Page 141 of Before We Say Goodbye
“That’s right,” she said. “He wanted to sell every last drop.”
Brooks set down a round of fresh glasses. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
Tasting the wine brought back a thousand memories, most of them not cringeworthy, though it was hard not to think of Lloyd for a moment. The man had successfully avoided jail so far, but he’d destroyed his reputation. Perhaps that was worse than jail for him.
“This could be your first hundred pointer,” Michael said, referring to the ’09 vintage.
For a moment Otis thought his son was serious. Hadn’t he taught him better than that? “Oh, I hope not. Please, dear God. Finally, I’m satisfied with a vintage, and I don’t want the critics to ruin it for me.”
“It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it?” Brooks asked, unawares.
“To get one hundred points?” Otis dramatically dropped his head into his hands. “Have I taught you nothing, boys?”
“Here we go,” Bec said, grins all around.
Brooks spun the wine in his glass like a sommelier. Oh, how far he’d come. “I get it,” he said. “Wine is subjective, but still ... you admitted yourself that you were chasing a review from Sam Ledbetter all those years.”
“Yeah, that’s when I was making wine for all the wrong reasons. He was doing the far more admirable job of actually writing about the wine. A number is entirely different. Besides, my poor choices, my hope to be written about—those are mistakes I hope you don’t make.One-hundred-point wines can be fine, but they’re no more special than any wine that captures its terroir with a degree of fine balance.”
“Have you had that many?” Brooks asked, excitement radiating from him. Otis knew that no matter what he said, he couldn’t unpolish the sheen of curiosity in the young lad’s mind.
“I have a few one hundred pointers in the cellar,” Otis said. “Gifts, mind you. I don’t buy one-hundred-point wine. On principle.”
Silence.
Otis could read the room. “Shall we drink one?”
Brooks failed to conceal his elation. “I wouldn’t say no.”
Otis looked at Rebecca. “I guess he does have to learn his own lessons.”
Michael ran up to the cellar this time and returned with a bottle of wine they’d received five years earlier from a California winemaker who’d achieved his first “perfect” wine. Brooks set yet another round of glasses on the table.
Otis watched Brooks take his first sips of “perfection.” Brooks looked around and then gave a smile. Otis held back his own opinion, waiting.
“Well . . .” Rebecca said.
“Ours is better,” Brooks said.
Otis smacked the table, jarring the bottles. “You’re damn right ours is better. I’m telling you, Brooks. The point system makes winemakers compromise their craft. They’re competing in a game of making Hollywood-action-movie wines. You know the ones, the movies with no plot but plenty of explosions. It’s a car chase that lasts thirty minutes on the screen. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a fresh score 100! No, no, no. What we have done ...”
Otis lifted the glass of the ’09. “She’s a movie that grows on you, one you show your kids when you’re older. One that makes you think. One that makes youfeel.” He kissed the glass. “This is the finest wine I’ve ever been a part of making. I don’t know that I’ll ever say it again, but this was our vintage. This is what Bec and I have been going after for forty years. Can you believe that? I think we finally did it, deary.”
Bec was sitting back, watching it all with amusement. “You finally caught your wave, didn’t you, Otis Pennington Till?”
“Our wave, my dear. None of this exists without you.”
He kissed her on the lips, then went back to the one-hundred-point wine. “You know what this is good for?”
“Oh, God,” Rebecca said. “Don’t get all riled up, Otis.”
“What? Seriously. I can’t handle this system. How is it that we let a few people tell us what is good in wine? Even worse than attempting to sum up Mother Earth’s greatest gift with a number ... is that people believe it. They open their little magazines and see a score by a label and don’t realize the score came from just one person, a person who might not even know the context of the wine, making their best guess at a rating.”
“Now we’ve opened the can of worms,” Mike said to Brooks. “He won’t stop all night now.”
Brooks folded over in laughter as Otis kept going. He ranted for five more minutes, then walked into the kitchen and grabbed an empty pitcher. He filled it with ice, then chopped up an apple and diced an orange, dropping it in.
“What are you doing?” Rebecca asked with exasperation.
