Page 127 of Before We Say Goodbye
“Hey, I’m proud right now. You’ll be a great farmer if you stick with it.”
“I hope so.”
“By the way, I’ve called a meeting. Everyone on the mountain. Would you come?”
“Sure.”
A week later, out front of the Till Vineyards tasting room, Otis stood in front of nearly every winegrower and winemaker on Red Mountain. They’d come up from the riverside and down from the hill. Many of them wore jeans and boots, but another set wore fancier clothes, as if they’d walked right out of a boardroom.
“I know we’re all so different,” Otis started, speaking loudly, “but I suspect we’re all here for a reason. I won’t get too mystical on you, but maybe there is some sort of design. Maybe it’s our place to lift Red Mountain to new heights. I’ve tasted a lot of wine from around the world, and what I know is that this little blip of land makes wines something beautiful. It’s a challenge. By God, it’s a challenge, but isn’t that what growing good fruit is all about?”
Otis paused, wondering if they really could all come together.
“Look, I’m an outsider, but I’ve been doing this a long time. Maybe we all want the same things. If that’s the case, would you let me offer you my spin? Tom and Anne-Marie Hedges have a vision of Red Mountain one day becoming its own AVA. When I first heard that, I nearly fell from my chair. I’m convinced it’s exactly the way we must forge ahead. As a collective.”
Otis heard the urgency in his voice. “I hear talk of workers not being paid. That can’t happen. I see some of our wines out there on shelves with the pricing slashed. Or retail pricing close to eight dollars. Lower sometimes. And the labels ... they look like you printed them at home. Even the choice of glass matters. We don’t want our wines in cheap glass ... we don’t want cheap corks. I don’t even want to spray chemicals, but that’s a fight I’ll wage down the line. These are things we have to talk about. Especially as we work to make Red Mountain its own AVA.”
He held up a finger, reminded of the first hard lesson he’d learned. “But first, as you know, we must sell Washington State. When I was on the road, someone bloody asked me which side of the Potomac we planted on.”
Trickles of laughter blended with the skepticism in the air.
“How many times has someone said to you, ‘I thought it always rained in Washington State’? Then you have to tell them that’s in Seattle and explain how the Cascades stop the weather from moving our way. That’s just fine. We’re on virgin land. We are settlers,pioneers. Along with making the finest wines we can muster, ones that taste only of thisplace, we must work together to spread the word. That means we all have to devote marketing dollars to getting out there and pouring the wines. We can’t wait for drinkers to come here. We have to go to them. We have to pour our wines down their gullets and show them that we have something extraordinary to offer.”
He wondered whether he was getting through to anyone. A few eyes had glazed over. “Some of you might want to tell me to go back to California, but I’m here to ride the wave with you, to become a soldier of our terroir. I will give everything I have to this land for the rest of my life, and when the time comes, when my body starts to fade, I will let the vines wrap around me and take me back into the earth. My dying breath will be of this place, of Red Mountain.”
His heart charged forward. “To some, it’s a small thing. To me, the land, this land. The vines. What we’re doing. It matters. It’s the way I shine my light on the world. I’d like to offer an idea. I’d like everyone to have a voice and a way for us to communicate. So I propose we create a consortium. Anyone who has a foot in this land can join. A Red Mountain Round Table, if you like. No leaders, simply a united voice. We may not always see eye to eye, but we can find our common ground. We can work together to solve issues both in the fields and in the cellar. We can learn from each other.”
Otis looked at Vance. “We must pave the way for the next generation. It took Burgundy hundreds of years to achieve its status, but it started somewhere. Like this, a collective of people willing to work together, wanting to change the world.”
He searched the crowd for supporters. “What say you? Will you take a seat at the Red Mountain Round Table?”
A silence hovered in the air. Otis wasn’t expecting cheering, but he thought he’d spoken some inspiring words.
“Not even a clap?” he asked.
A few nodded. The hermit Mitch Green raised an arm in solidarity.
Then a man in the back, one of the old guard, a cherry farmer named Bill Sussex, called out, “You’re right, Otis. I think you need to go back to California. We don’t need your hippie beliefs here.”
Otis’s first idea was to spray a round of insults right back.Hippie beliefs? Have you ever set foot in Europe? Have you ever walked the rows of Romanée-Conti? Have you ever taken a sip from the holy grail of a first growth? Hippie beliefs. This isn’t cherries, dear sir. You’re in the big leagues now.
Otis only smiled as he held back these thoughts. Instead, he looked at his wife, then said, “I’m not trying to get in the way of your dreams. I know they’re all different, but ... don’t you want to go to bed at night knowing you’re doing something that matters? Don’t you want to meet your maker with your head held high, knowing that you gave your all to something?”
A rush of emotions came over him, and he had to collect himself. He bent down and took a handful of the Red Mountain dust, then he let it sift through his fingers. “I’m no good at a lot of things, but I understand wine, and I know that we can only lift this place up together. The wines will only sing at their finest when we as a people find harmony. Can we do that? Can we meet and listen to each other? Can we collect as artists and choose to do something that’s beyond average? Something to make our families proud. Something worthy of giving back to God, to your maker, to the universe, to whomever you pray to at night.”
Otis slammed a fist into his palm. “We’re here only a short amount of time, my brothers and sisters. This mountain has brought us together. Let us make wines that transport, that inspire, that ignite!”
He stopped and looked around. Silence.
A few nods.
Then a clap.
A slow clap, but still a clap.
It was Rebecca, smacking her hands together.
Another clap, then another. Otis saw the Hedges family out there, Jim Holmes, John Williams and his sons, JJ and Tyler, all starting to put their hands together.
