where the root stock for these vines came from?” he asked. “And when they were put in?”