Jane Connors

Not spitting

It’s a clear, freezing night outside and Samantha is back in Charles’ cellar, looking down the neat rows of wooden barrels against the white limestone walls and enjoying Charles’ funk, soul, and disco mix. The barrel ageing of the wines from the 2022 harvest is finished. The next, and final step is bottling prior to the Chablis release in April. She and Charles are about to taste straight from the barrel, the last tasting before the vintage is released. 

         “How has it evolved, Charles?” she asks him as he siphons wine from a barrel into the three glasses on top of an upturned barrel. She knows he won’t tell her. He wants her to taste it.

         “You’ll see! You’ll see!” he says, moving his shoulders in time with the beat and loosening his yellow scarf.

         Will it be even better than it was in November, Samantha wonders. Along with the music playing loud in Charles’ cellar tonight — definitely a good omen — there’s the sound of metal scratching hard on stone and Pascal, Charles son, comes flying round the corner at the end of the row on roller skates and speeds towards them, his blonde ponytail flipping out to the sides, a bag of pretzels dangling from one hand. He has that big smile and easy charm that a twenty-three-year-old can seemingly pull out of the hat at any time of day or night. She likes Pascal a lot and was happy she’d helped him get a summer job with a Californian wine producer.

         “Salut, Samantha,” he says, kissing her on both cheeks, then turns to his father. “Tiens, the baby’s toy,” he says, handing over a small toy car, and picking up his wine glass.

“Let’s go.” Charles slips the little red car carefully in his coat pocket, and lifts his glass with a deadpan expression, but there’s a raised eyebrow which makes him look like he’s about to deliver a great punch line.

They’ve tasted the Petit Chablis, the Chablis so now it’s Chablis Premier Cru. Holding her glass up to the light, Samantha admires the clear, gold colour, breathes in the burst of aromas: chamomile, white peach, patisserie. Samantha takes a sip, looking at Charles as she savours the fine acidity and long finish.

“I’m not spitting this one, Charles.” They had tasted the previous two cuvees only swallowing a couple of sips then spitting into the black spittoon.

            “I didn’t notice! What do you think?”

“I love it,” she says.

“Okay, I’m not spitting either,” he says, taking a mouthful. “It’s so special, this flavour: the white stone fruit, subtle flower, this touch of… brioche.”

“You did it!”

Pascal raises his glass to her. “We did! Pure luck. For us, the candles worked.”

Samantha remembers Chablis frost April 2022: Candles 

It was minus four degrees at 2:00 a.m. at the top of a lumpy slope in Charles’ vineyard and Samantha’s head torch was tight around her skull, Charles must have given her a child’s one by mistake. After all the rushing to get the big paraffin candles out, Charles and Pascal were now motionless next to her on the hilltop gazing out across the valley.

The night was freezing: they were bundled up in hats and thick coats, staring ahead like zombies at the bare vines lit up by rows of fat candles burning in tin buckets. The flames glowed in long lines all the way down the slope then continued up the opposite hillside like runway lights.

As far as Samantha could see across the slopes before her, there were lines of orange dots that reminded her of a perfectly executed artwork: hundreds of burning candles at regular intervals illuminating the wires holding up the vines strung between posts. An icicle hung from the neatly pruned vine cane in front of Samantha. Bloody hell, she’d thought, this could be a disaster.

            “We did a good job, lighting all the candles so quickly,” Pascal said.

Charles had replied gloomily, “The buds will die. The warm weather in March has left them vulnerable, too much growth too soon.” His glasses glinted as he shook his head. In fact, both the men’s faces looked weirdly romanticised in the candlelight.

“Think we did eight hundred, maybe a thousand candles.” Pascal wrapped his scarf more tightly round his neck.

“Amazing, right?” said Samantha. “You and the guys did great.” She could feel the tip of her nose ice cold and covers it with her glove. When frost kills the flower buds there won’t be any fruit. Frostbite. Samantha wanted to run down the hillside, do something more to protect the buds. “Let’s walk down. Have a look.”

“It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if we hadn’t had that warm spell,” said Charles.

“The candles will help,” said Pascal, nudging his father’s shoulder with his own shoulder as they walked downhill on the lumpy ground all lit up by the fat candle flames. They had all known that was unlikely. The smell of paraffin was a bit sickly. Iced leaves on the vines glimmered like diamonds. 

Tasting notes with soundtrack

Charles loves music and this winter’s night the funk, soul, and disco he plays on surround sound in his cellar, these beats play alongside the aromas and flavours of the wines she’s tasting. In her head, even the name of the individual song that’s playing goes together with the particular Chablis cuvee she tastes it:

         Petit Chablis: ‘I Got To Stay Funky’ An entry level delight: tart apple

         Chablis: ‘Doing Our Own Thing’ Classic balance and texture

         Chablis: Premier Cru ‘She’s A Bad Mama Jama’ An age-worthy wine, long finish

         Chablis Grand Cru: ‘Blow Your Whistle’ Tour de force, honeysuckle, butter notes, intense minerality. Early days for this sophisticated classic.

It’s nuts.

            “Samantha?” Pascal offers her the open pack of pretzels. Charles turns up the music for the last song of the evening.

            “Perfect.” She takes two pretzels at once and crunches the salty, crisp snacks.

Great vintage, bad fall

They all start walking up the stairs. Turning back for one last look at the rows of barrels, Samantha’s foot slips sideways in the worn groove of the stone step and she’s not standing anymore. Her cheekbone hits the hard surface. She’s lying on the cold steps and her ankle is shooting electric shocks of pain. 

Pam multi tasks

In Charles’ spare bedroom Samantha shifts her ankle on the ice pack and grabs her headphones to answer Pam’s video call. “What are you doing? Where are you?”

Pam smiles at Samantha from behind a big wooden table with buckets of flowers on it. The Cure’s song, “Love Cats” is playing in the background. “Sorry, forgot to turn the music down.” She grabs a remote and lowers the volume.

“At Charles’. With a bung ankle.”

“Shit.”

“I know! Can’t walk.”

“Shit! How long for?”

“A week, at least a week.”

“I’m listening, I’ve just got to finish this.” Pam reaches for a length of florist wire and starts twisting it in spirals around the stem of a white gerbera so that the head of the flower will face directly outwards and not droop. This looks like quite a satisfying task to Samantha, leaning back against the pillow that is apparently from the 1970s and stuffed with clumps of foam that flatten out totally under the weight of her head. She admires the rows of about two dozen gerberas standing in a thick line in a black oblong vase facing her. Each one is at a slightly different angle so that the arrangement, whilst in a straight line, is multi-faceted. From all sides a viewer will see some blooms face on. “That’s beautiful, Pam.”

“It’s all right. Frankly, I’m sick of gerberas but they do work for some clients. Big fat round flowers. So obvious. How did you fall over?”

Telling her what happened, seeing her sympathetic expression, Samantha feels like crying: her ankle hurts, her eye is swollen all around it, the bed has a dip on one side that she keeps rolling into. Plus she’s wearing a T-shirt that’s too short and Charles’ spare room smells mousey.

Invalid recovery

“How can you tell if you’ve got female or male asparagus plants?” a male caller asks the gardening expert. Samantha is listening to a random gardening program, lying in bed and looking out the window at Charles’ terrace. The caller doesn’t bluster or rattle on, he sounds somehow innocent. “Mine are five years old and I’m wondering if I should cull the males.”

“The females drop red berries,” the gardening woman explains, then continues with plenty of other interesting information on the different productivity of male and female asparagus plants, concluding that five-year-old male and female plants will produce sufficient asparagus to eat.

Keep it simple, thinks Samantha. Five years she’d wasted with Alex. She remembers now two boyfriends who’d cheated on her, and at the time, she’d been amazed. How could anyone be with two lovers at the same time? Yuk! But she’d completely fallen for someone who did that. She misses Alex so much: his company, his skin, his smile. It took her that long to be with the right person for her, but turned out he wasn’t and he’s still annoying her by the way, remembering his message on New Year’s Day. That’s it: time to cull.

Winter wine work

Samantha opens her draft reports on the 2022 vintage in all the Burgundy regions: Chablis, Côte de Nuits, Côte de Beaune, Côte Chalonnaise, Maçon, and sends them off to Lonergan’s. Email to the Wine Awards to confirm Australia and New Zealand tastings, calculate travel expenses for Margaret River trip for tax, finalise long Chablis article for Lonergan’s vintage report. Samantha leans back in bed and feels like her head is full of mushy snow. Too many windows open on the screen, not enough windows to stare out of. She reaches awkwardly, leaning half out of bed so she can pull open the navy linen curtain. The leafless winter trees that line the path to the terrace look completely dead with their wet, black branches stark against the grey sky. Outside her window, a cat is hiding behind one of the empty stone planters.

Young love?

Outside, Pascal is on a call, his long hay-coloured hair looped behind big ear phones that act only as a headband, because he has ear buds in his ears and is talking into the little microphone on the white cord while looking at his phone. He shakes his head at the screen, then flashes a sunshine smile. The other person must be doing all the talking. Pascal’s almond shaped eyes don’t leave the screen, he’s laughing, he looks so happy. He covers his eyes with his hand, as in “Enough!” but, oh no, his head tilts downwards as if he’s sobbing. When he moves his hand away, there are no tears, and he’s laughing again. Still looking at the screen, Pascal doesn’t say anything for a couple of minutes, so it seems as if the call has ended but then he starts talking very intensely, totally focused on the person on his screen. Samantha can’t work out the uneven pacing of the call but she’s sure that Pascal is in love. She looks away at the dead leaves blowing across the flagstones. Alex had never cried when they were together. Neither had she.

Sweet as

She knows she shouldn’t do this now, but—wide awake at 2:00 a.m., with an hour to wait before she can take more pain killers, Samantha props up the new down pillows that had mysteriously appeared that morning and picks up her phone from the small bookshelf next to the bed, almost knocking over a blue and white teapot as well as a photo of Charles with Pascal and the new baby on a hilltop, must be last autumn, the vine leaves are brilliant yellow and orange.

Why is she so clumsy now?

She knows to be careful when staying in other people’s houses: it’s surprising what might be of value to the owners that does not appear of any value to someone else: in her own house she has a pink pebble from one of the last beach walks she took with her father, a tatty Champagne label from the first time she and Johnnie went to France together, a lone saucer from her mother’s cupboard. She moves the teapot to a safe spot against the window then pulls the yellow quilt up, anchoring it under her armpits. The central heating makes a weird thud, but she’s comfortable digging her shoulder blades into the luxurious pillows, and scrolling down on her phone.

Whoa! What’s this from Alison, her MW friend in New York? A round pastry cushion, crunchy and golden on the outside, with snow-white icing. 

                       
                                   Cronut! Croissant pastry shaped like a doughnut. You

                                    won’t believe it but this pairs really well with light and fizzy

Moscato D’Asti. See you in April, xxx

Samantha wishes she had one right now to eat in bed. She looks around the room, even though she knows there’s no food. She can just imagine how good the squishy, sweet pastry would be to eat slowly with a very chilled Moscato D’Asti.

Bring some with you to London. We’ll need a sugar hit. Xxx

Samantha thinks how good it will be to see Alison in a few months, and Charles will be there too. She pulls the pillows down, and wraps her arm under one, thinking she’s not going to tell Alison about her ankle. She’ll be better by then, back to walking five kilometers along the Thames in springtime to the big judging rooms at Canary Wharf.

Surprise response to the humble Cronut

The next morning, on the phone again, of course, Samantha is hoping for that French shock horror Guy usually voices when someone messes with anything classically French, even a croissant, when she sends him the Cronut picture:

Would you eat this?

Guy replies with a photo of a Basque cooking class featuring platters of prawns, olives, dark crimson ham thinly sliced: Mouth Watering Pintxos (tapas) Lessons in San Sebastian:

Maybe we should do this sometime?

            Which confusingly sounded like he was asking her out on a date. Outside, snow is falling in thick flurries and starting to cover the stone paving, white on grey.  She drops her phone on the quilt; it’s not the first time she’s incorrectly guessed what Guy’s response would be.

More work

“French aviation unions have effectively closed all airports in a protest that has no end in sight.” Well, that means Samantha’s not going to make it back to London. She waits for her boss to answer the phone while she stares at the sun beams and fluttering shadows on her bandaged leg from the branches shaking outside the window. Two days later, she’s in the same spot with rows of wine glasses next to her as she writes tasting notes for Charles’ 2022 vintage.

         Charles comes in, “Plane strike. Can you take on some more work?”            

         “Of course.” She loves this delving into the production details, the conditions of the harvest, the evolution of the wines post fermentation and writes the notes for Charles’s neighboring producers as well with a dedication to the individuality of each. Having tasted the wines for a dozen producers and written up the notes, by the end of the week, Samantha wants to go and see for herself these vineyards and speak with the winemakers. But the strike is finished and she’s got to get back to London.

More work

“I’m going, Charles.” Samantha puts her travel bag down on the pink rug next to the door. Charles laughs, standing outside the front door in his gumboots that are already covered in thick white clay. He must have been out in fields already. “We want to offer you a post at the Wine Cooperative,” he says.

The morning breeze brushes her face, across the field a bird swoops down in a loop and the outlook is all green slopes and blue sky. It would be great to wake up and go to work around here; she sees herself jumping out of bed, running around outside all day, not having to listen to people if she didn’t want to. But of course, it’s not possible. “I have to go today. That’s the plan.”

“No, no.” He puts his head on one side and looks at her in his careful way. “I don’t mean today. Of course you have to go now, the first releases, the judging. But later in the year, when you visit Chablis encore, you can add on consulting with the Co-Op.” Samantha cringes internally, how ridiculous that she thought he was offering a dream job to start immediately. Also, how disappointing that he wasn’t.