Page 40 of Love Undecided
Chapter 17
Kat
With late afternoon traffic, it takes me a while to get toLovestone,my bestieLexie's, boutique winery.
I walk into the tasting room, the girl working the bar gives me a big smile and then an even bigger glass of wine.
“Lexie said to fill you up withAs You Wish, then send you back to the barrel room to find her.”
Lexie is a total romantic at heart and she loves a happily ever after. Especially if it comes in the form of a movie with a dashing and heroic male lead. If you make the movie black and white with actors named Cary, Humphrey, or Clark, it’s even better.
The nameLovestoneis a tribute to Stone Strassberg, her mentor and benefactor. But it also fits with her overall theme of romance and old Hollywood glamour. Lexie names her wines after iconic lines and characters from her favorite movies:As You Wish,Scarlett,Holly Go-Lightly, andPut Your Lips Together and Blowto name a few.
The smell hits me as soon as I walk into the barrel room. That amazing smell of oak, must, and wine. Lexie keeps the barrel room cool, so I grab a jacket from the hook on the wall and start walking through rows of barrels to find her.
Which I do, in the Pinot Noir section, straddling a barrel, four rows up. Or in laymen terms, about fifteen feet in the air. Wine thief in one hand, wine glass in the other.
She is dressed in her normal winemaking outfit of jeans, long sleeved tee shirt, puffy vest, and Chucks. Lexie's shoulder-length pink hair is pulled up in a spikey ponytail atop her head, bright blue eyes studying the wine in the glass, pink Chuck clad foot tapping the side of the barrel.
Lexie is always in motion, whether she’s moving her whole body or just a part of it, she rarely sits still.
“Hey Mama, what’s shaking?” I call up to her.
Lexie responds without looking away from the glass, “Oh Kat, I’ve got the most beautiful 2010 Anderson Valley Pinot Noir right here. It’s so beautiful I think I might be able to finally usethe name.”
“Thename?” I ask.
“Yes,” Lexie says, almost reverently.
One of Lexie’s all-time favorite scenes in a movie is fromLove Actuallywhen one of the characters writes a series of signs for a woman he has fallen in love with, who happens to be married to his best friend. One of the signs says, ‘to me, you are perfect.’ Lexi’s been waiting for the right wine to use that name for ever since.
“This is exciting, let me taste, let me taste, let me taste!” I say.
“Come on up!”
I start to climb the incredibly unstable and rickety (as far as I was concerned) pieces of nailed together planks that Lexie considered to be a ladder. Lexie was like a little monkey swinging from barrel to barrel with the agility of a ninja. Things like ladders that were falling apart didn’t faze her.
“You need a new ladder, Lexie,” I say.
“I know, I know. But I love this ladder. It was Daddy’s ladder. I get that it’s rickety and uneven, but it’s been in the family its whole life. I can’t give it up now. No one is going to love it like I do. And it will miss me.”
Lexie frequently gives life and feelings to inanimate objects. Case in point, her father’s ladder.
Lexie’s father had that ladder her entire life, so it had definitely seen its share of use and abuse. And for some reason, after he died, Lexie clung to the ladder like a security blanket.
I finally make it to the top of the rack and awkwardly straddle a neighboring barrel. Once I feel stable, I ask her for a glass.
Lexie grabs another glass, from where I have no idea, and fills it for me. I lift the glass to my nose and sniff just like Lexie taught me to do, give it a little swirl, and then sniff again.
“What do you think? What do you think?” Lexie asks, eyes alight with excitement.
I look at Lexie, feeling at a bit of a loss, and guess, “Roses?”
“Ah, I have taught you well, Grasshopper,” Lexie replies with a giggle.
Then I taste the wine, and Lexie is right, it is sublime. And I tell her so. Lexie does a little sitting shimmy on the barrel, barely able to contain her excitement.
“I’m so going to submit it to the National Winemaker Challenge!”
