Celia showed Annie to the ladies’ room, where Annie tried unsuccessfully to remove the fragments of glass from her pantyhose. After a few attempts, she gave up and took them off.
On her return to the party, the crowd seemed somehow to have tripled, leaving the guests barely enough elbow room to taste wine. The noise level had risen as the wine flowed. Annie looked around, and when she couldn’t locate Harry Braithwaite or Seth Longacre, pushed her way through to the North Faire table, where Celia was pouring samples of wine. Seeing Annie, Celia quickly handed her the bottle.
“Thank goodness. I don’t know where Galen went, and I’m under-age. If he catches me pouring, he’ll have a fit. Besides,” Celia giggled and lowered her voice, “Dr. Marchand is over there all by himself, and I just have to say hello. Could you stay here till Galen gets back?” Without waiting for an answer, Celia was gone. Annie saw Dr. Marchand smile broadly as the young woman approached him. He took her to taste wine at an adjacent display, apparently oblivious of her age.
Annie stood behind the display table feeling overwhelmed by everything that was happening. A guest asked if it would be possible to try a vertical tasting of merlot. “A vertical, um…” She tried to stall for time, having absolutely no idea what a vertical tasting was. A horizontal tasting sounded a bit too casual. “I guess I could let you try some of this,” she said tentatively, locating a bottle of merlot. She started to remove the cork. Fortunately, before she could embarrass herself too badly, Galen Rockwell appeared at her side.
It was the first time she had seen the serious man smile. “I see Celia left you holding the bottle, so to speak. Well, as much as we’d like your help, Annie, it’s against the law for the guests to pour. Let me.”
“By all means, I know about as much about wine as I do about nuclear technology. Except that I like wine a lot better.”
“Most people do.” He set out some clean glasses. In their brief prior encounters, Annie had gotten the impression that Galen Rockwell was humorless and overbearing. Now, talking about wine, he relaxed and his whole face lit up with enthusiasm. As he poured the wine, he explained to the guests in detail how weather patterns had affected each particular vintage, and that a vertical tasting involved the same wine from different vintages, generally from younger to older. It enabled one to see how a wine made with the same grapes and methods could differ from year to year, and also how well the wine aged.
When there was a lull, he said to Annie, “I just talked to the sheriffs’ office again. A deputy should be here at any time. It was difficult, but I finally convinced Taylor to wait upstairs. She actually wanted to confront Steve and tell him off.”
“When we spoke on the phone yesterday afternoon, and you said it was an emergency, were you referring to this kind of problem?”
Galen nodded, and kept working. “The last week or so has been the worst. Several times he’s confronted her, saying the same kinds of things as tonight. The threats are vague, but there’s no question he’s hostile toward her. I don’t know how much more she can take.” He picked up a small circular device and slit the foil on another bottle, then deftly inserted a two-pronged cork puller into the bottle. “She threw him out about six months ago, and he hasn’t left her alone since. Yesterday morning was the last straw. If I hadn’t happened in right at that moment, who knows what might have happened? And after all that, she was still not going to take action. The woman baffles me, that’s all I can say.” With one quick yank, the cork came out with a small pop. “Makes me nervous, knowing he’s right out there. He’s got to come in at some point.”
“I know. I was thinking the same thing.”
“Let’s just hope a deputy arrives first.”
There was an awkward moment. Neither Annie nor Galen wanted to talk about Steven Vick. Finally, Galen said, “In all the excitement, have you had a chance to taste any wine?”
“Actually, no.”
“Well, it’s about time, then, isn’t it?”
“I’d like that.”
Galen filled two glasses about a third full. “This merlot won a gold medal at the state fair just a week ago. It’s probably one of the best wines being served in this room.”
Annie started to bring the glass to her mouth, but the winemaker stopped her. “First, we look.” Annie followed Galen’s example and held the sample up to the light. The color was a beautiful deep garnet.
“This is a little hard in artificial light. That’s why judges like to do their tasting during the day. And some judges will only taste wine in the morning, when the palate is the freshest.”
Annie peered into her glass. “So, what am I looking for, anyway?”
“In a blind tasting, looking at the wine can tell the judge a lot about its age and quality. What we’re looking for, besides just enjoying the color, is clarity and brightness. Muddiness or cloudiness could indicate a flaw in the wine, or simply that the sediment hadn’t had a chance to settle. At North Faire, like a lot of the smaller wineries, we don’t filter our wine, so there will always be some sediment. We think too much filtering can take away character and leave a papery taste.”
“This looks pretty clear to me.”
“It is. The brilliance is influenced in part by the acidity. This wine has a low pH, meaning it’s fairly high in acidity.”
“Is that good?”
“Very good. A wine lacking acidity will be dull and flabby, not very aggressive.” He noticed Annie’s smile. “I know. The descriptions we use, sometimes you’d think we were describing our inlaws.”
A middle-aged couple came to the North Faire table, and Galen poured them each a sample. The man swirled it in his glass, then watched the patterns the flowing wine formed. “Look at that, Margo. Now that’s what I call legs. Great legs.”
Margo sipped her wine. “I wish he’d say that to me once in a while.”
As they moved away, Galen explained that the man was referring to the pattern left by the wine on the sides of the glass. “It’s supposed to tell you something about the viscosity of the wine, but in reality, it only tells you how clean the stemware is.” Annie glanced over at the next table. Dr. Marchand seemed to be delighting in Celia’s company. The smile on Celia’s face said the feeling was mutual.
“Now may I taste it?” Annie asked Galen.
“Not yet. Next you have to smell it. The nose is a lot more sensitive than the taste buds. Sometimes what you think is taste is really smell. What happens is, aromas inside your mouth will rise up through the passage at the back of the throat into your nasal passages. Here, hold your glass like this, by the stem, and twirl it gently.” He demonstrated, with a small movement that caused the wine to circle in the glass. “Swirling causes more air to contact the wine’s surface, which intensifies what you smell.”
Annie did her best to copy the motion without spilling the wine.
“What you’re looking for is, first, whether there are any unpleasant odors—that would tell you if the wine is flawed, or gone bad. Then you look for the aroma—that refers to the smell of the fruit of the grape. ‘Bouquet’ refers to the smells that come from the aging and fermentation—everything that happens to the wine once the winemaker gets his hands on it. The key factors are intensity, complexity, and balance. Now, sniff.”
Annie felt somewhat silly as she stuck her nose into the glass and breathed deeply. She’d already forgotten the difference between aroma and bouquet. All she knew was that the wine smelled very nice, but she was unable to describe to Galen what she smelled. It smelled a lot like, well, wine.
“It takes practice,” he said. “It’s all part of learning to appreciate wine. Some of the judges are so sensitive to odor that they’ll insist that no one around them wear any kind of scent—lotion, hairspray, even deodorant—when they’re tasting. They probably would have ejected you.” He leaned closer and breathed in her perfume. “I’m not that familiar with scents, but you’re wearing something spicy, with elements of musk and vanilla. And pretty expensive, I’d say.”
“You’re very good.”
He smiled. “Just part of my job. Actually, perfume is much easier to identify than wine, which is so subtle. And subjective. In different reviews of this particular wine, one reviewer found elements of ‘citrus, loganberry and smoke,’ while another found ‘black cherry, plum, and chocolate.’ That’s how far off tasters can be.”
“Chocolate?” Annie sniffed again, but couldn’t identify anything smelling even vaguely like a Hershey bar. “Can you smell chocolate in this?”
Galen sniffed again. “Yes, actually, I can. But you have to remember I’ve been doing this a long time. You have to develop a very good sense of smell if you’re going to be any good at making wine. Just as I’m sure you’re very good at spotting the fine print in a contract.”
“I guess. Is it difficult marketing Washington wine?”
He shook his head. “Right now, North Faire can sell all it produces, so we don’t even worry about marketing. If we were to get bigger that might be a concern. For now, it’s one less detail to worry about. The local wholesale distributor comes on the first and the fifteenth, and we just tell them to take it away.”
Annie swirled the wine in her glass. “You know, a person could get awfully thirsty doing this. When do I get to have something to drink?”
“Okay, I get the point. Now, what you want to know here is that the four basic tastes—sweet, salty, sour, and bitter—are all detected on different parts of the tongue. Sweet is on the tip, sour down the sides, salty in the middle and bitter in the back. You’ve heard the phrase ‘bitter finish? That’s because you don’t taste the bitter until you swallow. It’s the harmony of these four kinds of taste that makes up the balance and complexity of wine. That’s why you want to spread the wine to as many different parts of the palate as possible. It’s called ‘chewing’ the wine.”
“Sounds unattractive.”
“Hey, it is. It looks totally foolish. But don’t be embarrassed, everyone does it. Here, I’ll show you.” He demonstrated by taking a large sip and pushing it around his mouth, cheeks and tongue in motion. He even held the wine at the front of his mouth and inhaled a stream of air. Annie almost expected the winemaker to start gargling. After fifteen or twenty seconds, he swallowed. “Now you try. Take a large enough sip, and really move it around your mouth.”
Annie did as she was instructed, but it was hard to keep a straight face. She swallowed. “I like it. It’s nice.”
“Aw, c’mon. If I’m going to turn you into a wine connoisseur, you’ve gotta learn no less than forty-seven different words for ‘nice.’ You know, something like ‘precocious, with a woody nose,’ or ‘light, but not too arrogant’—stuff like that. My favorite is something James Thurber said, ‘It’s a naive domestic Burgundy without much breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption’.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth.”
Annie went through the same routine with the next sample Galen poured for her, a cabernet. “I really like this one. But how can I tell if it’s a ‘good’ wine?”
“You just did.”
“No, come on. I haven’t the faintest idea what’s good and what’s not.”
“Lots of people think like that, and it keeps them from experimenting and finding what they like. For the most part, whether a wine is ‘good’ or not is totally subjective—it’s what you enjoy. If you think that you would like to drink more than one glass of this wine, and it would go well with food, then it’s a good wine. But it’s true that as you learn more about wine, you appreciate it more.”
“So, I don’t need to be embarrassed if I don’t know a ‘good’ wine when I taste one?”
“Not at all. It’s all pretty arbitrary. In fact, I was at a blind tasting one time, and a very prominent winemaker tasted a sample—he didn’t know what it was. He stood up and berated it as the worst dreck he’d ever tasted. He sat down rather abruptly when his wife pulled on his sleeve and told him it was his.”
“No.”
“True story.”
By the time Galen explained all the nuances of each and every wine that North Faire produced, Annie was laughing and starting to feel a little tipsy. No wonder Taylor enjoyed her work so much. But as Galen poured, the sound of the French doors being thrown open drew his attention, and he spilled a few drops on the white tablecloth. They both turned as a cool draft flew in from the garden. Celia and Dr. Marchand moved closer to get a better look.
Suddenly sober, Annie braced herself, expecting to see Steven Vick and Martin Grubenmacher returning to the party. Instead, she saw a man in his mid-thirties with short, curly hair, wearing a stylish leather jacket and black slacks. His face was completely drained of color.
“Gerald North, Taylor’s brother,” Galen whispered, a fact Annie had already guessed. The blond man rushed toward the North Faire table.
“What is it, man? You look like you’ve seen your mother’s ghost.”
Taylor’s brother struggled to catch his breath enough to speak. When he did, his voice was so low it was hard to make out what he was saying. “Quick… call nine-one-one… it’s Steve… out in the garden… oh my God, I don’t believe it…”
Galen flushed. “The bastard, what’s he gone and done now?”
Gerald swallowed. “Hurt… Badly…”
“What has he done, man? Did he start a fight?”
“No, no. It’s Steve—dead. I think he’s dead.”
“What the—where’s Taylor? Is she still upstairs? Has anyone told her?”
Gerald shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. She’s out there with him. Galen, she killed him.”