Tangled Vines

by Janet Dailey

  Claude scrambled up as quickly as he could, but it was too late. There she stood, her blue eyes traveling over him in frank curiosity.

  “And who are you?” she asked.

  Claude faced her squarely and pulled himself up to his full height, which for his age of eleven was considerable, “I am called Claude Henri Broussard.” He darted a quick glance at the baroness, fearing a reprimand, but she seemed more amused than angry. Suddenly, he desperately wanted to have stature in the eyes of this beautiful woman, and he added, very importantly, “My grand-pere is the maitre de chai here at Chateau Noir.”

  “He is.” She looked suitably impressed. “And your father?”

  His glance fell as he fought a tightness in his throat. “He is dead, Madam. Killed in the war.”

  The baroness inserted, very softly, “He was gassed in the trenches. A fever took his maman soon afterward. He lives with his grand-pere now.”

  “I am sorry, Claude.” The beautiful madam looked at him with gentle eyes. “My father died when I was young like you. It was a very painful time for me. Sometimes it still hurts when I think of him.”

  He felt his heart swell that she would tell him this, that she would understand what made his voice gruff. “When I am a man,” Claude told her, “I shall one day be maitre de chai. My grand-pere is teaching me all the things I must know.”

  “Then you must know a great deal about the vineyards.” She clasped her hands in front of her, her gloves white as pearls against the pale pink of her dress.

  Claude attempted one of the august nods his grand-pere so often gave. “I know about the vineyards and the winery. My grand-pere often consults with me in the tasting of the wines.”

  He had stretched the truth a bit with that one, but he had been asked to taste the young wines on several occasions. And each time his grandfather had sought his opinion. Perhaps not his opinion, but he had been questioned on what he tasted and instructed in the things to look for.

  “How fortunate that I have met someone so knowledgeable as you. My husband and I will be spending several weeks here. Perhaps your grandfather will allow you to be our guide, show us through the vineyards and the winery.”

  There was such a swelling of pride in his chest, Claude thought he would burst. “I will ask him.” He bobbed his head quickly to both the madam and the baroness then tore off toward the chai, the long, low, imposing building where the wine was stored in giant barrels until it had matured enough to be bottled. The place where he knew he would find his grand-pere.

  Permission was not immediately given. His grand-pere seemed to doubt that the request was a serious one, and said he must check first with the baron. It wasn’t until later that evening that his grand-pere told Claude to present himself at the chateau promptly at ten the following morning.

  Dressed in his cleanest shirt and best pants, his unruly hair slicked to his head with water, Claude arrived at the chateau precisely at ten. He was excited and nervous. He wasn’t sure which made him more nervous: his glimpse of the gilt-and-marble grandeur of the great galerie when the door opened; or the sight of the baron, slim and handsome in his tweed country jacket and fair-isle sweater, and the realization that he intended to accompany them.

  But it was the beautiful madam who had his heart and his attention. Though he had thought it impossible, she looked even more beautiful today in a pale blue dress that made her hair appear blacker and her eyes darker than the rare and rich blue of the marble on the floor of the galerie.

  It was difficult to tear his eyes from her, especially when she smiled at him and inquired after his health. Reddening, Claude mumbled a reply and turned to the baron, his patron.

  “I thought to begin in the vineyards, if that is satisfactory with you,” Claude said.

  The baron withheld comment and deferred to his guests, leaving the choice to them. The madam spoke briefly to her husband in their language, then said to Claude, “Great wines have their beginnings in the vineyard. It is the place for us to begin, too.”

  That morning the vineyard seemed to know it had important guests and put on its brightest emerald dress for the occasion. Long ago his grand-pere had taught Claude how to distinguish the variety of a vinifera vine by the shape of its leaves. Eager to show off his knowledge, he stepped quickly into the meter-wide space between the vine rows.

  “This is the youngest of our vineyards. It has been planted to the cabernet sauvignon,” he began. “You can tell this by -”

  But the madam wasn’t listening. She had bent to scoop up a handful of the turned soil between the rows, and now held out her gloved hand to her husband, showing him rough soil cupped in her palm. Although Claude couldn’t understand what she said to him, he caught the marveling tone in her voice.

  Finally she said to him in French, “We had not expected to find the soil so poor.”

  He thought she was being critical and sought to explain. “It is true the soil is poor for the growing of other crops, but it is the best for the growing of wine grapes. It is as my grand-pere says – the water drains quickly from it and the vine roots must grow deep to find the moisture and nutrients they need. It is very important they should have deep roots. It is the way they stay strong and healthy when there is too little rain here, or too much. It is also important for the vines to bask in the sun from morning all the way to night.” With a sweep of his arm, he indicated the whole vineyard, located to receive full sun all day long.

  “I see that.” She let her glance run over the vineyard, then brought it immediately back to the coarse soil in her palm. She stirred it with the tip of a gloved finger. “The land we own in America is rough and gravelly like this.”

  She seemed to find this significant, so Claude nodded. But it was the word America that he seized on, seeing it as another opportunity to impart his knowledge to her.

  “You have heard of the phylloxera, non?” He referred to the tiny, louse-like insect that attacked the roots, ultimately killing the vine plant.

  In his grandfather’s youth, the phylloxera plague had ravaged the Continent, destroying two and a half million acres of French vineyards alone, eventually reaching all the way to Australia. The deadly invader had come to them from America, but Claude didn’t want to offend the madam by mentioning that.

  She started to shake her head in denial, then her husband said something. They conversed briefly. “My husband tells me that his grandfather lost his vineyards on our land to this plague. He replanted many of them, but not all.”

  “Did he tell you the way it was done so the phylloxera would not attack the roots of the new plants and kill them as well?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  His mouth curved in silent pleasure that he could be the one to tell her. “It was discovered the phylloxera did not attack the roots of certain American grapevines. Cuttings were taken from our vinifera plants and grafted onto the American roots. A great many people believed this meant fine wines could no longer be made from these grapes that gained their nourishment from American roots. But my grand-pere,” Claude said proudly, “he did not agree with such talk. He said the vines would know the sod was French even if the sap that brought the taste of it to them traveled through American roots.” He paused and echoed the words his grand-pere had spoken so often. “It is all in the earth, Madam. Great wines can be made only from great grapes, and the earth gives the grapes their greatness. Of course, they also need the correct weather and care,” he said, adding the other two items in the essential trinity. “God provides the weather and we provide the care.” Claude made it sound as if he were personally responsible for the latter.

  She didn’t dispute him. “I have no doubt you give the vines very good care.”

  Swelling a bit at her praise of him, he continued the tour of the vineyard. He pointed out the distinctive shape of the cabernet sauvignon’s leaf, showed her a flower cluster and the tiny grapes
that were forming in places, and explained that these vines were enjoying their fifth summer of growth and that this year promised to be the first one in which the grapes would have the potential to produce a great wine.

  Claude searched his mind for every scrap of knowledge his grand-pere had taught him about the vines. Occasionally the patron inserted a comment, although for the most part, he allowed Claude to do all the telling.

  Too soon the sun crested and began its downward arc, time for the midday meal and the tour to end. With reluctance, Claude faced the madam and prepared to take his leave of her.

  She smiled at him. “Thank you, Claude, for a very informative tour. Perhaps tomorrow, if you are free, you can take us through the winery.”

  He hesitated and glanced at his patron, wishing he would be the one to tell the madam. But the baron merely looked at him with a knowing eye and waited for Claude to speak.

  He felt awkward, not at all certain how to bring up the subject, and worried that he would upset her. “Forgive me, Madam,” he began anxiously. “But the fragrance you wear. It is very lovely,” he inserted hastily. “But, my grand-pere, he is very strict. He allows no strong scents, no perfumed hair creams to be worn, nothing that might taint the young wines.” He saw the flush of color come into her cheeks and immediately dropped his gaze, mumbling, “I am deeply sorry, Madam. Were it not for that, I should be happy to show you the winery.”

  “Does your grand-pere have any objections to the clean smell of soap?”

  He lifted his head, hardly daring to hope. “Non.”

  “Tomorrow, I promise, my husband and I will smell of nothing else.” Her voice was cool, but her look was kind. “Will that do?”

  “Oui, Madam.” Claude beamed back at her. “It will please ease my grand-pere very much that you understand. Many times he has told me the wine must always come first; people and their feelings, second.”

  She seemed to consider his words carefully for several long moments, then nodded to him and took her husband’s arm to start toward the chateau. Claude backed away, then turned and raced to the small cottage on the property that he shared with his grand-pere.

  Claude was much too excited to eat and his stew grew cold while he told his grand-pere of all that had happened, and everything the madam had said. It mattered little that his grand-pere shared neither his excitement nor enthusiasm.

  The next morning, he again presented himself at the chateau. This time Claude took his same group to the old stone winery. Progress was much slower on this day. The madam’s husband had many questions, necessitating the translation of both the questions and their answers. Fortunately his grand-pere was on hand to respond to the more technical ones.

  After the midday meal the tour was resumed at the chai to sample some of the young wines. The temperature inside was cool, the thick walls maintaining a constant of fifty-five degrees. Claude stood by while his grand-pere climbed a short ladder to reach the top of one of the large oak barrels lying on its side. Using a wooden mallet, he knocked the bung from its hole and thrust a long tube of glass, called a wine thief by some, into the barrel. He closed the top of the tube with his horny thumb and extracted a tall column of purple wine. With a deftness that came from a half century of practice,, his grand-pere released a precise measure into each glass.

  For a moment Claude was afraid his grand-pere would not prepare a glass for him. Just as he started to shift uneasily, his grand-pere offered one to him, treating him as a grown man – just as the madam did.

  With glasses in hand, the baron took over and went through the tasting process step by stop in his faulty, heavily accented English that Claude couldn’t follow. Instead he copied his grand-pere, as he always had.

  First Claude studied the color of the wine. It was a shade of purple more red than blue, which indicated its youth. Cupping his hands around the glass, he warmed the wine to the optimum temperature and moved the glass in a vigorous, circular motion to agitate the wine and release its vapors. He stuck his nose in the glass and breathed them.

  This was the wine’s bouquet, which consisted of a variety of odors. He was pleased when the madam detected so many separate smells oak, definitely cedar, a fruitiness that reminded her of black currants more than grapes, and a trace of violets. Even his grand-pere appeared to be impressed that she had such a sensitive nose.

  Finally Claude took a sip of the wine, drawing it into his mouth in a thin stream, stroking it with his tongue, then using his tongue to push it into every crevice of his mouth, chewing it the way a taster did, the way his grandfather had taught him. It was strong and hard, yet without the balance it needed, Claude thought.

  At this point, his grand-pere had always had him spit out the wine. But nothing had been provided into which he could spit it. Claude looked around uncertainly, then swallowed it in a noisy gulp. The taste of it stayed in his mouth a long time. His grand-pere would have said it had a long finish, he thought, remembering the correct term.

  Both the madam and her husband took their time in tasting the wine in their glasses. Afterward, she briefly placed her fingers against her lips, then lowered them.

  “It is strong,” she told the baron. “It made my mouth pucker a little.”

  “That is the tannin you taste,” the patron explained. “It is what gives the wine a long life. Yet there cannot be too much or it will taste bitter, like tea that has steeped too long.”

  “I can see that.” The madam nodded, then translated the baron’s remarks to her husband.

  In the days and weeks that followed, Claude saw the madam frequently. She and her husband were always somewhere about, looking at this, asking questions about that, curious about everything around them. Sometimes Claude accompanied them; at others, he could only watch while he performed some task his grandfather had given him.

  But he learned much about the madam, most of it from his conversations with her and the rest from other workers on the property. In America, she lived in a place called California where inferior American wines had once been made, before that country passed an absurd law that forbade the making and selling of wine, or any alcoholic beverage.

  She had become friends with the baroness some years ago when they both had attended the same school in Switzerland. According to gossip from the house servants, she had brought her two young sons to France with her; the youngest was called Gilbert, and the oldest had an English name Claude found difficult to pronounce Jonathon. He had never seen them. He was told the madam had brought along a woman to look after them and see to their needs.

  Also he learned that both the madam and her husband believed the day would soon come when it would be legal again in their country to make wine. When it did, they would make wine from grapes grown on their own California land that would rival the best wines from the great chateaux of France. An impossibility, of course, their soil was not French. Yet Claude secretly hoped the beautiful madam would fulfill her dream.

  Still, as much as he had learned about them, as much as he adored the madam, he doubted he would ever understand these Americans. They were very different from the guests who usually stayed at the chateau. They were definitely very different from his patron, the baron.

  The patron would regularly inspect the vineyards, examine the vines for disease, the grapes for ripeness. Just as often, he came to the chai and consulted with Claude’s grand-pere on the wines aging in the barrels and bottles, checking their progress. But for the patron to associate with the workers, to be at their side hour after hour, to learn their work, to do it himself – it was unthinkable!

  Yet the madam’s husband did it almost as a matter of course. As vintage drew near and the time came for the old leaves to be snipped away to let more sun reach the ripening grapes, he was in the vineyards with the workers, watching what they did, finding out why they selected certain leaves over others, then copying them.

  His French was so
bad, his sentences inter-spliced with English, that most times the madam was with him. Claude thought she took as much interest in the work as her ruddy-faced husband.

  Even though he didn’t know what to make of her husband, like the rest of the workers Claude grew to like him. Not as much as the madam, of course. She was special; her husband was unusual. He wanted to do everything, know everything.

  On the dawn of the morning when the first grapes were to be picked, her husband arrived at the vineyard in shirtsleeves. He collected a basket and a knife with a curved blade from the foreman and went to his assigned row. More astonishing than that, he worked as long as the other pickers did.

  The next day, instead of going to the vineyards, he went to the winery and learned how the grapes were stemmed and crushed. The madam stayed with him the whole time, conveying his endless questions to Claude’s grand-pere and relating the answers.

  Day after day it went on like that. Many times Claude’s grand-pere grumbled that the man was a nuisance a plague to him. But Claude had seen the glint of approval, of respect, in the eye of his grand-pere and he had heard the patience in his voice when he explained something, frequently in lengthy detail, to Monsieur Rutledge.

  Yes, his grand-pere liked this man. And he liked the madam, too, though he never said so.

  When crush was over and the vineyards donned their red and gold coats of autumn, Claude expected the couple to leave. Yet they stayed, although a few times, they did, as they had on occasions during the summer, climb into their touring car and motor off to Paris or to visit another winery in the Medoc. Why? Claude didn’t know. There was none that made better wines than Chateau Noir. Some were as good, perhaps, but none was better.

  That winter they were on hand for the first pruning. What a sight it was to see the tall monsieur bent almost double as he worked, cutting away the unproductive wood from the vine. At the end of the day he showed the madam the blisters on his hand, with some pride in them, and both laughed.