Vintage

by Olivia Darling

  “We’ve also done the pack shot,” Solange continued. “That’s the shot at the very end of the ad. The close-up on the bottle itself.”

  “I know what a pack shot is,” said Randon.

  “Of course.” Solange was chastised. “I forget—”

  “Silence everybody!” called the director’s assistant. “Places.”

  The clapper loader dashed out in front of the camera with his clapper board, neatly annotated with the job, director and take number.

  “And action!”

  The ad’s story was fairly simple. Morgan and Tarrant were guests at two separate New Year’s Eve parties. Footage shot earlier in the day showed them as wallflowers at their respective gatherings, looking bored as hell while the other guests swirled around them, laughing, dancing and generally having a gay old time. Next, the hero and heroine were both seen climbing the stairs to the rooftops. Tarrant’s character actually had to squeeze out through a tiny attic window. Both of them were carrying champagne glasses. Tarrant also had a bottle of Éclat.

  Catching sight of each other across the fake divide, which would look like a giddying five-story drop once the CGI department had finished, Morgan and Tarrant raised their glasses to toast each other. And then, by the power of movie magic, the beautiful pair were lifted into the air by the bubbles in their champagne, through a sudden flurry of glittering snowflakes, to meet each other halfway across the rooftops and indulge in a magical mid-air dance to a lesser-known piece by Wagner (Wylie’s choice). It wasn’t exactly cheery music but somehow it worked, adding to the atmosphere of slightly edgy decadence.

  On cue, both Tarrant and Morgan floated up into studio sky, looking suitably surprised and delighted by their sudden ability to fly. They met in mid-air, clinking their glasses before falling into a passionate embrace. They whirled around and around until the stunt master got nervous about the harnesses tangling and tapped the director on the arm.

  “Cut!” shouted Wylie.

  The camera stopped rolling.

  Tarrant and Morgan broke apart and dangled in midair like a pair of masterless puppets.

  “I think that’s the one,” said Wylie, conferring with his lighting cameraman.

  “Great,” shouted Bill. “Now can someone get me down? This freakin’ harness is cutting into my balls.”

  Freed from her own uncomfortable harness, Christina Morgan joined her co-star and Mathieu Randon by the monitors.

  “Matt Randon!” Bill clapped the Frenchman on the back. “Good to see ya, old man.”

  Randon winced.

  “Bill, you have no idea of your own strength,” Christina told him, assuming Randon was smarting from the smack. “Monsieur Randon. Hello.” Christina extended her perfectly manicured hand. Randon lifted it to his lips and kissed it.

  “So European,” Christina laughed, as she affected a swoon. “Bill, you should try it.”

  “In the United States?” said Bill. “Forget it, sweetheart. If I went around kissing hands, I’d get punched. What did you think of the ad, Matt?”

  “I liked it very much,” said Randon. “The chemistry between you is very obvious.”

  “So it should be,” said Christina. “We’ve only been married eleven months!”

  She planted a kiss on her husband’s cheek. She hoped it looked full of affection and warmth.

  “It’s like we’re still on honeymoon,” she said. “Isn’t it, darling?”

  “Do you know when the ad will begin showing?” asked Bill.

  “The ad company rep has assured me that we have slots booked to coincide with the release of your new movie around Thanksgiving.”

  Bill nodded.

  “That’s good news,” Christina concurred.

  “I’m glad you think so. Now we should all go out to dinner and celebrate a very successful shoot,” Randon suggested. “I understand Frank has chosen a restaurant.”

  “I’m up for that,” said Bill.

  “I’ll join you boys but not for too long,” said Christina. “I’m flying back to Los Angeles first thing. And unfortunately, I really mean first thing.”

  “I hope you’re being well compensated for missing a night out in Paris,” said Randon.

  “Not this time,” said Christina. “I’m heading back to shoot an infomercial for a non-profit. Battered women.”

  “Always doing charity work. She never turns down a request,” her husband added.

  “How could I?” Christina exclaimed. “Just a few moments of my time to change so many sorry lives?”

  “And of course it keeps her name in the news,” said Bill.

  Christina glared at him.

  “I’m joking, sweetheart. See what an angel I married?”

  “She is definitely a heavenly vision,” said Randon, kissing her hand again.

  “Oh, Monsieur Randon,” Christina’s hand fluttered to her heart. “You are such a charmer! Later, boys.”

  She left them with a wink and crossed the floor to her dressing room as though she were walking the catwalk. She might as well have been on a catwalk, she thought to herself. She knew everybody would be watching. Well, she’d give them all a show.

  “Your tongue is dragging on the floor,” Christina heard Solange tell her young male assistant.

  CHAPTER 5

  That Thursday morning at the Gloria Hotel was the stuff of every chambermaid’s nightmares. The previous night the hotel restaurant had hosted wine magazine Vinifera’s annual awards. The hotel was packed with people who had attended the ceremony (and the grand tasting) and none of them was likely to be checking out before mid-day, which meant that the chambermaids would have just two hours to change three hundred beds before the next lot of guests arrived.

  Hilarian Jackson didn’t even wake up until ten to twelve. His right arm felt dead. He panicked. He thought he’d had a stroke. It took a moment to register that it was just that he’d been sleeping so heavily, thanks to the booze, that he’d hardly moved during the night. Relieved to feel the pins and needles that heralded the return of blood to his arm, he rolled over onto his left side and closed his eyes again. And then he remembered.

  “Arse,” he said to himself.

  He had a lunch date. Ronald Ginsburg and Odile Levert would be waiting for him downstairs in the hotel bar at that very moment.

  He could have used another hour in bed. Maybe he should stand them up, he thought. It wasn’t such a big deal, though he knew that to the cognoscenti, it was quite a gathering. Arguably the three most important wine critics in the world at the same table. Breaking bread and disagreeing about the booze. As usual.

  Hilarian dragged himself to the bathroom and surveyed the damage from the night before. His memories of the Vinifera awards were vague to say the least. His head pounded. A lattice of bright red vessels patterned his ordinarily yellow eyes.

  “I’m never drinking again,” said Hilarian, as he always did. “Starting tomorrow.”

  When Hilarian finally got to the hotel bar, half an hour late, Odile and Ronald were already at the table. Ronald didn’t look as though he’d slept much. He never did. He was seventy years old. He could have started a luggage concession with the bags under his eyes and there was always a dribble of something expensive on the front of his Brooks Brothers’ shirt. Odile was entirely different. The Parisian was dressed from head to toe in cream. Probably Chanel. Always immaculate. Hilarian reflected that he had never seen her spill so much as a drop of wine in their long acquaintance. He’d never seen her drunk either. Not even slightly tipsy.

  “Stallion’s Leap worthy of a gold medal? Ronald, you must have a head cold,” Odile was saying.

  “Darling,” Ronald retorted. “Are you absolutely sure it’s not your time of the month? A woman’s cycle affects her judgment of everything.”

  Hilarian saw Odile stiffen. He had arrived just in time. There was nothing guaranteed to put Odile Levert in a rage more quickly than Ronald Ginsburg’s theory that women simply were not biologically suited to eva
luating wine.

  “At last! ‘Ilarian!” “When Odile said his name, Hilarian almost liked it. Odile was colder than a witch’s tit, but her accent was pure aural sex. She kissed him on both cheeks.

  Ronald tipped an imaginary hat. “Ah, the Noble Rotter.”

  Hilarian rolled his eyes, but in fact he rather liked his nickname, which reflected not only his supposed incorrigibility but also the fact that he was an hon and an expert on botrytis (the real “noble rot” so important to the production of sweet wine). “The Noble Rotter” was the name of his regular column in one of the Sundays.

  “And who was the lucky lady last night?” Ronald asked pruriently. “I saw you go upstairs with that girl with the … ” He mimed a pair of substantial breasts. Odile tutted.

  “A gentleman never tells,” said Hilarian.

  “But you’re no gentleman,” purred Odile.

  “Good point,” said Hilarian. They didn’t have to know that he’d simply helped the extraordinarily drunken subeditor from Vinifera to her room and kissed her good night at the door. “Who’s choosing the wine?” Hilarian changed the subject. He picked up the list and started to scan it. These three always took more trouble over choosing the wine than they did the food. “And whose expense account are we on today?” he added.

  “I’ll pick this up,” said Ronald. Ronald had Vinifera’s most important column. It was said that winemakers the world over tweaked their wine to Ronald’s taste in search of his approval. His annual guides shifted millions of copies.

  “In that case … ” Hilarian suggested Chassagne Montrachet at three hundred pounds a bottle. Would have been rude not to.

  Over lunch, the three critics discussed the previous evening’s award ceremony. They agreed that the overall quality of that year’s competitors was patchy, the result of very strange summer weather. Unusually heavy rain in Northern Europe led to much of the grape harvest there rotting in the sodden vineyards. Meanwhile, Southern Europe roasted and the grapes in that part of the continent had a cooked jammy taste. Ronald and Odile also agreed that Vinifera had been “dumbing down.”

  “I blame Sideways,” said Ronald. “Now that everyone is getting into wine they keep telling me to make my columns more goddamn accessible.”

  “That’s a good thing, surely?” said Hilarian.

  Ronald and Odile looked at him as though he were mad; they actually prided themselves on producing impenetrable columns. They were elitists. Wine intellectuals. Snobs. Since his own main money-spinner was a guide to supermarket wines retailing at less than a tenner a pop, Hilarian often wondered why they bothered with him.

  “So,” said Ronald when the last of the wine had been drunk and the three were sipping espressos, “you ready to pay up, Hilarian?”

  “Pay up?”

  “Your bet,” said Odile helpfully. A slightly cruel smile twisted her perfectly made-up mouth. Somehow she had managed to eat an entire meal without displacing any of her signature red lipstick.

  “I made a bet? Who with?” Hilarian asked. “And,” he added with a groan, “how much did I lose?”

  He felt a chill travel the length of his body as Odile and Ronald looked at each other conspiratorially. Ronald’s old eyes crinkled with pleasure. Hilarian tried to retain some semblance of composure but his mind was traveling back to the previous year’s Vinifera awards, when he bet Ronald ten thousand pounds that Maison Randon’s Éclat would take the highest prize in the champagne section. It didn’t. Ronald had insisted that the bet be paid though Hilarian couldn’t even remember having made it.

  “You haven’t lost anything,” said Odile at last.

  Hilarian was flooded with relief.

  “Yet!”

  Both she and Ronald laughed.

  “By the look on both your faces,” said Hilarian, “I’m guessing that I made a silly wager.”

  “Very silly,” said Odile.

  Ronald agreed.

  “Well, for goodness’ sake, tell me what it was.”

  “That an English sparkling wine would carry off wine of the year at the Vinifera awards within the next five years.”

  Hilarian didn’t put his head in his hands but that was what he felt like doing.

  “Oh dear,” he said. “How much?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” said Odile, clapping her hands in glee.

  “Sweet Jesus.”

  “Don’t blaspheme,” said Ronald.

  “I must have been very drunk,” Hilarian groaned.

  “Of course,” said Odile. “You always are.”

  “Neither of you took me up on it,” said Hilarian hopefully.

  Odile grinned wickedly as she reached into her handbag and pulled out a tattered paper napkin. She flourished it at Hilarian.

  “Ta-daa! We wrote it down,” she said.

  Hilarian looked at his signature in blurry felt pen with horror.

  “ ‘Fifty thousand dollars. English sparkling wine to win Wine of the Year within the next five years.’ Signed Hilarian Jackson.” Odile read it out as though she were trying to be helpful.

  “And you’re going to hold me to that?” Hilarian asked. He knew that shit-bag Ronald would. Fifty grand was nothing to that decrepit bastard. Odile came from money and Ronald’s books had made him a mint but Hilarian didn’t have that kind of cash. Nowhere near. He certainly had no “old money” as Ronald had often implied. Hilarian may have had a title but, as was the case with so many British aristocratic families, all the accompanying dosh had gone to repairing the drafty family pile in Northumberland.

  “No,” said Odile. “That would be cruel.”

  Hilarian was so relieved he thought he might lose control of his bowels.

  “But when we had finished choking in horror at the very thought of a world-beating English sparkler, Ronald and I agreed that it would be a bit of fun to take you up on your challenge in another way. So, in five years’ time, we’re going to have our own private Judgment of Paris.”

  Hilarian raised an eyebrow. The Judgment of Paris was the name given to the infamous Paris wine tasting of 1976. Prior to that date, it was taken as gospel that French wines were the best in the world and, to prove it conclusively, a wine merchant named Steven Spurrier organized a blind tasting comparing French wines to their American equivalents. The idea was to put the upstart Yanks in their place. Eight of the nine tasting judges were French. And they judged the best wines to be American. When the competition was reprised several years later, some of the French houses tactfully refused to take part.

  “Weren’t there three competitors in the original judgment?” Hilarian mused. “I mean in the myth, of course.”

  “Exactly,” said Odile. “You’re not the only one who had a classical education. Aphrodite, Athena and Hera.”

  Hilarian gave Odile a small round of applause.

  “And so we will judge wines from three different nations. All made from this year’s harvest. Champagne for my country. ‘Champagne’ from the United States for Ronald here.” Odile made little quotation marks in the air to remind her companions that she fully subscribed to the French view that no sparkling wine produced outside the Champagne region should ever be called by that name. “And from your country, Hilarian, a sparkling white wine. Whatever you want to call it.” She flicked her hand dismissively. “Or if you prefer, we can make you an honorary Italian and you could champion Asti Spumante instead. Might give you a better chance.”

  “Ha ha ha,” said Hilarian.

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s not what I wagered,” said Hilarian.

  “No,” said Ronald. “It gives you better odds. You only have to beat two other wines with your chosen vintage.”

  “How much?” Hilarian ventured.

  “Let’s stick with your original stake,” said Odile. “Fifty thousand dollars each.”

  Hilarian tried not to wince. Fifty thousand dollars. What was that in pounds?

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Ronald to Odile.
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br />   Thank goodness, thought Hilarian.

  “It’s got to be fifty thousand sterling!”

  “Even better,” Odile laughed.

  “Are you serious?” Hilarian asked her.

  “Of course,” said Odile. “Winner takes all. Agreed? I’m going to buy myself a nice little Mercedes with your cash, boys.”

  “I wouldn’t be too cocky, Odile,” said Ronald. “You remember 1976.”

  “Not as well as you, old man,” said Odile. “Are you in, Hilarian?”

  He couldn’t afford to be. He had an ex-wife, two teenage sons to put through university and a telephone-number overdraft. But the moment of reckoning was five whole years away. Maybe he would have fifty grand to spare by then. He didn’t want to look a party pooper. Or give Ginsburg a reason to think he wasn’t doing quite as well as him. And perhaps … a tiny flicker of optimism tickled the back of Hilarian’s brain. His wasn’t a totally impossible position. Some of the finest palates in the world had mistaken the Sussex sparkler Nyetimber for vintage champagne. And if he did win, what he could do with a hundred thousand pounds …

  “I’m in,” he said as confidently as he could. “You know I think East Sussex has a terroir that easily rivals that of the Marne. And if there’s one good thing about global warming, it’s that it has been fabulous for the Great Britain grape. We’ve had a couple of outstanding years. I’d be happy to put a hundred thousand pounds on an English sparkler.”

  “Then let’s raise the bet!” said Ginsburg.

  “No,” said Hilarian quickly. “Really, fifty grand is fine. I wouldn’t want you to have to raid your retirement fund, Ronald.”

  “Then it’s settled,” said Odile. “I love a competition. Fifty thousand each. We’ll declare our chosen vineyards at the London wine fair in June. These are the parameters. No bigger than fifty hectares. Must never have won an award before.”

  Bugger, thought Hilarian. That ruled out Nyetimber and Ridgeview.