Bordeaux: The Bitter Finish

by Janet Hubbard

  “I’ve never tasted a rare wine,” Max said. “But, sure. Let’s begin my education.”

  After a brief tutorial, Ellen announced that she needed to sleep, reaching for her mask and moving her seat into the horizontal position. Max pulled the latest Cara Black mystery novel out of her backpack. Tucked in its pages was the last email that she had received from Olivier. Dated February 12, it read: I’m sorry I went incommunicado back in November. I was struggling with lots of things, and I’m afraid I was a lousy friend and correspondent. I trust that life is going well. I hope to hear from you. Fondest, Olivier. Max folded the piece of paper and stuck it in her jeans pocket. She had been hurt when he suddenly stopped emailing and, when he started again, she didn’t respond. She wished now that she had.

  Being with Joe on a daily basis hadn’t helped. They had to remain partners and live with their broken relationship each day, or one of them would be sent to a new precinct. In Max’s mind it was a little like staying in a bad marriage because neither spouse wanted to move out. Joe was cajoling one day, sarcastic the next, yet as work partners they still clicked, and were known for their boldness.

  Max pulled out her little notebook that she used as a journal and wrote: Note #1 for therapist: Why is my trust level around men at an all-time low? Note #2: Why do I carry a printout of an email from Olivier around with me like a lovesick teenager? Note #3: Once I get to France, will I have the courage to call the grandmother I’ve never met?

  She put her seat back and glanced over at Ellen, who was snoring lightly, her precious cargo on the floor between them. Max sighed and closed her eyes.

  Bordeaux, France, April 2012

  Chapter Two

  April 1

  Olivier Chaumont scanned the headlines in Sud Ouest, Bordeaux’s daily paper, while waiting for his assistant to show up. It was the start of the en primeur, when retailers and importers from places like the U.S., Hong Kong, Singapore, and Russia arrived to purchase “futures” after the first wine-tasting, then waited three years for the vintage to arrive in bottles. After the tasting, a courtier, or broker, connected with a négociant, or trader, who then sold it to an importer in another country. A distributor finally sold the wine to a retail store and other outlets.

  Spring 2011 had been extremely hot, with drought conditions. Summer had been like autumn, then autumn like summer again. Olivier knew what that meant. The wines would not be as round and voluptuous as they were in 2009 and 2010. Already critics were up in arms because the négociants were quoting the same prices for the inferior 2011 wine. It smacked of greed, which came as no surprise when Olivier considered the vast sums of money involved in the fine wine trade.

  Bordeaux had over centuries produced the most sought-after wines in the world, and in the global community the more established vineyards were selling at higher prices than ever before. Olivier had read about the rich Chinese who arrived with fistfuls of cash with the intention of purchasing the most precious vintages, which they were rumored to mix with soft drinks. Some had gone on to purchase châteaux. Before the Chinese arrived, the Americans exhibited their lust for the best vintages, driving prices up, and making the wines unaffordable for all but the most elite collectors.

  To add to these concerns, a new ratings system on the Right Bank demoted some winegrowers in the area while promoting others. The slightest changes in ratings could either raise profits significantly or bring a vineyard to ruin. A couple of vintners had sued over their loss of status, the most vocal being François Laussac. At the same time as Laussac’s vineyard was ranked lower by the appellation committee, Ellen Jordan had lowered his 2010 tasting score, and he had taken to publicly blaming her for all his woes. Olivier found him insufferable, but he had a lot of clout in Bordeaux.

  A light knock on the kitchen door, and Commissaire Abdel Zeroual entered, wearing the traditional blue Police Nationale uniform. Now thirty, Abdel had been involved in a bad crowd back in Paris as a teen. Olivier had taken him under his wing, shaped him up and gotten him a job out of the city. They had been together in Champagne, where Abdel’s grandmother, Zohra, housemaid to the Chaumont family, lived. Both had decided to move to Bordeaux when Olivier was assigned there.

  “Bonjour, Abdel, I was just reading about the en primeur event starting this evening. I predict there might be an arrest or two due to excessive drinking.”

  “To a teetotaler it sounds like a lot of fuss over nothing. Something smells delicious, by the way.”

  “It’s a joint effort of your grandmother’s and mine, using a recipe from an old friend named Bruno, the local police chief over in Saint-Denis.”

  Abdel sniffed the air. “Gigot?”

  “Oui. Lamb shanks cooked for hours in a bed of red onions and red wine. I have guests coming for dinner.” Olivier handed Abdel the newspaper. Page three contained an article on the American wine critic, Ellen Jordan. “She called me to say she had something to discuss that couldn’t wait. Of course the Laussac dinner is this evening, but she declined his invitation, a blasphemous act. I invited her here for dinner instead, an even more blasphemous act.”

  Abdel glanced up from the paper. “I saw on the news that her nose, like the critic Robert Parker’s, is insured for a million. She also said publicly that Monsieur Laussac’s wine was not much better than…piss.”

  Olivier winced. “No wonder she wasn’t interested in his posh gathering this evening. I’m curious what’s so urgent.” He got up and headed to the oven to check the lamb.

  Abdel stuck his head into the dining room. “She must be pretty special for you to go to all this trouble.”

  Olivier smiled at the sight of the table, covered with an ancient white linen tablecloth, fine Sevres porcelain, silver, and crystal. The centre de table, the yellow tulips that he had bought to display in the silver jardinière, an eighteenth-century relic he had found in a secondhand market, was perfect. He took a moment to admire the tapestried raspberry-colored walls that created intimacy, blending beautifully with the room-size Persian rug. He held up the bottle of wine he planned to serve at his dinner, and examined the label. A 1982 Cos Estournel. “I was wise to have purchased a case of this fifteen years ago,” he said.

  “At twenty-two you were buying cases of wine?” Abdel chuckled.

  “Wine is a living organism. When you taste, you are inhaling terroir, where you get a sense of the land that grew the grape, the rain that fed the roots, the wind that rustled the leaves, the sun that warmed the ripening fruit. It ends up on your tongue and finds a permanent place in your mind…”

  Abdel interjected, “Sorry for interrupting, Monsieur, but you wanted to talk about a plan of action for this evening?”

  “Oh...right. I want you to keep an eye on things in Saint-Émilion. Check for drunk drivers. Stop in at the Hôtellerie Renaissance and make sure the Laussac evening is going smoothly. At 7:30, escort Madame Jordan and her assistant out the back door of the hotel and bring them here.”

  “Why such secrecy?”

  “The press knows Ellen Jordan is in town. I’d prefer that they, and Laussac, not know her dinner plans, especially since my other guests are Pascal and Sylvie Boulin.”

  Abdel said, “It’s a rumor that Madame Jordan and Monsieur Boulin are in bed together with the promotion of his wine.”

  “She is the reason for his success, after all.”

  “And in bed together, literally. I read it on a local blog that pretends to be about the wine industry.”

  “That’s absurd,” Olivier said. “From what I understand about this style of writing, and it is very little, anyone can write whatever they want, true or not.”

  Abdel, accustomed to Olivier’s prejudice against bloggers, and the Internet in general, steered the conversation back to the dinner. “And the assistant Madame Jordan is bringing with her? A calm presence among all the renegades?”

  “You’re putting me in the renegade
category?”

  “Compared to your peers, yes. I’ll bet you five francs the assistant’s a woman.”

  Olivier laughed. They had been making wagers since Abdel was a teenager, ever since Olivier had taught him to play poker. It wasn’t in Olivier’s nature to be silly, but somehow he felt at ease enough to be so with Abdel. “I don’t see her as the type to travel with a doughy little secretary. A young man who has just awakened to his senses would be perfect for Madame Jordan.”

  Abdel gave a toothy grin. “So you think she’s a couguar, eh? I have to go. But don’t expect me to fit in with the people at the Laussac dinner.”

  “Meaning you’ll be the only sober one?”

  “The only Arab is more like it. I might get sent to the kitchen to wash dishes.”

  “I hope that’s a joke.”

  “I wish I could say it is. Don’t worry, I’m used to it.”

  “That makes it worse.” Olivier walked outside with Abdel.

  “This weekend is the perfect opportunity for us to launch Opération Merlot. Is everything in place?”

  Abdel came to attention. “Our agents have infiltrated all the export offices and are marking any suspicious cases with the letters OM on the bottom of the crate. A global alert has gone out to customs offices and importers where the wine is shipped.”

  “Not that any of them will read it, but let’s see if we get a bite,” Olivier said. “Our biggest deterrent is our revered, and I’m being sarcastic, Minister of Justice Philippe Douvier, along with Minister of the Interior Katia Alban. Both claim that my request to pursue an international counterfeit wine ring smacks of self-aggrandizement and will cost the government too much. Of course, they are trying to make my job obsolete.”

  Olivier liked being a juge d’instruction, or investigative magistrate. He had dealt with a lot of political corruption, but only occasionally took on major murder cases like the Champagne murders of the previous year. Appointed by a procureur to those cases, he was one of the few judges who relished solving a crime. One of Philippe Douvier’s jobs was to oversee the major cases, and Madame Alban was in charge of the police and gendarmes.

  “The people believe in the judges,” Abdel said. “Without them, who would keep an eye on the elected officials?”

  “But it’s our president who will determine the next three years for me. No worries if Hollande wins the election, but I’m not in Sarkozy’s good graces, as you know. I have to walk gingerly these next few weeks.” Recently Olivier had gone after Douvier for protecting a German suspect during the Champagne murder investigation. The German had brought such a large sum of cash into France that Olivier was sure he was intent on buying land on the periphery of Champagne that would quadruple in value once it was officially designated as a part of that region. It was a difficult accusation to prove, but Olivier fervently believed that people like this needed to be brought to justice.

  Abdel pointed to a small headline in the paper, “How about this article on the scam invented by that investment company, Bordeaux Advisory? Perhaps we should send it to the ministers.”

  “Are you referring to the company that bought wine for 4.75 euros a bottle and sold it to unsuspecting buyers for 1,100 a case?”

  Olivier felt this had paved the way for an even bolder move: a counterfeit operation in Bordeaux. Counterfeit wine was now a global scam costing up to thirty million dollars. The wine world had become more sensitive about counterfeiting since the arrest in California on mail and wire-fraud charges of an Indonesian named Rudy Kurniawan. There was more to it than met the eye. Back in 2008 Kurniawan allegedly consigned for auction eighty-four bottles of counterfeit wine, which he expected to sell for $600,000; since then, many had issued complaints that they had been ripped off by him. Olivier put some of the blame on the collectors, who wanted bragging rights for owning the most expensive bottles which they then hid away in their cellars, behaving more like hoarders than true oenophiles.

  Since moving to Bordeaux, Olivier had compiled a list of châteaux that had been robbed. The thieves no doubt thought that a simple way to make money would be to steal cases of the rare wine and sell it on the black market or through private sources. Or better yet, drink it, and fill it with cheaper wine and sell it for a fortune. What was also frustrating was that vineyard owners didn’t want the negative publicity surrounding an investigation, which thwarted authorities’ efforts to find and punish the culprits.

  Olivier’s thoughts were interrupted by an Etta James tune on the radio, reminding him of the last night he and Max McGuire spent together in Champagne. They were at the home of mutual friends when Etta James singing, “I Want to Make Love to You,” began playing. Olivier had spontaneously taken Max in his arms and led her out to the balcony to dance. He had been completely smitten with the American detective, who was his opposite in every way. All they shared, aside from their strong attraction to each other, was a mutual passion for solving crimes.

  Abdel said, “That song sounds familiar. I know. It was the night we closed the de Saint-Pern case…”

  “You have a good memory,” Olivier said, walking across the room to turn the radio off.

  “You never hear from Detective Maguire?”

  “Oh, you know, New York is a great…distance.” Olivier wondered if he looked a bit chagrined. When Max hadn’t responded to the email he had sent in February, he assumed she had moved on with her life.

  “I’m surprised,” Abdel said. “I received two postcards from her. She invited me to visit New York. She knows that’s my dream.”

  “Did you write back?”

  “Sure. I sent her a postcard of Bordeaux.” Olivier realized he must have been scowling, because Abdel said, “I won’t write to her anymore if you think it unprofessional.”

  “I don’t know why we’re discussing postcards. I’ll see you at eight.”

  Abdel waved, and left the house. Olivier picked up his cat, Mouchette, and absently stroked her head while watching Abdel climb into his car and drive away.

  Chapter Three

  April 2

  Sitting in a Louise XVI fauteuil chair in an elegant hotel suite, Max nervously jiggled her long legs as Ellen began tasting wine. Soon after they’d arrived at the Hôtellerie Renaissance, bottles began to arrive. If Ellen gave a first-growth a score of 95 or higher, a bottle might be priced as high as $1,000 or more. If she dropped the score below 90, the winemaker would begin losing profits. Ellen had adopted the scoring system started by her fellow American critic Robert Parker. Ninety-five to 100 was the equivalent of an A, and B was between 90 and 95; after that, no one paid much attention.

  The wine gurgled in Ellen’s throat before she spit it into a small bucket. “It’s interesting to note the caudalie.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “There isn’t a word in English that matches it. It’s the number of seconds we use to measure the aftertaste of a vintage. How long it lasts on the palate. The finish, as it were.”

  “Wine is a numbers game, right? The scores. The vintages. The number of minutes it’s supposed to breathe before you can drink it. The seconds of aftertaste. The ten years before you’re supposed to drink it.”

  Ellen chuckled. “You’ve just put a new slant on wine. I’ll quote you in my next newsletter.”

  She crossed the room and picked up the shiny aluminum case Max had toted onto the plane and set it down in front of Max. “Here’s a number for you. This magnum of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild could be worth over $30,000.” Max whistled through her teeth. “It was sold as part of a four-magnum lot to a friend of mine at a New York auction. A collector named Bill Casey with an ego the size of the Empire State Building, but I adore him all the same.”

  Max sat at full attention, listening.

  Ellen’s face grew troubled. “I tasted the first bottle in the lot, and declared it counterfeit. Casey called a mutual friend of ours
, Paula Goodwin, who is an auctioneer, to taste it, and she’s adamant that it was authentic.”

  “Don’t you need somebody objective to taste all four magnums?”

  “That’s the ideal solution, of course, but Bill won’t agree to it. I could go to the Major Theft Squad at the FBI, and they could confiscate the bottles, but Casey would never speak to me again.”

  “Imagine if none of the rest turned out to be counterfeit. Ninety-thousand down the tube, right?”

  “Exactly. I doubt that that’s the case, though.” Max turned her attention back to the specially contained magnum in front of her. “I made a deal with Bill,” Ellen continued. “The man who is hosting a small dinner this evening in my behalf not only has an incredible knowledge about wine, but he knows of a company in Bordeaux that has developed a high-tech method for testing wine for authenticity. I’ve decided to defer to him.”

  “What’s the deal you and Casey made?”

  “If this bottle is declared authentic, I won’t pursue it any further.”

  “Meaning you will be conceding that Paula Goodwin was right.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. What’s going on, Max, is that I’m convinced, as are others, that there’s a counterfeit ring operating under our noses. This is the third time this year I’ve been handed fake wine to taste.”

  “My dad could have put you in touch with the right people.”

  “I don’t want to create another Rudy Kurniawan scandal. I thought you and I could be on the qui vive while we’re here.”

  “Us? What are we on the alert for?”

  “Counterfeiters!” Ellen said in an impatient voice. “I have some ideas.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of unearthing a counterfeit scheme on your own?”

  “What do you think I brought you along for? You solved that big murder case in Champagne last year.”

  “I assisted the French in solving it…”