Page 102 of Before We Say Goodbye
Otis gave Amigo a pat on the head and chewed on his pen for a moment. He stood and sat and stood and sat again. Finally, he found stillness. Desperate to relive those first years on the mountain, a smile spread across his face.
It was like having sex for the first time, stumbling and fumbling around, unsure of what to do or how to do it, but craving it all the same. Of course, I’m talking about figuring our way through the new terroir. I suspected that I’dhave to learn a few new tricks, but I didn’t know what it would require.
Amazingly, I thought I was on an easy glide for the rest of my life with regards to wine. I’d found my passion and made money from it, didn’t have to keep learning.
That’s what was so special about Red Mountain. She turned me into a kid again, lost and alive all at the same time.
Truthfully, all was well until ...
Otis slapped his pen onto the desk. “For God’s sake. If this isn’t the mark of a bad writer, Amigo.All was well until ...let’s hope no one ever reads this namby-pamby. How else do I say it? I had the tools, the skills, the experience. Lloyd had disappeared in the rearview mirror. I was ready. The world was my oyster. Shit, another cliché.”
Otis dragged a line over much of what he’d written.
“Can you imagine what Graham Greene would say? I suppose it means I should leave the writing to the pros. Don’t worry, I’m almost done, but maybe I should back up a hair.”
Chapter 23
The Elder Vine
They returned to Glen Ellen to finish what they’d started all those years ago. Otis moved the wines to barrel. Rebecca began working on both selling the winery and building a new one on Red Mountain.
While the land was under contract, they flew up a few more times to meet with a soil scientist and other experts, ensuring that their particular site would suit them well. They had many discussions on which varieties would thrive and how they should be planted to best take advantage of the slope and sun.
“This is a place for syrah,” Otis finally said, after digesting everyone’s opinions. He felt it in his bones. He’d learned the magic of syrah traveling through the Rhône Valley in France over the years, and he’d played with it down in Sonoma, but he had by no means learned to harness it.
“I don’t care that the Aussies have butchered it. I don’t care that it’s trendy. It won’t be forever. All I know is that I want to dedicate this place to syrah. We can dabble with others, but we must master syrah.”
They toured the local high school and visited the nearby restaurants. Aside from some lovely Mexican food, it was a far cry from the culinary boom happening in the Sonoma Valley. Nevertheless, Red Mountain’s time would come; Otis knew it with a curious yet confident certainty.
Cam flew in from Denver to join them on the day of closing. After signing the papers in Richland, they drove to the property and met with an architect from Seattle. They knew what they wanted, a place that evoked feelings of the Old World, a slice of Europe, the beginnings of a new chapter.
As Otis had learned, it was nearly impossible to get a construction loan from a bank, so the solution was mobile homes. That was why there were so many, including the two he could see from his property. Sonoma had once been that way too. It was pure farm country, nothing more. They were grateful that the good fortune of Lost Souls had armed them with the cash it took to build their dream house.
After the architect left, Otis stood in the center of where they would build the winery, and he raised his arms to the sky.
Taking in a deep breath of new beginnings, Otis howled like he hadn’t howled in many moons. “Ahhhwoooo! Ahhwoooooo!” The energy rose from his toes and up his spine, shooting out toward the heavens.
Bec, Michael, and Camden joined him, smiles stretching wide, all of them shaking out the past, shaking out everything but this moment.
A series of coyote calls came back from somewhere up the hill.
Otis lost his breath. “You hear that, guys? A welcome call.”
His every cell shimmered with delight, and Otis knew he would dedicate the rest of his life to this new terroir. Not by working his tail off but by finding the balance. By being the man he was meant to be, by becoming the man Rebecca deserved, a man his kids could look up to. Like Mike had said more than once, Red Mountain would be a second chance.
He would not mess it up.
So that Mike could get started with the second semester of his junior year in his new school and so Bec could manage construction of the new house and winery, they rented a house in Benton City, and Becand Mike preceded Otis to their new state. They bought an old Chevy farm truck with limited miles but unlimited dents and scuffs and put aRedmtnlicense plate on the back. Eloise and Aunt Morgan made the eight-hour drive from Bozeman and stayed for a while. Otis sneaked up there as much as he could. His constant goodbyes began to break the connection between him and Lost Souls.
On Mother’s Day, Rebecca and Otis planted their first vines, a syrah block that would be their new baby. A coyote appeared in the broad daylight and watched them for three days straight. They took turns with the posthole digger, the other plopping the baby vines into the earth and covering them back up with the dusty soil of this new promised land. They planted hundreds of vines per day, watching as each carefully selected block of land came to life. Along with syrah, cabernet, and merlot, they planted a few test rows of other varieties to see which thrived. They’d have to wait two to three years before they’d get enough fruit to make wine, but that was okay.
Otis was tired of rushing.
Almost a year later, in March 1995, Rebecca, Otis, and Mike moved into their new abode. It was everything they’d hoped, a stone cottage with three bedrooms in the center of thirty acres. From the looks of it, one might not know she was in the New World at all, and that was the point. This home and the stone winery up the hill were a nod to his European upbringing and to the great master vintners of long ago.
The back deck looked over the Yakima River to Mount Adams. Fencing lined the entire property to accommodate the sheep and chickens they’d brought up from Sonoma. After losing a couple of chickens to coyotes, they adopted a Great Pyrenees named Rosco from a local animal shelter. He slept outside to protect the livestock and poultry.
The winery featured their first tasting room, and they’d allowed the architect to give it a look of modernity with walls of thick glass, creating an immersive tasting experience offering a near-360-degree view of the Columbia Valley. When a visitor posted up to the concrete bar, illuminated by the naked Edison bulbs dangling above, Otis wanted them to feel the vines surrounding them.
