On Three
Rushing from my room, I slammed the door and turned toward the stairway, running smack into Jamie’s hard chest. I looked up. He was grinning, and then in the softest voice he said, “Hello, angel. You’re gonna have to ditch those shoes. You know that, don’t you? Did you bring anything else?” I took a step back and scanned him from head to toe. He was wearing grungy jeans, work boots, and a plain white T-shirt beneath a long-sleeved flannel shirt, unbuttoned. I looked down at my shoes.
“Okay. Give me one second.” I turned and ran back to my room. Other than heels and flats, I only had a pair of gray and black old-school checkerboard Vans. They were my flying shoes because I could slip them on and off easily. Normally I wouldn’t have been embarrassed to wear them, but when I looked in the mirror I noticed I was very mismatched. Shedding the blazer in a huff, I pulled on my dorky, heather-gray University of Illinois hoodie.
When I met Jamie again in the hallway, he looked down at my feet, smirked, and said, “Perfect. You’re cute.” And then he looked up and said, “Go Chiefs.”
“Actually, it’s Chief Illiniwek, and people have a huge problem with that. Did you go to college?”
“You’re not convinced enough to say, ‘Where did you go to college?’ ”
I laughed nervously. Way to insult him. He jogged down the staircase, motioning with his arm. “Come on, we have to meet Guillermo.”
I followed him through the great room and out to the front of the building.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that. Where did you go to college?”
He threw his arms out to his sides and gestured around us. “Everywhere. All over. Anywhere I could.”
“So you didn’t have a formal college education, per se?” I smiled kindly, trying to figure out what he was implying.
“I had that, too.” One side of his mouth turned up. “But I’ve learned a lot more from the people in my life.” He gestured toward a man walking in our direction and raised his voice. “Like Guillermo, for example. This guy has grown up on the vineyards, making wine and perfecting his craft.”
Guillermo, a small man of maybe fifty, gave Jamie a guylike half-handshake, half-hug. “J, get your ass out there, it’s still crush season.”
Jamie laughed and then turned to face me. “Enjoy the tour, I’ll catch up with you later.” Still holding my gaze, he said to Guillermo, “This is Katy. Bring her back in one piece, okay man?” Guillermo chuckled.
When Jamie left, I said, “It’s nice to meet you, Guillermo.” He shook my hand. “And by the way, what is crush season?”
“It means we’re still picking the grapes, mija. Let’s go see how we make this stuff.” We walked side by side into the vast sea of vines. “The first thing you need to know is that it’s about the fruit, the grapes. These are not the grapes you’re used to.”
He stopped at a cluster of dull-looking grapes hanging from a vine.
“See, dear, these are Pinot Noir grapes. They have less color.”
“They look bad.”
He shook his head. “These are excellent grapes. It has taken us ten years to perfect the Pinot Noir grape on this property, something they have been doing in France for years.” He pulled one from the bunch and handed it to me. I popped it into my mouth.
“Wow, that’s not what I expected at all.”
“Juicy, right? Juicier than the grapes you eat?”
“Yes, and very, very sweet, but it tastes nothing like Pinot Noir.”
He chuckled. “Well, you see, much of that flavor is coming from the skin. The skin is a bit bitterer and much thicker than, say, a Thompson seedless grape, and that’s why these grapes are not as enjoyable to eat. But they do make a magnificent wine, don’t they?”
“I have to ask, if you’ve been here so long, why is it only now, since Lawson has taken over, that the wines have done so well?”
“He sent me to France.” Pausing, he arched his eyebrows. “He paid for the whole thing. Let me spend a month there. I learned a lot, but mostly things I already knew and just needed to be reminded of. Lawson gave me the resources and space. Pinot Noir grapes have a low yield. When I got back, we focused on that specific wine here on the estate and set aside more acres to grow this grape.”
“Why was Lawson so set on Pinot Noir?”
He popped his shoulders up into a shrug. “Hopeless romantic, I guess.”
“I doubt that.”
“No, truthfully, he said he wanted to make Pinot Noir because it’s a sexy wine.” He laughed loudly, like he thought that was ludicrous.
I instantly remembered a quote from a Vanity Fair article describing Pinot as the most romantic of wines, with so voluptuous a perfume, so sweet an edge, and so powerful a punch that, like falling in love, they make the blood run hot and the soul wax embarrassingly poetic.
“I guess that kind of makes sense because he’s a”—chauvinistic pig, I thought—“Because he’s trying to sell wine.”