Page 75 of Red Mountain Burning
The Lost Vintage
“Not many people have been down here,” Otis said, slipping a giant iron key into a lock dangling from a chain. He reminded her of a wizard in a fantasy novel, leading someone through a secret chamber. Emilia hadn’t noticed the arched wooden door when she’d gone from the cellar into the tasting room earlier.
A musty odor wafted out as Otis pulled open the door. Emilia peeked around him, wondering what in the world lay in store for her this afternoon. Stepping through, he retrieved a lantern from the wall and switched it on. A narrow set of stairs descending into the earth showed itself. The brick walls formed into an arched ceiling. She followed him down, feeling the drop in temperature as they descended.
When the two of them reached the last steps, her eyes feasted on one of the most incredible wine cellars she’d ever seen. Having toured with her father in Europe, she’d visited many of the greatest wineries in the world, and this one was on par. She cringed as she recalled her lack of interest in wine back in those days. Her face had been glued to her phone as they’d navigated the Gallo-Roman chalk mines that made up Taittinger’s wine cellar in Champagne.
Now, she couldn’t think of anything more interesting and intriguing than a lifetime of bottled memories from vintages the world over. So many souls and their stories trapped in bottles, waiting for their corks to be pulled.
“This is so cool. Has my dad been down here?”
“A time or two.” Their voices echoed.
Otis set the lantern down and turned a dimmer knob. Sconces along the brick walls lit up in a soft orange, revealing this truly marvelous feat in architecture. Large brick columns held up the arched ceilings. Thousands of bottles lined the walls, and Emilia suddenly wanted to get lost in the passageways. After being down here and also meeting Angeline, she wondered how many secrets this mountain had been keeping from her.
They walked further into the space, circling a column to an opening. A small wooden table stood in the middle with four chairs around it. Several candles protruded from empty wine bottles caked in wax drippings.
Emilia approached one of the walls of wine. The shelves were made of concrete, and each section held a couple of cases. There were chalk marks indicating vintages and regions, places she recognized in the Rhone Valley. From the south, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas, Lirac. And from the north, Hermitage, Cornas, Rasteau. She ran her fingers along the dusty bottles. Some of the labels were peeling off.
“How long have you been collecting bottles?”
“Much of this I brought up from Sonoma. Rebecca and I started buying wines in our twenties. So forty years. Some of these wines date back beyond my days, though.”
“Prewar?”
“A few. You’re in France now. In the next room are the more obscure regions. A bit of Georgia and Greece. Past that, you’ll encounter my riesling problem. If you’ve not had a chance to wrap your head around riesling, it’s the wine of the gods. I’m not sure any other white ages with such grace.”
Her eyes glazed as she touched the dusty bottles with faded labels, and Otis narrated her tour through time. She felt like she’d fallen into a storybook, each bottle a different mystical chapter.
After the tour, Otis said, “Look around if you like. I’ll retrieve a couple of bottles and meet you at the table.” He disappeared past a column.
Emilia lost herself in the endless bottles, feeling the energies of winemakers who’d struggled through vintages long before her time. The idea of stories captured in a bottle was nearly overwhelming, and she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, utterly exposed to the raw beauty of humanity, a world where such an endeavor was possible.
A chair scraped the concrete floor, and she peeked around a column. Otis had set two bottles down on the table and was taking a seat.
Joining him, she said, “I’m honored that you’d share your cellar and these wines with me. My mind is exploding.” She shook her head, thinking she might tear up. “I could stay down here forever.”
“I feel the same way.” He dragged a match along the table until it burst into flame. As he lit the candles, she took a seat opposite him and eyed the bottles, dying to know what they were about to taste. One was from his vineyard here. She didn’t recognize the other one, but it was much older. She could barely make out on the fading label that it was Californian.
“Does Joan like coming down here? I imagine she does.”
Otis reached for the first bottle and pushed the corkscrew into the cork. “We haven’t been down here for a long time together. I’m afraid my love of wine—or, as she might call it,obsession—is beginning to grate on her nerves. I can’t blame her. She’s tired of hearing me talk about Drink Flamingo.”
“It’s a pretty big deal, them being there. Especially for you, as their neighbor.”
“No question. But she claims I’m overthinking it all.” He tilted his head. “She tells me not to let the things I can’t control control me.”
Emilia was touched that he was being so honest with her, but this cellar had a sacred feeling and seemed to demand nothing but honesty. “You’re very lucky to have her. She helped me so much when I was going through all my issues two years ago.”
He nodded as he sniffed the cork he’d extracted from the bottle. “She’s saving all of us, one at a time.” Setting the cork down, he continued, “She may have met her match with me, though.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Arching his eyebrow, he said, “I fear I might be losing her.”
She felt his pain in her heart. “Why would you say that? You two are meant to be together.”
He poured the wine into two gorgeous crystal glasses, and Emilia could see from the light-brown edges that it was an older vintage. “She deserves much more than me.” He watched the candle for a while as the wine breathed.
