Page 37 of Before We Say Goodbye
Otis didn’t dare speak.
Carmine leaned in, his pungent sweaty-and-smoky smell invading Otis’s nostrils. “That you want to turn your land to liquid, that it’s not about you and your silly dreams. It’s about tapping the vein of your farm and running a line of it right into the bottle.” A gold tooth in the back of his mouth sparkled.
He bent down and gathered a handful of dirt, then held it over the glass and let it fall through his fingers. The soil splashed into Otis’s wine. Carmine spun the glass in a sharp, angry motion, then tossed the wine into the back of his throat.
Otis about shit himself.
“Become one with your land. Speak her language. Know when she’s sick, know when she’s mad. Tend to her with the respect she deserves. Get down on the ground and make love to her. Eat her dirt and let it spread under your flesh. You understand?”
“I . . . sort of?”
“You’re not even a shepherd. You’re a pair of hands, the only opposable thumbs on the farm, the only being who can do the math. So pick the grapes, move them from tank to barrel, do your measurements, and get out of the way. Don’t worry about making a wine that tastesgood. Taste hasnothingto do with it. Make a wine that sings the sermon of the earth!”
Otis exhaled, as if he’d narrowly missed a bullet. He had no idea what Carmine was talking about, and yet he’d learned more in the last twenty minutes than he would the rest of his life.
Carmine kept going, sharing wisdom that Otis would try to wrangle into reason for years to come.
“What is it?” Carmine said after a while. “I can see you have a question.”
Otis rubbed his eyes, wading through a minefield of question marks. “I don’t mean offense, but—”
“Out with it, Till.”
“You say I have to take myself out of it, but then you tell me I should have put my name on the bottle. That’s what you do.”
Carmine stuffed a cigarette into his smiling lips and drew in a long puff. The red cherry glowed. Out with the smoke came more wisdom. “Just when I worried that you were another pawn falling in line. Now you’re thinking,ragazzo. It’s a hell of a question, a complex one. To make a great wine, you must take ego out of it. You have to let your farm lead the way and take all the glory, but the reality is that to sell a wine, we need to sell ourselves too.
“In a perfect world, my labels would be blank. Or better yet, I’d just press some of this dirt into them, but we must consider marketing. If we are to be the stewards that usher juice into people’s mouths, we must give them a brand. But what we putinthe bottle is not the brand. It is life, nature ... God. Brands are a short-term tool forged on the impatience of the human capitalist perspective.”
Otis laughed at that. This fellow had a way with words.
Carmine helped himself to another glass and knocked it back. “I have work to do. Aren’t you sorry you came to see me?”
“I’m begging you ... let me help around here. I’ll work for free.”
“I don’t need help, and you’re not ready.”
“Why not?”
Carmine stood and looked down at Otis. “For one thing, you need to go to the Old World. Go to the church of wine. Go to Burgundy and Bordeaux. Go walk the magical hills of Tuscany. You know what? Go baptize yourself in the Mosel. They started making wine there in the fifteenth century. Soak that up. Then go buy a farm and learn how to tend to land. You’re up there working a block at Murphy Vineyards. It’s not about working a block,ragazzo. It’s about working a farm. You see all these trees around here, you see those animals, the biodiversity? You hear those bees? Fermenting wine is the easy part. All right, class dismissed.”
He found a pen and wrote his number down. “So that next time I don’t shoot you for trespassing, at least call first.”
As Otis took the paper into his hands, tears welled under his eyes.
Otis would never forget his first trip to the Mosel Valley, courtesy of his father, who’d paid for it as their honeymoon trip. Carmine was right—the hills were damn near cliffs. The naked riesling vines descended steeply down from the mountain mist and stopped just shy of the ancient fairy-tale town of Bernkastel-Kues, which straddled the Mosel River. A grand church tower stood over the half-timberedfachwerkbuildings that made up most of the architecture.
Before they even unpacked, Otis was dragging Rebecca and Camden out the door. They’d barely slept, but he was wide awake. They enjoyed sausage and sauerkraut and beer and then wandered along the old stone wall that created a border between the town and the vines.
Whispers trickled down like fog descending a mountain.
“Do you hear them?” Otis asked.
“What’s that?” Rebecca asked.
“The vines. They’re talking.”
Rebecca smiled. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
