Page 63 of Red Mountain Burning
A Guessing Game
Otis sipped the honey-colored juice in his glass—a barrel sample of marsanne that Brooks had brought from Lacoda. “Astoundingly vibrant. A nice expression, Brooks. What’s the pH?”
“Three-point-two, I think. Give or take.”
Otis sniffed again. “Yeah, quite crunchy.”
“What doescrunchymean?” Emilia asked, loving Otis’s seemingly never-ending list of wine adjectives.
“Think of biting into a crisp apple,” Otis answered. “A crunchy wine has a snap to it.”
They’d taken seats under an umbrella on the deck of a restaurant that overlooked the Columbia River. An empty barge crept by in the distance.
Emilia emulated Otis, spinning the glass in the air, sniffing the wine. She thought of all the white-wine descriptors she’d been studying. Apricot, banana, mango, citrus. Which ones could she detect in this glass?
She took a sip and breathed in some air to activate the flavors. Was it melon? Or maybe…honeysuckle? She reached across the table for the dump bucket and spat the contents against the side. Though she’d been nervous to spit in front of them, she’d been practicing in the shower and was proud of her effort.
“What do you think?” Brooks asked her.
Emilia blushed. “Please don’t make me talk about the wine.”
“Oh, c’mon, young lady,” Otis said. “Brooks has invented more absurd wine descriptors than anyone in Washington. And half the time he’s been right! Give it a go.”
Emilia nodded, thinking back to her last sip. “Okay, well, I did like the brightness. I think I smelled…fried green tomatoes? And definitely some honeysuckle. I liked it a lot.”
“Fried green tomatoes,” Otis said. “I think you’re spot on with quite an original thought. Well done.” Otis pointed at the brown bag Brooks held. “And what’s this?”
Emilia was glad to be off the hook and felt her shoulders lower and release.
Brooks drew the bottle out of the bag. It had no label, which Emilia had learned was called a shiner. This one had a beer cap as opposed to a cork. “You remember we used to talk about making a Red Mountain piquette?”
Otis smiled proudly. “Oh, bloody hell. Well done, sir.”
“Seven-point-eight percent alcohol, from malbec and merlot pommus. Twenty cases made. I call it Red Mountain Light.”
“What’s a piquette?” Emilia asked, thinking nothing was cooler in the world than these geeky projects that they were sharing.
“A wine for peasants,” Otis said.
“Yep,” Brooks agreed, popping the top and pouring the fizzy, light-red wine into three glasses. “You know what pommus is, right? The leftovers from the grapes after pressing. So the skins, stems, seeds, and pulp. The scraps, really. Vineyard workers for hundreds, or maybe thousands of years, have been making this little delight. I used some Red Mountain honey just before bottling to get that fizz. Or as Otis calls it,petulance.”
The three of them tasted Brooks’s creation and shared their opinions, and Emilia found herself eager for harvest when she could finally make her own wine. They eventually fell into more casual wine conversation as they waited for their food to come. Otis and Brooks were sipping more than spitting, and the mood lightened. She thought both of them were quite funny after a bit of wine, and she hoped there would be many more lunches like this one.
Otis smacked his lips after a big long sip. “I feel compelled to share something I’ve done recently, but I must hold you to secrecy. You must promise me. This stays between us.”
Brooks and Emilia both promised. Emilia couldn’t imagine what great secret he was about to divulge. Maybe that he’d started a new project? Or that he’d proposed to Joan?
Otis looked around and whispered, “I’ve infiltrated the Drink Flamingo compound.”
“What?” Brooks said, his eyes blowing up.
The grapefather grinned. “I ripped out some of their cabernet and replaced it with a less noble variety. Only a few vines, nothing terribly harmful.”
Emilia and Brooks looked at each other in surprise.
“Are you serious?” Brooks asked. “How’d you get inside?”
“With wire cutters, of course. Care to take a guess at the variety I chose?”
