Page 50 of Red Mountain Burning
Brooks smiled. “Now you know why wine is so much different from anything else in the world. Our job is to bottle that feeling. If we’re respectful to this land, and if we are minimal in our intervention and inputs, we can capture Angeline and share her with the world.”
Emilia let go, and Brooks could tell she understood what he meant. Those eager eyes had lit up, and Brooks knew she felt the same way he had when he’d first walked Otis’s vines. Maybe she was meant to be out here too. Maybe this was her calling, the one she’d been searching for so desperately.
“Can you believe all this is yours?” Brooks asked. “This is your family’s land. You live here.”
“I can’t believe my dad has never taken me to Angeline.”
Brooks shook his head. “It can’t be a spectacle to come here. You have to earn the right. And for you to want to work at Lacoda means it’s your time.”
“So everyone who works here knows about Angeline?”
“Everyone who works here has knelt in this exact same spot.”
Emilia smiled.
“Yeah, pretty cool, right? We’re not building auto parts around here. This is serious business. We’re cutting deep.”
“Does my mom know about her?”
“Yeah, she does. I’m not sure she was impressed, but Jake’s brought her up here before.”
They dusted themselves off and stood. Emilia’s eyes were still planted on Angeline. “What do you mean by minimal intervention?”
“It’s hands-off winemaking. Of course, it’s not completely hands-off. You have to pick the fruit and move it into fermentation tanks and guide it all the way to the bottle, but the idea is to intervene as little as possible. It’s so easy in this day and age to manipulate every process in order to get what you want.” Brooks shook his head. “That’s not what we do here. We want a wine with specificity and vintage differentiation. How do we do that?”
Emilia looked up from Angeline. “By staying out of the way and letting nature do her magic?”
“Exactly.”
* * *
The last thingMargot had heard in her house before she left to host the ladies of Red Mountain was Remi and Carly screaming at each other upstairs. It had been so bad that Jasper left to visit Emilia after her workday. Margot had wanted to say something, anything to make them stop, but she knew she had no answers to end their bickering. If they were to reunite as father and daughter, they’d have to figure it out on their own.
She left a note for Remi next to the dinner she’d prepared for them: a healthy soup and lovely loaf of bread from her new friend, Sarah Goedhart, the head winemaker of Hedges Family Estate, who had cut a Red Mountain triangle into the crust. All Margot could do at this point was to keep loving him with everything she had.
Doing her best to keep her troubles at bay, Margot looked with a smile at the nine women surrounding her massive oak island in the industrial kitchen of Épiphanie. They each had an aperitif and a measured pile ofdoppio zeroflour in front of them. Behind her were two large farm sinks and the windows overlooking her garden. Large glass containers with bulk foods lined one wall. Dried herbs dangled from the metal racks alongside beautiful copper and stainless pots and pans. Though she’d abandoned many of her cookbooks when moving, her collection was growing again, and two shelves were crammed full of new ideas just waiting to be tested.
The days were getting longer, and it was still bright outside, but she’d turned on the Edison light bulbs so they could see exactly what they were doing. Every time Margot stood here in front of the women of Red Mountain, she was reminded of how far she’d come since first driving west.
“Okay, ladies,” Margot said. “I know we all have so much to catch up on, but we’d better get started if we want to eat tonight.” Once the women had quieted, she continued, “This is not the easiest way of mixing dough, but it’s the traditional way, and something that’s not only effective but really fun once you get the hang of it. Wecouldmix everything, including the flour, in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. Or we could cheat with a mixer. But we want to be as Italian as possible tonight.”
Demonstrating as she talked, she said, “I want you to carve out a hole in the middle of the flour, like you’re making a little volcano. Then take your mixture of water, yeast, salt, and honey, and pour just a little bit into the hole, forming a lake of goodness. Then work them together like so. You have to be very careful here, making sure your walls stay intact, or the liquid will escape and run right off the table.”
Once they were all kneading, an army of Red Mountain women pressing and pulling their dough, Margot said, “Since we’d all be drunk as skunks if we waited for the dough to rise, I’ve already made enough to use tonight. You can take these home and either cook them in the next day or so, or throw it in your freezer for later.”
Margot answered questions about shelf life and thawing the dough after freezing, then they moved onto the current gossip of Red Mountain. When Margot had first started these nights, it had occurred to her that these women had not had a place to gather and share. They came for the cooking lessons but stayed for the camaraderie.
Sarah Goedhart asked Emilia about her first year in New York, and Emilia replied, “New York is fine. I had a lot of fun, and it was nice being so close to Jasper. But honestly, I’m having more fun tonight. I missed everyone.”
“We missedyou,” Joan said, standing next to Emilia. “At least we get you back every summer.”
“It might be more than that,” Emilia admitted. “I’m not sure I want to leave again. Anyway, how are you and Otis?”
All eyes went to Joan, who stopped kneading. “We’re fine. Everything’s good.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Margot said, knowing there was more to the story. “We’re all friends here. Tell the truth.”
Joan glanced around the room and caved. “Well, this Drink Flamingo thing is tearing Otis up. And for some reason, I’m letting it get to me too.” The ladies worked their dough in silence, which forced Joan to continue. “I keep internalizing everything he’s going through, and I can’t help but try to fix him, which is exactly what I shouldnotbe doing. I find myself preaching at him all the time, and he’s getting tired of it.” She started kneading again. “I’m even grating my own nerves.”
