Page 76 of Before We Say Goodbye
Otis made a bold decision. Being a successful winemaker required following trends, and now that he’d sold his soul to the devil with white zinfandel, other lines began to blur.
Robert Parker’sWine Advocatecontinued to grow in popularity, and many new writers had started scoring wines on the one-hundred-point system. Though Otis didn’t agree with attempting to objectify wine, he also knew that high scores made life much easier.
Whenever he nabbed high scores, the phones rang. He could hike the price, and no one would balk. Or, if they did, he’d say, “I’m sure I can find another home for it.” He became a shrewd businessman—and winemaker—in that way.
Fortunately, the recipe to make a high-scoring wine wasn’t too difficult to follow: Pick the grapes late; add enzymes to enhance color, flavors, and texture; age in new oak barrels; add back a touch of sugar and gum arabic; and then sterile filter the holy hell out of it ... and whatever else it took to make the wines big and bold, giving them the oomph they needed to stand out in a tasting. You wanted someone to pull the cork and be knocked over by the power of the juice. If you could do that, then the critics would eat it up.
Otis had already begun to succumb to the temptation. During the previous harvest, with hurt feelings over the 93-point ratings he’d received, Otis had picked his estate fruit later than usual, at higher Brix. An element of shame pierced his soul as he walked his land, but he kept telling himself that a few years of this would mean even his grandkids would never have to work again.
His sins didn’t stop there. Once the wines had fermented, he’d racked them into all brand-new, heavy toast French oak barrels, which would over time soften and smoothen out the tannins and impart notes of graham cracker and toasted marshmallow, along with seductive vanilla and baking spice flavors. This practice was a far cry from his previous regimen of using mostly used barrels, which didn’t mask the expressive fruit and allowed the geography to shine. Now that terroir was dead—and it was—what the hell.
In March, he decided to push it even further by transferring the wines into yetanotherset of brand-new barrels, a proverbial touch of additional plastic surgery that would make this particular vintage absolutely irresistible to consumers and critics alike. Otis was no longer capturing a time and place in a bottle; he was the Willy Wonka of wine, the King of Smooth, bottling fluffy clouds of cotton candy that might garner the first 101-point rating in history.Otis Till has made the first wine that’s actually beyond perfect!There would be no authenticity to speak of, but who cared anyway? It was all one big sham. If he was going to abandon his beliefs, why not drive a Lamborghini while doing so?
Otis didn’t tell a soul—not even Bec. It would be too hard to say out loud. Only the vineyard crew and cellar rats could see what he was doing, and he found himself avoiding eye contact with them when he gave them the latest instructions. “Make it smoother than smooth, fellas,” he’d say, knowing they’d all be happy when he handed them their fat bonuses.
Distributors started giving Otis a hard time for ignoring them, and that was the excuse he used when he said he had to start traveling again soon. Escaping the man he’d become on his own land was closer to the truth. There were days when he’d walk through the rows and notice that the reverberant whisper of his farm had gone silent.
“Just a few months of working the market,” he told Bec. “My face is being forgotten. The white zin market’s crowded. I want to stay front of mind. Besides, I don’t even know if the trend will continue. We can’t start getting lazy.” He often found a way to sneak in another barb. “Don’t forget, this was your idea, building this empire.”
Perhaps in the back of his mind, he did sound like his father, making up excuses to keep working. He tried to remember his childhood. He sought clues to his parents’ unhappiness. How in God’s name had they fooled him into thinking that it had been Addison’s decision to move? Eloise had made it seem like he was a hero. She’d painted this version of Addison for him, that he was the greatest man to walk the earth.
Then, in a few short words, she’d cut it all down.
Starting in April, Otis hit the road. He’d land in a town hungover and drop his bags at a hotel; then one of the reps for the distributor would drive him around all day to meet with the most powerful buyers in each city. Otis had found that he was far more personable after a nip of wine, so he didn’t spit when he tasted with them, even if it was ten in the morning. By eleven, he’d have a nice buzz and would wax poetic about his practices in the vines to buyers who gathered around him at long tables in back rooms of restaurants like he was the final word on terroir.
It was in the bathroom of Le Bernardin, an exquisite restaurant in Manhattan led by the genius chef Eric Ripert, when Otis’s backslide took an even worse turn. He was on a whirlwind trip on the East Coast and hadn’t been home in three weeks. Having decided to embrace his artistic side, he wore a flashy silk shirt with a few buttons undone to expose a gold chain. He was there to meet with all the higher-ups from his new distributor.
One thing he’d started doing in the late eighties was replacing distributors. They’d started getting lazy on him, and he had no room for it. “Don’t tell me sales are down. I’m giving you something easy to sell. And look at the scores!”
They were sipping on Manhattans and about to order dinner when one of the reps slid a bag of cocaine into Otis’s hand. He hadn’t touched it in years, not since a trip to Chicago years before, but nothing kept him from it tonight. The truth was that he was exhausted. He was out of energy and tired of talking to people, tired of being in the spotlight. Three weeks on the road, and he’d barely slept, and he couldn’t keep up the facade much longer. No quantity of Manhattans or Negronis would help.
He took the bag into the bathroom, rolled up a bill, and sniffed a line as long as his middle finger. Woo, it woke him up. Suddenly all that weariness disappeared, and he returned to the table more charming than he’d ever been.
Easing back into the seat with confidence, a smile on his face, he said, “I ever tell you about the time Carmine Coraggio dumped dirt into a glass of my first wine and then tossed it back without a care?”
Otis couldn’t believe how all eyes went to him as he spoke. Sometimes he forgot what he’d achieved. Not many winemakers would ever reach such a level of success. It felt so good that he sneaked back to the bathroom three more times.
The next morning he peeled himself from the bed of his suite at the St. Regis—still dressed from the night before—and realized he must have forgotten to set his alarm. He was first up presenting at the general sales meeting.
With his hair wet from a shower, he rushed out the door. Bits and pieces of what had happened after dinner slowly came back to him in the taxi. A late-night show at the Village Vanguard. Or was it the Blue Note? Countless more cocktails. Otis recalled slapping down his American Express card multiple times to cover the bill. He dreaded looking through the receipts in his wallet to see the damage done. Bec would certainly have something to say upon his return. He had terribly vague memories of nearly getting into a bar brawl, and there was also a possibility that he’d thrown up into a trash can in Times Square, but maybe that had been a dream.
Twenty minutes later, Otis leaped up the stairs of an office building in SoHo, where everyone waited for him. He stood in front of forty sales reps and several managers and only then realized that his fingers were shaking. On the table beside him waited his wines.
“Well, here we are. I can’t lie. I had a late one last night. Le Bernardin and then who knows what.” He wiped his brow, capturing a layer of sweat. “Hair of the dog anyone?” He pulled the cork from the first wine and poured himself a glass, then tossed it back.
Once the liquid soothed him, he looked up. “Well, that did it. I’m back, folks. Back for more. Where are we having lunch?”
Everyone laughed, and Otis began to pass around his wine, so that each person could pour their own.
“I suppose there’s a reason that I’m best staying back home and working the fields. In all honesty, I’ve been on the road too long, but it’s important. I want to meet you guys, see who’s out there pushing my juice so that I can keep doing what I do. I appreciate your help, and all that I can offer is to give my all every year in the vineyards ... and then climb out from my cave every once in a while for a visit.”
He poured himself another glass. “My land, my farm ... I treat her like a princess. We’ve had our years, our challenges, but I’ve learned that the more love I give her, the more she responds. The more these wines speak. We’ve been to hell and back, but I think she’s coming around now, giving us vintages that we’ll never forget.”
Otis carried on for a long time, and when he finished, everyone gave him a standing ovation. In the back of his mind, he knew it was all bullshit. Just as he knew what people wanted to drink, what critics wanted to praise, he knew exactly how to spin his pitches. In truth, if his land could talk, she’d berate him for what he was doing, what he’d become.
But it was too late now. Just too late.
By the time he returned to Glen Ellen, he was a wreck. Rebecca’s jaw fell open when he stumbled into the front door with his bags. Even his boys noticed.
