Forty-nine
In August, the plants stopped producing. It was the calm before the harvest storm.
Leah walked through the field, the humid morning air like soup. All around her, unseen nature clicked and hummed and chirped. A woodpecker tapped out a code on a nearby tree. Tell me your secrets, she thought.
How big was the gap between what she knew and what she didn’t know about the winery? This was the thought that kept Leah awake at night. It was a catch-22: her distance from the place was what let her see missed opportunities. But she also felt like the solution to saving it—if there was one—required deep operational understanding. The obvious solution would be to ask her father a ton of questions, but she didn’t want him to get exasperated and throw up his hands and say, “Forget it! I’ll do it myself.”
The second-best option was talking to Javier, Mateo, and the senior winemaker, Chris Kessler. And so she called a meeting at the barn.
“Can we all fit in here?” she said as they squeezed into Mateo’s office.
It was tight, but they made it work, with Mateo and Javier sitting on his desk while Leah and Chris used two folding chairs to face them. Mateo turned on a standing fan and opened the window to try to catch the breeze.
“Thanks for taking the time to meet at such short notice,” she said. “I have some questions about harvest planning.”
The three men looked at one another. “Where’s Leonard?” Chris said.
“We’re all meeting in two days. I just want to ask a few things to get myself up to speed.”
“Before we start,” Chris said, “what’s going on with the sale?”
It was a good question.
“The truth is, I can’t really speak to that. But what I can say is that no one wants to sell. So what I’d like to do is figure out what’s working and what’s not working. Because I know you’re a great team, and that’s half the battle. So tell me, what comes next? Where are we in the production timeline?”
“Soon we’ll put up the bird netting,” Javier said. “Last year, we were picking fruit by September 20. But we didn’t finish the reds until the end of October.”
“This summer was hotter, so the reds are going to get extremely ripe. Our yields are going to be high,” Mateo added.
She nodded, writing everything down in her notebook.
“The bottom line is, the window for production decision will be closing soon,” Chris said. “Leonard is going to start pulling fruit to test sugar and pH. Then he’ll decide what fruit to use for what wines and allocate tank space.”
Leah looked up. “What if we wanted to produce a rosé this year?”
Chris looked at Javier, then said, “Leonard will never go for it.”
“Let me worry about that,” Leah said. “Just humor me: What grapes would you use?”
“We could use some of our Merlot and Cab Franc and Syrah grapes.”
She nodded. “And just to clarify: What’s the timeline for getting a rosé to market? I know that if we use those grapes for red wine, they’ll be sitting in the barrels for at least a year, so we don’t see profit on them for a while.”
Chris thought for a minute. “The red grapes still have to ferment awhile for the rosé. But by December we could start blending trials to see what would make the best wine. Best-case scenario is we bottle in February and release March 1.”
That was an even faster turnaround than she imagined. Still, she knew that revenue from the amount of rosé they could produce—even if they sold it all—wasn’t enough to solve their problems. But with two days to go before the harvest production meeting, it was at least a start.
She had her father’s ear. She had the beginning of an idea. Now she just had to find a way to tell her husband she wasn’t coming home. Again.
Vivian wanted to take pleasure in the simple elegance of the dinner table, set with a yellow linen runner down the center and three bunches of sunflowers. But it did little to offset the tense mood. Leah looked deflated. She must be lonely without her husband—or, at the very least, aware of the fact that he had made the decision not to join her. She was quiet—the whole table was quiet. Except for Bridget. Vivian found herself actually welcoming Bridget’s prattle for once.
“So this crochet bikini designer is paying me per views on my video. Everyone has to go onto Instagram and tell your friends.”
Leonard rolled his eyes. “I’m supposed to tell people to go online to look at videos of my son’s fiancée in a bathing suit?”
“Exactly! Thanks,” Bridget said.
Leonard poured more wine into his glass, took a sip, and then stood as if to make a toast. But he didn’t raise his glass.
“I have an announcement to make.”
The kids looked at him expectantly. Vivian tried to make eye contact with him, but he avoided her.
“The deal is off. The sale of the winery is not happening. At least, not for now.”
Vivian glanced at Leah, who gave a nearly imperceptible nod that she understood: the conversation had happened, and the outcome was as she’d predicted.
“What do you mean?” Asher said. “Don’t tell me this guy backed out, too. What the hell? Maybe Harold needs to rethink how he’s presenting the financials . . .”
Leonard held up his hand. “Enough. I’m the one who called off the deal. And I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
“When were you going to tell me?” Asher said, getting red in the face.
“I’m telling you now!”
“Okay, okay,” Vivian said. “Can we all just . . . relax.”
Leonard shot her an irritated look, and then it was back to silence. Leah, Asher, and Bridget clearly couldn’t wait to finish eating and decamp back to the house. When Vivian was alone with Leonard, she said, “I know you’re upset with me. But don’t take it out on the kids.”
Leonard pushed his plate away, looking around for Peternelle.
“I especially don’t want you giving Leah a hard time,” Vivian said. “It seems our marriage isn’t the only one suffering in all of this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t like the fact that Leah’s out here without Steven. It’s not a good sign.”
“Maybe not. I hope that isn’t the case. But there’s nothing we can do about it either way,” he said, standing and dropping his napkin onto the table.
Vivian wasn’t so sure about that. It was one thing for her marriage to be in jeopardy over all of this. But she wasn’t going to sit by and watch her daughter’s break apart.