The Winemaker

by Noah Gordon

  Mendes listened attentively and asked an occasional question, his eyes wide with pleasure.

  Josep had tried not to pounce on the French winemaker before they had shared a decent period of welcoming, but he found he was unable to contain himself any longer.

  “Perhaps a glass of wine?” he asked.

  Mendes smiled. “A glass of wine would be very welcome.”

  He got two glasses and hurried to the cellar for a bottle. Mendes looked at the label and raised his eyebrows as he handed the bottle back to be uncorked.

  “See what you think of this, Monsieur,” Josep said as he poured. They made no move to drink to one another’s health. Both were aware this was a tasting.

  Mendes held up the glass to note the wine’s color, then moved it in gentle circles and studied the thin, translucent tracks left on the glass as the dark liquid swirled. He held it to his nose and closed his eyes. He took a sip and held the wine in his mouth, breathing in through parted lips, pulling air over it and into his throat.

  Then he swallowed and sat with his eyes closed, his face stony and serious. Josep could tell very little from his expression.

  He opened his eyes and swallowed another sip. Only then did he look at Josep.

  “Oh, yes,” he said softly.

  “It’s very fine, as I’m sure you know. It’s rich and fruity, isn’t it, yet dry enough…Tempranillo grapes?”

  Josep was exultant but he answered casually. “Yes, our Ull de Llebre. Plus Garnacha. And a smaller amount of Cariñena.”

  “It’s full-bodied but elegant, and its spirit stays with you long after you swallow.

  If I had made this wine, I should be exceedingly proud,” Leon Mendes said.

  “In a way, you did make this wine, Monsieur,” Josep said. “I tried to remember the way you went about it, every step.”

  “In that case, I am proud. Is any of it for sale?”

  “Déu, of course.”

  “I mean to me, in bulk.”

  “Yes, yes, Monsieur.”

  “Show me your vineyard,” Mendes said.

  They walked together along the rows, now and then picking a grape to test the growing ripeness and discussing optimal harvest times. When they came to the door in the ridge, Josep opened it and brought his guest inside.

  In the lantern light, Leon Mendes studied every detail of the cellar. “You dug this alone?”

  “Yes.” Josep told him about discovering the rock formation.

  Mendes looked at the fourteen 100-liter casks, plus the three 225-liter barrels. “This is all the wine you have made?”

  Josep nodded. “I had to sell the rest of my grapes for vinegar, in order to finance this.”

  “Did you make a second label?”

  “Just one barrel.” He kept a cup on the barrelhead for dipping, and now, to give Mendes a sample drink, he had to tilt the cask. “This is the dregs,” he warned, but Mendes tasted the wine judiciously and pronounced it a perfectly good vin ordinaire.

  “Well, let us return to our chairs in the shade,” he said. “There is much we need to discuss.”

  “Have you sold any of your good wine?”

  “Relatively few bottles to date, in the Sitges marketplace, from the back of my wagon.”

  When Josep told Mendes the amount he had charged, the older man sighed. “You have badly underpriced an excellent wine. Well.” He drummed his fingertips on his thigh as he thought.

  “I would like to buy eleven of your 100-liter casks. I will pay you twice the price you set when you sold the wine from your wagon.” He smiled at the expression on Josep’s face. “It is not generosity, it is the market price. In the years since you left Languedoc, phylloxera has raged. That little bastard of a flea has destroyed three-quarters of the vineyards of France. People are clamoring for drinkable wine, and prices are very high and ever rising. After paying for shipping and bottling, I shall sell your wine at an excellent profit.

  “Selfishly, I wish I could take every drop you have made, but I’m leaving you enough to fill about 900 bottles, and you should use them to begin to develop a clientele in your own territory.

  “To sell your fine wine, you must buy new bottles and bring your label to a printer. Obtain a small stall in one of the large roofed marketplaces in Barcelona, and price the wine at two and one-half times what you asked for it in Sitges. People of modest means shop in Barcelona as well as in the fishermen’s village, but in Barcelona there are also prosperous businessmen and a wealthy aristocracy who buy the best and always have their eyes open for a new thing. You will sell your wine quickly.

  “How much of a new pressing are you planning?”

  Josep frowned. “A bit more than last year, but I’ll sell most of my fermented juice for vinegar again. I need cash.”

  “You’ll make much more from wine than from juice for vinegar.”

  “…I don’t have enough cash to get through the year, Monsieur.”

  “I’ll advance the working money you need, in return for the exclusive right to two-thirds of your wine in barrels.”

  He looked at Josep. “I must tell you, Josep, that if you don’t accept my offer, you will soon have many others. I’ve bumped into half a dozen French vintners looking to buy wine here. From now on they will be a common sight in Catalonia and elsewhere in Spain.”

  Josep’s head was awhirl. “There are important decisions that must be made. Do you mind if I leave you for a short time and give it thought?”

  “Of course not,” Mendes said. “In the meantime, I’ll stroll through the rest of your vineyard and enjoy myself.” He smiled, and Josep thought Monsieur Mendes knew exactly how the interval would be spent.

  The house smelled richly of garlic and herbs and simmering chicken.

  Josep found Marimar in the kitchen, shelling beans, a smudge of flour on her nose. “The only chicken Angel was willing to sell was a tough old hen that had stopped laying eggs,” she said. “But it will be fine. I’m braising it very slowly with prunes in a little wine and oil, and we’ll have a spinach omelet with a sauce of tomatoes and peppers and garlic.”

  She sat with him and listened quietly to his description of Monsieur Mendes’ offer, asking few questions but absorbing everything Josep told her.

  “It’s a chance to establish ourselves as makers of wine. We should take advantage of the situation. The phylloxera, the French wine shortage…” He broke off and looked at her.

  He was apprehensive, because he knew she was fearful of change and found security in familiar patterns, even harmful ones.

  “You want to do it, don’t you?” she said finally.

  “Oh, yes. I really want to do it.”

  “Then we must do it,” Maria del Mar said, and she went back to shelling beans.

  It was a very nice dinner. When their visitor complimented Marimar and spoke with special warmth of the small pastries she had served with their coffee, she laughed and told him drily that they came from the local grocery, whose proprietor was an accomplished baker.

  When Francesc had said a drowsy goodnight and gone off to his pallet, their talk quickly returned to wine.

  “Is your own vineyard in danger?” Josep asked.

  Mendes nodded. “Phylloxera perhaps will reach us next year or the year after that.”

  “Is there nothing you can do?” Maria del Mar asked.

  “There is. The plague came to Europe in grapevines imported from America, but there is an American grapevine whose roots the aphids don’t eat. Perhaps the roots contain an element poisonous to the aphids, or maybe they simply taste very bad. When cuttings of our doomed vines are grafted onto these American roots, the aphids don’t bother them.

  “I’ve replaced 25 percent of my vines annually with grafted stock, for the past three years. It takes four years before one can get a crop. Perhaps,” Mendes said, “you may be interested in converting your own vineyard.”

  “But Monsieur, why would we?” Maria del Mar said slowly. “The phylloxera is a French p
roblem, no?”

  “Ah, madame, soon it will be half Spanish!”

  “Surely the aphid will not be able to cross the Pyranees,” Josep said.

  “Most experts believe it is inevitable,” Mendes said. “Aphids are not eagles, but on their own tiny wings they advance about 13 miles a year. If there are strong winds the insects can be blown far and wide. And they have help from man in their travels. Each year many people cross the border. Aphids can hide anywhere, beneath the collar of a coat, or in the mane of a horse. Perhaps—who knows—they may may already be somewhere in Spain.”

  “Then it appears that we have no choice,” Josep said, troubled.

  Mendes nodded in sympathy. “At any rate, it is something to be given careful thought,” he said.

  That night they put clean sheets on the bed in the Vall house, and Mendes slept there. The next morning he was up soon after Josep and Marimar, and he announced he would leave early for Barcelona and his train to France. While Maria del Mar prepared a breakfast tortilla, he and Josep walked through the vineyard together in the fresh morning air.

  Josep told Mendes he would buy 225-liter barrels and stack them on both sides of the cellar, on wide shelves.

  Mendes approved. “That will work for now, because you can ship the wine-filled barrels to me after a relatively short time. But wine prices will remain high for years, and the day is going to come when you will want every drop of your wine to be sold in your own bottles. When that happens you will need to put another cellar in your hill, at least the size of the one you have now.”

  Josep made a face. “All that digging.”

  Mendes stopped walking. “One thing you need to learn, perhaps the hardest and most important lesson. Sometimes you must trust other people to do what you want done. Once your vineyard reaches a certain size, you don’t have the luxury of doing all the work by yourself,” he said.

  After breakfast, Josep saddled the livery horse, and the two men exchanged abrazos.

  “Monsieur!” Marimar came hurrying from the masia with a sack containing a bottle of the good wine and a portion of tortilla to be eaten on the train. “I wish you a safe journey home, Monsieur.”

  Leon Mendes bowed. “Thank you. You and your husband have fashioned a wonderful bodega, Senyora,” he said.

  62

  The Disagreement

  Three weeks later, Josep and Maria del Mar had the first serious quarrel of their married life.

  Both of them had been working hard and had spent long hours discussing the problems of the bodega and their plans for the future

  They had decided to begin replanting their vineyard after the next year’s harvest. Each year for four years they would replace twenty-five percent of their vines with grafted stock, as Mendes had done in Languedoc. Josep liked the fact that this would give them this season and the following one in which to make wine from their entire production of grapes. After that, because the grafted plants would not bear a crop for four years, each year as they planted a new portion, their income would decrease by twenty-five percent. In the fourth year they would have no harvest at all, but with the new high prices for wine, they would have accumulated plenty of working capital, and they agreed to spend that cropless fourth year making improvements in the winery. That was the year in which they would have a second cellar dug, and not only the cellar—if they could afford it, they would also have a well dug somewhere on the Alvarez piece. With all the scrubbing and rinsing, to say nothing of irrigation when it was required, hauling water from the river was a constant waste of time and labor. A winery needed its own well.

  What a new and unfamiliar pleasure it was to have money to do things that were necessary!

  One evening Marimar returned from a walk in the village with a bit of gossip.

  “Rosa and Donat are searching for a house.”

  “Oh?” Josep said. He was only half listening, wondering when the bottles he had ordered would be delivered “Why do they need a house?”

  “Rosa wants to put tables in the living quarters above the grocery and make a proper cafe where they can serve real meals. She’s a wonderful cook and baker. You saw how Monsieur Leon loved her pastries.”

  Josep nodded absently.

  After all, he was telling himself, he would not need the bottles for many weeks. A more immediate need was for him to decide which sections of the vineyard to harvest first. To crush so many grapes, it was necessary to follow a clear harvesting plan. He would have to discuss it with Marimar.

  Maria del Mar broke into his meditation.

  “I would like to give them the Valls house.”

  “Who?”

  “Rosa and Donat. I would like to give Rosa and Donat the Valls house.”

  Josep snorted. “Not likely.”

  She stared at him.

  “Donat is your brother.”

  “And his wife would have taken my land. And my house. And my vines. And my bar of soap and my drinking cup. I will never forget that.”

  “Rosa was desperate. She had nothing, and she was trying to protect her husband’s inheritance. Our situations are so different. I think,” she said, “if you allow yourself to get to know her, you will like her. She’s interesting. A hard-working woman with nerve and lots of different abilities.”

  “To hell with her.”

  “She’s pregnant also,” she said.

  She waited and looked at him, but there was no reaction.

  “Listen to me, Josep, we have no other relatives. I want my children to grow up among family. There are three houses on the bodega. We live in this one, and we need Quim’s house for storage. But my old house is empty, and I want to give it to Rosa and Donat.”

  “It is no longer your house,” he said roughly. “I own half of it, just as you own half of this house and half of Quim’s house. And listen well: You are not to give away things that I own.”

  He saw her expression change. Her face became pinched and guarded and somehow older, a look she had worn when he had first moved back to Santa Eulália. He had forgotten about that expression.

  In a moment he heard her climbing the stone steps to the bed chamber.

  Josep sat there, brooding.

  He cared for her so deeply. He remembered the vow he had made to himself, his promise that in act or word he would never treat her cruelly, as she had been treated by others before him. He saw that he had the power to injure her, perhaps even more than those other bastards.

  As he sat there feeling rotten and self-accusitory, he replayed her words in his mind and sat straighter in his chair.

  Had she really said that Rosa was pregnant, also?

  If so, had she misspoken? Or could it be that Rosa really was pregnant also!

  He left the chair and bounded up the stairs to go to his wife.

  A few days later, on a Thursday morning, a freight wagon pulled by two pairs of horses came. Josep directed the driver to Quim’s house and helped the man carry forty-two slatwood cases of bottles inside and up the stairs. Stacked in two layers, they took up almost half of what had been Quim’s small bedchamber. When the driver left, Josep opened one of the crates and took out a gleaming and virginal bottle, identical to all the others waiting for him to fill them with wine.

  He heard voices as he left the storage house. Drawn by the sound, he walked to the Valls house and found Maria del Mar with his brother. “When you go to sleep and when you wake up,” Marimar was saying, “in this masia you will hear the river sounds.”

  “Hola,” Josep said, and Donat returned the greeting awkwardly.

  “I was telling Rosa this morning,” Marimar said, “that it would look so pretty if we could plant more wild roses close to this house. It would be nice to do that near our house as well, Josep. Do you think you’ve already moved too many roses from the river banks?”

  “It’s a long river,” Josep said. “I might have to walk a while, but there are plenty of roses.”

  “I’ll go with you to dig them,” Donat said quickly.


  “Rosa loves the flat pink roses,” Maria del Mar said. “She can have all of those. I want the little white ones for our house.”

  Donat laughed. “We’ll have to wait until they bloom in April to tell which is which,” he said, but Josep shook his head.

  “I can tell the difference. The pink ones make a higher bush. We can get them in the winter, when there is more free time.”

  Donat nodded. “Well, I’d best get back to Rosa and the store. I just wanted to take a look at the row of stones that has to be repaired at the back of the house.”

  “What row of stones?” Josep asked.

  They moved to the rear of the house, and Josep saw and counted eight good-sized stones that lay scattered on the ground.

  “I knew there was one loose stone in that wall,” Maria del Mar said. “I’ve been meaning to mention it to you, but—what caused this?”

  “I think it was the Guardia,” Josep said. “They must have noticed the loose stone and removed it, then pried away the others to make certain that nothing had been hidden here. They really don’t overlook the smallest thing.”

  “I’ll repair it,” Donat said, but Josep shook his head. “I’ll do it this afternoon,” he said. “I like stonemasonry.”

  Donat turned to go. “Thank you, Josep,” he said.

  For the first time, Josep took a good look at him.

  He saw a portly, affable person. Donat’s eyes were clear, his face was calm, and he seemed to have a sense of purpose as he prepared to go back to work he enjoyed.

  His brother.

  Something within Josep—something small, cold, and heavy, an icy sin he had carried unknowing in his very core—melted and vanished.

  “For nothing, Donat,” he said.

  Coolness came to the village from far away, from the mountains, from the sea. Would the wind howl and destroy? Would it carry hail or tiny specks with wings? Autumn rain fell three times, but each time it was a mercy—gentle rain. Most days the sun still shone during the hours of light to warm away the chill brought by night, and the grapes continued to ripen.