A Taste for It

by Monica McInerney

  Maura hardly took a word in as Gerald talked for almost twenty minutes about the twinning between the two regions and spoke in great detail about his most recent trip to Australia. She smiled politely at his story about his first confrontation with a kangaroo and how he had coped with the hot South Australian summers. By the looks on some of the faces in the front rows they had heard some of these stories a few times too.

  Maura took the opportunity to try to count the number of people in the hall, trying to guess which of them would be likely wine-tasters and which had come along to learn about the Clare Valley. She noticed a few elderly women in one of the front rows, thinking with relief that they were unlikely wine drinkers. Then she noticed one of them nudge her partner, point to the table of bottles at the back of the hall and practically lick her lips.

  She thought gratefully of the trial run in Westport. The patter she had rehearsed to lead into each slide had seemed to go down well. Mind you, the way Gerald was introducing her, tonight’s audience was probably just expecting her to stand on stage and hurl bottles of wine out into the auditorium for them to catch.

  In a sudden fog of nerves, she heard Gerald introduce her, and she stood up with shaking legs and walked toward the microphone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Maura gazed out at all the faces looking expectantly up at her and took a deep breath.

  “Hello, everyone, and thank you all very much for coming along tonight. From what Gerald’s told me, you all have a pretty good idea already, but I thought I’d start my talk with a quick geography lesson, just to give you some idea of where Clare Valley is in the general scheme of things.”

  She clicked the slide remote-control button and turned around, expecting to see her first slide of a map of Australia, showing Lorikeet Hill’s location in South Australia.

  Instead it was an upside-down image of herself and Nick standing in front of Lorikeet Hill Winery Café. A few people in the audience started to snigger.

  Maura’s heart seemed to stop. She must have put the slides back in the wrong order after the talk in Westport, she thought in horror. In desperation, she ad-libbed.

  “Well, the simplest way is just to remind you that Australia is indeed the land down under. From your point of view, this is how we look, upside down at the bottom of the world.”

  She was rewarded with a few more laughs.

  “What I’d like to do tonight is briefly explain what Lorikeet Hill wine is all about.” She clicked the button, expecting the next slide in her run-down of the winemaking process, an artistic photo showing rows of vineyards, bursting with fruit.

  Instead it was a slide from the Gourmet Weekend, showing a gang of grinning people holding what was obviously not their first glass of red wine up to the camera.

  With a cold rush down her back, and in a split second, Maura realised immediately what had happened. Carla must have meddled with her slides while she and Dominic were taking photos at the turf bog.

  Maura had to stop herself swearing aloud. That little bitch, she thought. By God, she and Dominic made some double act. She thought quickly. She could hardly ask everyone to stop and wait while she did the laborious task of sorting the slides into the right way and the right order in the carousel.

  She’d have to wing it. “Yes,” she said, looking desperately at the slide. “That’s exactly what Lorikeet Hill is all about. It’s about good times, good friends and the taste of good wine.”

  She turned the slide projector off with a flourish, attempting to mask her shaking hands and turned toward the audience again.

  “You were probably all expecting a scientific lecture on the science of how wine is made. And I’m sorry to disappoint you. But it’s not really that complicated. We take grapes, we crush them, the juice ferments, we blend it and keep our fingers crossed nothing goes wrong. Then we bottle it and you drink it. That’s really simplified, of course, but the process is basically the same the world over, whether you’re talking Old World, New World, Australian wine, Chilean wine, God knows, maybe one day even Hawaiian wine.”

  Thanks for my one feeble joke, Cormac, she thought in relief, as a few people in the crowd laughed.

  “What I’m here to do tonight is to tell you why I think Australian wine, and especially Lorikeet Hill wine, is special.”

  She leaned back against a high stool beside the microphone, to give herself a relaxed look but in reality to stop her legs from shaking so violently.

  “My brother makes it, and he is genuinely passionate about it. I think that helps. He’s a great drinker, so that’s a good first step. But he also loves the smells and the different tastes and the whole mystery and magic of it.

  “One of the mysteries to me has always been why grapes grown in one part of South Australia produce wine that tastes completely different than wine made from grapes from another part of Australia or the rest of the world. Orange juice, or apple juice or tomato juice generally tastes the same, no matter where the fruit comes from.

  “I think that maybe it helps that the Clare Valley is a very beautiful part of the world. I hadn’t really realised how much I loved it until I went away from it for five years and lived in Sydney.

  “I had my own idea of what Ireland would look like and you probably have your own idea of what Australia does, or should, look like. Most of South Australia is made up of long straight roads through flat, dry land. It’s so different to the scenery I’ve seen the last couple of days as we drove through Galway, Sligo and Mayo and across the country from Dublin.

  “I’m sure you’re all used to it and hardly even notice how beautiful it is here. But as I look at it, I find myself thinking about all the thousands and thousands of people who have lived and worked and slept and picked over every plot of land in this country over many, many centuries.”

  Maura took a sip of water, before continuing. “Because that’s what always strikes me about South Australia, and the whole of Australia. Its isolation and emptiness and mystery. There’s a long Aboriginal history that we will probably never know everything about. And there are still places you can go there that maybe only you and one other person have ever stood on.

  “I think that isolation and mystery helps make our wine taste different to French wine or German wine. And of course we’ve only been producing wine in Australia for less than two hundred years, just a blink of an eye compared to Europe.

  “And that is part of it, of course. When the first winemakers in the Clare Valley, stuck on the other side of the world using techniques from thousands of miles away, forgot something, they couldn’t just turn to someone and say: sorry, what was that again? So they had to come up with their own ideas. And we’ve kept doing that.

  “That explains a lot of the taste of Australian wine. But I also reckon the land itself has a lot to do with it. It’s known a whole ancient civilisation, has had sun belting down on it for thousands of years, but very few people because of its sheer size. It’s seen drought and bushfires and all sorts of strange animals running across it. But despite all that there is still something untouched about it. Something bold.

  “And I reckon it’s what’s in the land that’s coming through in our wine. A boldness, mixed with a lot of mystery, brought together by science.”

  There was a pause, and Maura realised with a shock that she actually had everyone’s attention. She blinked a couple of times, suddenly feeling as though she’d been in a trance. She hadn’t realised this was what she thought until she had heard herself say it.

  She smiled suddenly. “Maybe you can help me solve another mystery tonight. Why isn’t Australian wine outselling Guinness in Ireland?”

  Everyone laughed. The mood was broken.

  She took a deep breath and looked around. “Well, there’s my theory on Australian winemaking. Now you should find out what it tastes like – if my assistants tonight are ready for you all?” She looked toward the back of the hall where two young men the Wine Society had roped in to assist with the tastings were w
aiting behind a long table covered with wineglasses. They nodded nervously.

  “For those of you who had expected a more detailed explanation of winemaking, please come up and say hello to me afterwards and I’ll do my best to answer your questions. And those of you who want to see the real thing, please take Gerald’s word for it, and accept this as my invitation. Thank you for making me welcome in your Clare and I’ll look forward to welcoming you all one day to my Clare.”

  She hardly heard Gerald’s appreciative thank you, or his exhortation to everyone in the hall to line up in an orderly fashion.

  She wanted to run outside and shout at the moon in sheer relief that the speech was over. Now that the adrenalin rush had gone, she felt her anger about Dominic’s wine-switching and Carla’s slide sabotage rise again. She could feel the damp curls at the back of her neck, where she had perspired from nervousness. And it wasn’t over yet.

  The queue for the tasting was snaking around the hall. Maura stepped carefully down the stairs where Rita was waiting for her, with a warm smile and a hug of congratulations.

  “That was terrific – well done! What a shame about the slides, did you drop them on the way here or something?” Rita asked.

  “Nothing so simple, I’m sorry to say,” Maura answered through gritted teeth, looking around for Dominic. She decided against filling Rita in on the whole situation just yet. She’d expected the imminent shortage of wine to be a more immediate worry for Rita, though the Irish girl seemed completely relaxed.

  Maura looked around again. The room was quite festive by now. Everyone seemed to have had at least one free glass and she watched in amazement as great numbers of them went up to the table at the far end of the hall to buy a bottle or two to take home, at the special discounted price.

  Through the queue of people heading toward the tasting table, she could see that Dominic was going into a back room and bringing out another box of bottles. Surely they had used up the stock by now, she wondered, unless he was performing a Wedding of Cana miracle and turning water into wine.

  As she watched, he went back into the room and brought out another half dozen bottles.

  “That room’s like the magic pudding,” she said aloud.

  “What’s that?” Rita asked with a distracted air, as she watched for the arrival of another local reporter.

  “It’s a famous Australian children’s story – no matter how much you ate from this special pudding bowl, it was never empty. How on earth can there be any left to sell?” Maura asked. She was astonished there had been enough for so many tastings, let alone any sales at all.

  “Dominic said he would look after it,” Rita said in an undertone, before setting eyes on the reporter and going over to talk to her.

  Maura watched puzzled as a young man walked in through the door carrying yet another box of wine. She wasn’t sure, but from a distance it almost looked like The Glen trademark on the side of the box. The light was poor, but she was definitely sure it wasn’t Lorikeet Hill’s logo. She watched as Dominic took the box and handed the man what looked like a small bundle of notes.

  No, she thought in shock. Surely he couldn’t have done that as well. He had known a huge crowd was expected tonight and must have guessed they would run out of Lorikeet Hill wine. He’d probably discussed it with Sylvie Rogers last night and they’d seen it as the perfect opportunity to sell The Glen. By the looks of the crowd here tonight, no one really minded what brand of Australian wine they were drinking. From the queue it also looked like they were keen to buy as well.

  Her temper rose like a geyser. Excusing herself from the group around her, she practically marched over to the wine-tasting table.

  “I have to talk to you,” she hissed at Dominic. He looked up calmly from his unloading and followed her into the back room.

  “Hello again, Maura,” he said calmly.

  She turned to him in a fury. Her embarrassment and near-disaster on stage overwhelmed her again and she could barely spit out the words.

  “What the hell is going on here? First Carla does her best to sabotage my talk – and don’t tell me you didn’t know anything at all about her vicious little games. Then you trick all the Galway winesellers into displaying The Glen wines. And now you’re running some sort of black market at Lorikeet Hill’s expense. You know how important this trip is to our business. You’re the one who suggested a truce – but it seems that making money at someone else’s expense is just too hard a habit to break.”

  Dominic’s eyes glittered at her but she was too worked up to notice the warning. His voice was very quiet and his body very still. “What are you talking about? What sabotage?”

  “Carla did her best to wreck my talk tonight with her fun and games with my slides. And you’ve ruined everything for Lorikeet Hill in Galway with your ‘business’ with Sylvie Rogers. Now, I don’t give a damn about whatever weird relationship you and Carla have or what sort of pact with the devil you’ve made to make yourself rich, but leave me, my brother and our business out of it, do you hear me?”

  Dominic interrupted her. “No, you hear me. I don’t know anything about deals with Sylvie Rogers or your slides or what Carla did or didn’t do. Or any trickery, or black market. And you don’t know anything – anything – about my relationship with Carla, so keep your theories to yourself.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “They’re all just theories, are they? So are you going to tell me you don’t know anything about this sudden mysterious arrival of carton after carton of wine either? It’s pretty obvious that you saw another handy opportunity to make a quick dollar. I saw you give that man some money.”

  Rita came in at that moment and heard the last of Maura’s speech.

  “Isn’t he brilliant?” she said, smiling up at Dominic. “So he’s filled you in on his whole brainwave, then. He wouldn’t even let me tell you anything about it, in case you got worried or it made you nervous about tonight’s talk. Thanks again, Dominic – you really got us out of a fix. And I’d say Lorikeet Hill has made some record sales tonight, Maura.”

  Maura felt a familiar sinking feeling. Rita mistook her shock for bewilderment.

  “Ah, Dominic, have you kept it to yourself?” Rita laughed. She turned to Maura to explain. “When Dominic heard about the big number of people expected tonight he realised before I did that we’d have a shortage of Lorikeet Hill wine. He got on to every off-licence and pub and restaurant within an hour’s drive of here and arranged for taxi drivers to collect and bring as much of your wine as they could. He even cleared all the Lorikeet Hill wine out of Galway himself, and brought it all along tonight. You saved the day, Dominic.”

  Maura closed her eyes slowly, hoping that when she opened them she would be a very, very long way away. Her wish didn’t come true. Looking through the door into the busy hall, she noticed this time that while the boxes on the floor were all sorts of different brands and wineries, every bottle of wine being sold on the table had Fran’s distinctive Lorikeet Hill bird logo.

  “Our only problem now is how to deal with a temporary shortage of Lorikeet Hill wine in the west of Ireland, but I’m sure we’ll cope, eh, Maura?” Rita asked with a grin.

  “Oh, I’m sure we will,” Maura answered in a very small voice.

  She looked up at Dominic, shocked, and trying to send him a heartfelt apology with her eyes. She fervently wished Rita gone, so she could at least try to thank him and attempt to say sorry. But she knew from the look in his eyes that she had gone too far for a simple apology.

  Rita was beaming with the success of the evening, and insisted that Maura and Dominic leave her to look after the clean-up herself. “Dominic, take that poor girl for a glass of champagne – she’s got plenty to celebrate after all.”

  Champagne would be great, Maura thought. If I could just get this foot out of my mouth so I could taste it.

  Dominic waited outside the door while Maura fetched her coat and scarf. As the rain started again, Maura gathered the
soft wool of the scarf around her, glad to have something to hide behind. Her temper had deflated like an empty balloon, and she felt full of shame about getting it all so wrong.

  They walked along the now empty streets for nearly five minutes in silence, until Maura couldn’t stand it any more.

  “Dominic, please listen to me. I jumped to the wrong conclusion about you and the wine and I was upset about the slides and I took it out on you, I’m sorry. I have a terrible temper and I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  As she spoke, they ducked under a shop awning to escape a sudden blustery downpour. Dominic didn’t answer.

  “Dominic?” Maura implored softly, putting her hand on his arm to stop him from walking away.

  She was taken aback when he pushed it away as though it burnt him. His eyes glittered at her, the irises looking black in the light from the shop window. He looked at her for what seemed like long minutes.

  “I don’t want to hear it, Maura,” he almost whispered, his Irish accent now much stronger than any American tone. “You’ve said what you think of me and Carla. I don’t think there’s much more to add.”

  “But your relationship with Carla is none of my business, I don’t know what made me say it.”

  “No, it isn’t any of your business . . .” he said softly, his voice not as harsh as his words. She was sure he was going to add something and gazed up at him, almost begging him with her eyes to forgive her temper.

  They looked at each other for a moment, and she held her breath as he slowly lifted his hand toward her face, as if he were going to stroke her cheek. A strange look crossed his face, then he seemed to mentally shake himself.

  “You’re getting wet, we’d better keep walking.” His voice was low.

  She followed him down the glistening, winding streets to their hotel. No receptionist to battle with, no arguments over the room tonight. Just a subdued good night to each other.