Madeleine knew that. It was a bottle from her own family’s estate.
The Arsenault family had several hectares of vines on the hills above Le Vezy, near Bouzy and Ay, where they made a well-regarded Blanc de Noirs. But the Clos Des Larmes was particularly special. It was the wine produced from the pinot noir in the eponymous walled vineyard right next to the house where Madeleine had grown up. A tiny vineyard, it produced just a few hundred bottles and only in the very best years.
Unbelievable. Madeleine had never seen Clos Des Larmes on an English wine list before. This was a bottle from 1985. A vintage made by her father.
Anyone else would have pointed it out to their dining companions, hoping to impress them. Geoff would have wanted Madeleine to flag it up, she knew. But the sight of that name just made Madeleine sad.
That year, 1985, was a great year for champagne but a very bad year for Famille Arsenault. It was the year Madeleine’s brother died in an accident and the year that Madeleine left France for the first time. She hadn’t properly been back since. Her mother swore that she and Madeleine’s father always intended to send their only daughter to boarding school in England but how could Madeleine have seen it as anything but a consequence of their grief? A punishment even?
With those three words, “Clos Des Larmes,” Madeleine was momentarily back home. She could see the Arsenault house, square and solid inside its white-walled courtyard. The dark green painted shutters. The bright red geraniums in her mother’s cherished window boxes. The gates high and wide enough to drive a coach and horses through, painted with the words “Champagne Arsenault” in extravagant curlicued letters. Proud letters. The roses in the garden. The scrawny black cat sunning itself on the steps. Then the Clos itself. The wild strawberries that grew beneath the vines in the summer. She saw herself as a young girl, playing in the Clos with her older brother. The single apple tree right in the middle …
“Made your mind up yet?” Freeman interrupted. “I need people who can make quick decisions on my team.”
“I’m sure Madeleine just wants to make sure she makes the perfect decision,” said Geoff, rushing to her defense. This business of defending her was a fairly new development in their relationship. She knew it was only because he thought his job depended on the impression that if he went, his entire team went too.
“We’ll have a bottle of the Jacquesson ‘96,” she said to the sommelier as she snapped the wine list shut.
Freeman nodded as though impressed by her decisiveness. “Bring two bottles,” he added.
Madeleine had hoped for an early night so that she might be up in time to catch the seven o’clock train to Paris the next morning, but four hours later they were still at the table.
They had moved from the champagne to a fine Bordeaux. Now the men were finishing off a bottle of port. Madeleine tried to disguise the fact that she had stopped drinking hours before by occasionally raising her glass to her lips and pretending to take a sip.
In Madeleine’s handbag, her mobile phone vibrated like a dying bee. When she got the chance to slip away to the bathroom to check her voicemail, she recognized her father’s number in the list of missed calls. At almost midnight—one o’clock in the morning in France—it was much too late to call him back. In any case, she was too tired to face the telling-off she probably deserved. She’d been promising to visit for months. She swore she would make it that weekend. The last thing she needed to hear right then was how she had let him down. Again. She would telephone him first thing in the morning.
“You haven’t been keeping up with us,” Freeman bellowed when Madeleine got back to the table. He filled her small glass to the brim, slopping port all over the pristine white tablecloth. “On my team, we work hard. We play hard. We’re the Tartars!”
“That’s the name of our cricket team,” said Freeman’s henchman helpfully.
“Fascinating,” said Madeleine.
“Come on, girl,” said Freeman. “Drink up.”
Madeleine gamely clinked her glass against his.
Beneath the table, hidden in Madeleine’s gray snakeskin-trimmed Fendi, Constant Arsenault’s name illuminated the screen of his daughter’s mobile phone one last time.
CHAPTER 3
Mathieu Randon, head of the eponymous Domaine Randon, was an impressive man. As soon as he walked into a room it was clear he was a force to be reckoned with. His bearing was the very definition of patrician. Though in his mid-fifties, he had the physical strength, grace and agility of a man half his age. He had a full head of silver-white hair, swept back presidentially in style. Naturally, as a Frenchman, he knew how to dress. Everything he wore was bespoke. Handmade shoes, handmade suit, handmade shirts. His ties were the only items he ever got off the rack. But then again, he did own the racks …
Mathieu Randon had inherited Maison Randon, the family champagne house with vineyards in the grand cru villages of Le Vezy, Avize and Verzenay, when he was just twenty-one years old. The upkeep of the champagne business alone would have been enough to occupy most people his age. And the results young Mathieu achieved in his first year at the helm would have formed a big enough pile of laurels for most older, more experienced men to rest upon indefinitely. But even in his early twenties Mathieu Randon was not a man who liked to laze about.
In his second year at the head of the family business Randon bought out two of the small houses with vineyards neighboring his family’s land, enabling the expansion of the Maison Randon brand. Ignoring the thought of his father turning in the grave, Randon concentrated on promoting the Maison’s non-vintage champagne. It sold spectacularly well overseas. It was the height of the eighties, when City bonuses were big and everyone felt like celebrating. Randon embarked on an aggressive sales push in the United States and Great Britain.
Prior to his time at the helm, Maison Randon had never advertised. That had to change. Randon employed an advertising agency to help him position the brand just so. An up-and-coming French actress was chosen to head up the campaign. She was pictured in bed, her modesty barely protected by a champagne-colored silk sheet. In her hand, a glass of Maison Randon’s non-vintage Brut. On the bedside, the bottle and another glass. The actress looked toward the camera as though her lover were behind the lens. The sexy image sent sales skyrocketing.
Meanwhile, Randon was still eager for more. He didn’t need the money but if there was one thing Mathieu Randon needed more than oxygen, it was power. And so Domaine Randon was born.
During the late eighties, it became increasingly difficult to buy more land suitable for champagne. The Champenois knew the value of their property and there was always someone to pass it on to, rather than let it fall into a stranger’s hands. Frustrated, Randon bought in the Loire and branched into quality still wines. Brandy too. All came into the Domaine. After that he turned his sights on a different kind of luxury.
It was easy to convince the bankers that his expertise would work just as well in jewelry or fashion. And so Randon bought up Martin et Fils, a family-owned jewelry business with outlets in Paris, Nice and Monaco. The Martin family business had a reputation for quality but had been resisting expansion for years. Randon changed all that. He took some of the Martin family’s classic designs and mass-produced them. The advertising agency that had taken Maison Randon from a relatively little-known marque to one everyone asked for, ran a similar campaign for the jewelry. It was seen on an Oscar-winning actress. Soon fashion magazines were clamoring to feature Martin et Fils jewelry. Randon bought another small jewelry house and amalgamated it into Martin et Fils to help meet the demand.
Next he took a side step into clothing. Once again he swooped in on small family-led companies: brands with reputations for quality but little real presence in the market. He took an Italian brand renowned for its cashmere and moved production to China. The goods were shipped back to Italy for hand-finishing, thus benefiting from the best of both nations: the cachet and quality of Italian design combined with cheap labor. Randon copied
the formula with six other labels.
Three decades after his father’s death and his rise to the head of the family business, Mathieu Randon had taken his family name global. His was the company behind almost any quality luxury goods brand you cared to mention.
“You must be about ready to retire,” said the journalist who interviewed him on his fiftieth birthday for Forbes, the business magazine.
“Only when I’m dead,” said Mathieu Randon.
That Monday afternoon, Randon was in his office on the Avenue Des Champs-Élysées. Back when the building was a private house the room had been the ballroom and the setting for scenes of legendary debauch, according to the real estate agent. Randon had kept the space largely empty, as though he were the kind of man who might leap to his feet and waltz the full length of the beautiful hardwood floor at any moment. He wasn’t that kind of man.
Randon was studying an article in one of the British Sunday papers (naturally, he was fluent in English, German and Italian as well as French). The article reported on the “most expensive champagne in the world.” It named one of Maison Randon’s rivals: Champagne Brice. They had produced, they claimed, a fabulous single vineyard grand cru. It was available in such small quantities that its retail price would be $645 per bottle.
Randon snarled. The idea that anyone else could produce something worth more than the best bottle at Maison Randon irked him. He pulled out a map of the Randon vineyards in the Champagne region and leaned over it on his desk, studying closely where his land lay in relation to that belonging to Brice. So close. Bordering in many instances. Why did they think they had so much better results? As he studied the extent of the Brice vineyards, Randon kept his right hand over a part of the map he’d outlined in black (a few hectares in Le Vezy), as though to spare his eyes that other horror right then.
Having somewhat neglected the maison during the late nineties, lately he had been concentrating on the champagne house at the heart of his empire again. The fashion and jewelry departments of DR were pretty much running themselves, but Maison Randon had seen the first small slip in its market dominance in twenty-nine years. It didn’t make Randon happy.
Randon approached the problem like a true dictator. He sacked all the high-level staff at Maison Randon and replaced them with younger, keener men and women. People who had reputations to make. Hungry people who worked harder and had better ideas. He’d promoted Stefan Urban to head up the new team. Stefan had worked at Randon’s operation in Napa for the previous decade. He brought his young protégé, Axel Delaflote, from California with him. The two men were full of enthusiasm and energy. Still, Randon was not comforted by knowing that he had the best team possible on the case.
He would have to do something about that very soon. But first he had other business to attend to. He picked up the phone and barked at his assistant, “Get me my coat.”
“Yes, Mathieu,” said Bertille.
Randon’s sigh said it all.
“I mean, yes, Monsieur Randon. At once.”
Randon put down the phone and looked out of one of the five floor-to-ceiling windows onto the street.
He saw a van pass by with the legend Ruinart painted on its side. The reminder of yet another champagne brand didn’t improve his mood.
Moments later, there was a gentle knock at the door and Bertille appeared. She was a petite brunette with a tiny waist who, nonetheless, was well endowed enough to make the buttons on her shirt look endangered when she took a deep breath. As the first point of contact most business associates had with Domaine Randon, Bertille was an excellent ambassadress for the brand. Now she leaned against the door frame in a manner she probably assumed looked coquettish. She had Randon’s coat draped over her arm.
“Your car is here,” she told him.
“Thank you.”
Randon strode across the room. He took his coat from Bertille. He didn’t let her help him into it as he usually did. She looked a little affronted at that. Hurt.
“Bertille,” he said softly.
“Yes,” she murmured back.
Bertille would have to go. It was a pity. She was an excellent assistant but lately she had become far too familiar. Randon knew he shouldn’t have slept with her. It had been an unfortunate case of his loins getting the better of him and now, of course, Bertille thought things were different. Randon cursed his lack of discretion. He was normally very careful about these matters.
She looked up at him with soft, loving eyes. Dark brown. Doe-like. Or cow-like, thought Randon, less generously. He knew that she, like him, was remembering their single night together. But he also knew that, unlike him, she was remembering it with a pleasure that went beyond the physical. Hers was a look of love.
“I think it’s time you took a vacation, my dear. In fact, I think you need to take a permanent vacation from Domaine Randon. I’d like you to clear your desk before I come back to the office tomorrow morning. I will have the personnel department arrange for a proper settlement.”
“But … ” Bertille began to protest.
“Sweet girl, one shouldn’t mix business and pleasure,” he reminded her. He reached out and touched her cheek lightly with the back of his hand. Bertille suddenly beamed. Randon knew she’d misunderstood him, that she thought he wanted her to leave the company so they could see more of each other privately. When she realized her mistake, Bertille would protest against her dismissal, of course, but he didn’t let that worry him. There was nothing that couldn’t be sorted out if you threw enough money at it. Even French employment law.
CHAPTER 4
That afternoon’s appointment was at a film studio on the outskirts of Paris where they were shooting the new cinema commercial for Maison Randon’s finest grand cru vintage champagne: Éclat.
From the outside, the sound studio looked like a hangar on any industrial lot, but inside, it had been transformed into a slice of another world. Randon was greeted at the door by the advertising agency representative, Solange. She was a pretty girl, he noted. She looked intelligent too.
“Monsieur Randon. You’ve arrived at the perfect time. Everyone is just coming back after their afternoon break,” Solange explained. “Mr. Tarrant and Ms. Morgan are in makeup. They’ll be back on set any moment. Can I get you a coffee?”
Randon shook his head. He had little doubt that the catering on this job would leave everything to be wished for. Instead he accepted a glass of water—Aqua Blue, Domaine Randon’s very own bottled brand “filtered by the Alps”—and took a seat beside the director’s chair. The director for this little segment was Frank Wylie, a young Angeleno. Following three Oscar nominations for his first movie, Wylie’s stock was on the rise. Even Randon had been impressed by his debut, a surreal extravaganza in the style of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. And thus Wylie was the obvious choice to bring an injection of high glamour to Domaine Randon’s Éclat.
“Mr. Wylie has asked not to be disturbed by visitors until the shoot is over,” said Solange.
“Fine,” said Randon. He was gratified to see that Wylie was taking this commission seriously.
The soundstage had been dressed to resemble Parisian rooftops. Randon allowed himself a little smile as the electricians fired up the lights and a glittering Eiffel Tower appeared on the backdrop.
“It looks a bit ropey from here,” said Solange. “But if you’d like to look through the monitor, you’ll get a better sense of how realistic it will look post-production.”
Just then, while Randon watched via the monitor, a vision of a woman stepped out onto one of the make-believe rooftops. Her long blond hair hung straight and shiny almost to her waist. Her perfect apricot-pink skin was positively luminous beneath the studio lights. She moved with the grace of a dancer as she walked to the center of the stage.
Christina Morgan, the supermodel. She needed no introduction.
Solange explained the rest. “Christina is wearing a dress by Estrella … ”
Estrella was the most recent of four new
fashion houses to be absorbed into Randon’s empire. Randon recognized the cut straightaway. The bodice fit like a second skin. The skirt was a waterfall of expensive black lace. Meanwhile, Christina’s earlobes, neck and wrists glittered with half a million Euros’ worth of diamonds.
“And jewelry by Martin et Fils, of course.”
Randon watched closely as the stunt manager unzipped the back of Christina’s dress and checked the harness hidden beneath it. The stunt manager attached a couple of wires to the harness and zipped Christina back up. She turned and thanked him.
On the other side of the stage, while a makeup artist powdered his all-American action-hero jaw, Bill Tarrant was also being fitted up to fly. It was quite a coup having persuaded an actor with Tarrant’s box office clout to appear in a commercial. He was the housewife’s choice, commanding fees per movie that rivaled Cruise’s and Clooney’s.
Tarrant was wearing a suit by Trianon, the men’s outfitter that Randon had shaped into a major contender for Gucci and Armani’s role as the male star’s tailor of choice for those red-carpet moments and Vanity Fair covers.
“Who made his shoes?” Randon asked.
“Patrick Cox for Trianon,” Solange confirmed. Randon nodded at her attention to detail.
Fully harnessed, the two main players in Frank Wylie’s scene smiled at each other across the gap between their two fake rooftops. Bill took out his chewing gum and handed it to an overeager production assistant. Then he gave Frank Wylie the thumbs-up. They were ready.
“In the ad itself we’ll look down into the gap between the two houses to see the metaphorical gulf between them,” Solange murmured into Randon’s ear. “The power of computer imagery. We’ve already shot the moment when the bottle is opened. We used a hand model, since Bill still has quite a nasty scar on his right hand.”
Randon had heard about the accident Bill Tarrant suffered on the set of his latest film—a science-fiction epic in which Bill bravely saved the world from an enormous blancmange (as it said in one of the kinder reviews).
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