Page 36 of Before We Say Goodbye
“People are going to fight for this wine,” Paul said. “Have you thought about a label?”
With Cam in his arms, Otis turned to the man who’d given him his first chance. “Every day since you and I met.”
Carmine Coraggio’s farm burst with a haphazard and overgrown explosion of life, so very different from the manicured country-club wineries lining the highway. The cover crop—the plant life around the vines—rose nearly as high as the vines’ trunks, camouflaging them. A red-tailed hawk kept watch atop a foothill pine. The meandering sheep had cut zigzag paths down the rows, no doubt leaving nutrient-rich manure in their wake. Carmine must not even mow the rows. Just over the heads of the animals, two warblers chased after one another. Loose grape clusters peeked out from behind uneven canopies of bright-green leaves that had become a playground for bees and butterflies. This land was alive, every atom of it.
Otis heard that whisper that he’d noted last time, perhaps more a feeling than a sound, reverberating out over the land and easing its way up Otis’s legs and causing a stillness in his chest.
At the end of the long gravel drive, a dog alerted Carmine to Otis’s presence. It was a mutt of some kind, scraggly as the old man, who stood near the shed spraying down bins. He wore cutoff jeans and nothing else. A thin gold necklace with a locket hung from his neck. A pink scar ran across his chest. Tattoos marked his shoulders and biceps. His withered skin hung loose over fading muscles.
Otis knelt to pet the dog, then raised the bottle in his hand. “I brought some wine. My second vintage, bottled last October. Would you please try it with me?”
Carmine turned off the hose. “You’re a persistent one, aren’t you, Otis Till?”
“I don’t know anyone else making wines like you.”
“Oh, c’mon. The whole of Europe is forging wines like me.” He fired up a smoke.
“Ten minutes of your time, that’s all.”
Carmine relented and led him to a picnic table surrounded by old barrels. Down the hill, a creek trickled through a thick tuft of trees. Carmine produced two foggy glasses marred with fingerprint smudges. Otis had to suppress his urge to ask if there might be more polished stemware somewhere.
With his heart rattling his ribs, Otis pulled the cork and poured the wine he’d forged from the depths of himself. Carmine stared with squinted eyes at the color as he sloshed it around in his glass. The anticipation nearly killed Otis, and he shared the details of the wine with a shaky voice.
Finally, the old Italian man took a sip. Otis waited with a breath caught in his lungs. He wondered how Carmine had any palate left with all the cigarettes he’d likely burned, but who was he to question the man’s ability? Carmine had a funny way of tasting, moving his whole head to shake the wine in his mouth, then he looked up to thesky and let gravity drop the juice down his throat. He smacked his lips and then closed his eyes.
“This is your second vintage?”
Otis nodded proudly.
Carmine set the glass down and pulled on his beard. “You’ve been working hard, haven’t you? How are you learning?”
“From Paul down at the Murphy Vineyards. Reading everything I can get my hands on. Tasting as much as I can afford.”
Carmine was quiet for a long time. “You have a good name. Till. That’s what I would have called it, but all you young kids don’t like using your last names. I’m okay with Lost Souls, though. That speaks to me. Here’s the thing. You need to forget what everyone’s been telling you ... what you’ve read. What I taste here is damn near perfect, scientifically speaking. No strange flavors. No VA. You kept it away from oxygen. It’s clean. You filtered, I’m assuming?”
“I did.”
“And you picked at a good time. I like the balance.”
Otis sat up straighter.
“It’s not my kind of wine, though,” Carmine said. “To me, it’s boring. Tastes like every bulk wine from every country in the world. There’s no heart in there, Till. Can you tell that?”
Otis had gone from having the best day of his life to falling on his ass. “I thought it was pretty good. Everyone seems to like it.”
“Who is that, your mom and sister?” He chuckled to himself. “It’s fine. Delicious even. In the same way that orange juice is fine. You’ve made something that is entirely palatable, but you’re here telling me you want to make something great.”
“That’s right.” Otis wanted to fling himself in front of a tractor.Entirely palatable. Wasn’t that a phrase for the ages.
“Filtering is your first problem. If you use anything tighter than a window screen, you’re stripping the marrow from your wine. If a drinker complains about sediment, they can go fuck off. More importantly ...” He recalibrated. “Stop trying to please others and stop trying to makesomething great. I keep hearing you talk about yourself. You, you,youwant to do something great. That’s not how you make a wine that’s true. You need to get out of the way and let the land speak.”
“How do I do that?”
“It’s taken me a lifetime to figure that out.” Carmine laughed, then tapped Otis’s head. “Stop creating with this.” Then he jabbed Otis in the chest. “You make it here. With your heart. Your essence.”
Chills traveled up Otis’s spine. Carmine didn’t make clear how to do such a thing, but the sentiment was powerful.
Carmine stomped on the ground, shaking Otis. Scaring him. “When I see you again and ask you what you want, you know what you should tell me?”
