Vintage (24 page)

‘When God created the soil of the Médoc, he wasn’t thinking of the AOC regulations.’

‘He also said I needed to replace sixty per cent of my barrels…’

‘I’m the oenologue round here,’ Halliday said, helping himself to bread with which to clean his plate. ‘If you want me to help you – and you’re going to need my help – I’ll tell you what you have to do.’

Waiting for Jamie to return from the hospital, Clare thought that although she was not short of willing advisers to guide the Château de Cluzac ship through, what were for her, uncharted waters, most of them were male chauvinists. Halliday Baines was their apotheosis.

Halliday had contemptuously dismissed Big Mick’s suggestion that she replace sixty per cent of her barrels. Although it might be true that the flavour of new oak, like the addition of certain spices to a dish when cooking, added character to the wine – in this case a sweet vanilla flavour – which might possibly make it more saleable in the USA, the additional cost of so many new barrels needed to be taken into consideration and the exact proportion of new oak extremely carefully assessed.

Halliday’s judgement was based on the findings of the Institut Oenologique at the University of Bordeaux, which had carried out a study for the ageing of red wine in barrels. It was his considered opinion that to replace only twenty-five per cent of her casks was the correct approach.

‘Big Mac doesn’t know the first thing about barrels. All he knows about is bottles, tasted on neutral territory, with no reference to the producers, and dishing out marks based on his highly questionable palate.’

‘Is that so terrible?’

‘It’s highly dangerous. The American wine trade reacts to the number of points he gives like sheep, rather than deciding which wine their customers will like and what they want to sell. The French understand the culture of
the grape. They judge their wines in a far more civilised way.’

Inspecting the fermentation tanks in the chai – after two helpings of Sidonie’s ice-cream pudding – Halliday, instantly the professional, noticed that most of the old vats were time-expired and than none of them were up to scratch.

‘I’m putting in new inox,’ Clare said.

‘I hear that Alain “the Mutt” is backing you.’

Clare laughed at the Australian’s corruption of Alain Lamotte’s name. ‘Who told you?’

‘“Any resemblance between Alain Lamotte and a tailor’s dummy is purely coincidental!”’ Halliday stepped over a hose on the freshly sluiced floor. ‘Word gets round.’

‘I can hardly underwrite inox on my own.’

‘There’ll be a lot of people trying to muscle in.’

‘I’m perfectly capable of running the château.’

‘It wasn’t the château I was thinking of.’

‘I can look after myself.’

Having spent more than two hours in the cellars, using his basic French to suggest to Jean – to whom current scientific concepts such as pH, oxidation-reduction and colloids were a closed book, but who listened to the oenologist with respect – that new vats would be the first step in putting Château de Cluzac on the map in the shortest possible time, and personally getting to work with the hose, Halliday told Clare that what she really had to do was to declassify part of her 1993 vintage.

Clare hadn’t the foggiest idea what the oenologist was talking about. He explained that, since she was strapped for cash, the choice was one of financial responsibility, and this would be eased considerably by the creation of a ‘second’ wine. To do this she would have to make use of her ‘reserve’; take wine from the main blend and mix it
with that which had been dumped, not because it wasn’t good enough but because it would have spoiled the balance.

‘Balance?’

‘When the constituents are in the right proportions the wine is well-balanced – good fruit flavours and a positive after-taste or “finish” in the mouth. Not enough fruit and your wine’s too dull: too much fruit and it’s too simple or “jammy”. Insufficient sun means acidic “green” tannins. Too much sun and not enough rain, you get cold stewed tea. A good winemaker will use his equipment and his palate to compensate for the shortcomings of nature.

‘Your château wine matures in the bottle. Your second wine will be for early drinking. Balance it from the start and you can do what you like with it. Sell it on the Place de Bordeaux, stick it in quarter bottles with screw caps and flog it to the airlines. Your neighbours will kill you. You can’t sell it under the Château de Cluzac label. You’ll have to find another name for it.’

‘How about Château de Cluzac Inférieure…?’

‘It won’t be inferior. Just different. Not made to last as long. Even the most fastidious airline will fall over themselves to buy it. What you decide to call it is a mega decision. Just remember that the English have black belts in snobbery when it comes to wine. The top ten best sellers are bought not on quality but on the name on the label and the price.’

‘And the French?’

‘The French just get on with it. Seventy per cent of what they drink is bought in supermarkets; they take no pride in their wines. Give your average Pom a wine list and it’s a different story. Ri-oja, Lam-brusco,
Chianti
, Val-pol-icella, Pouilly Fuissé, Pouilly-Fumé – they can’t even tell the difference – Gewürz-
traminer
,
Puligny-Montrachet, Chassagne-Montrachet, Châteauneuf-du-Pape… They like the way it sounds.’

‘Am I allowed to declassify?’ Clare asked, as they came out of the gloom of the cellars into the sunlight and, accompanied by a subdued Rougemont, walked through the iron gate towards the formal gardens where Aristide Louchemain, son of old Monsieur Louchemain, was tending the miniature orange trees, which spent their winters under canvas, in their square white tubs.

‘You can do anything you damn’ well like. There’s a whole new generation of wine drinkers out there. Bordeaux means nothing to them. It means less than nothing. They’d just as soon drink wines from the Midi, from eastern Europe, from the New World. Heavily promoted “bargain basement” wines don’t do anyone any favours. The retailer makes nothing, the producer gets shafted, and the consumer goes more and more
down-market
. We call it “the supermarket effect”. As far as Bordeaux is concerned, the expensive stuff is
overpriced
and the sub-five-pounds claret market is stuffed with lean, green wines you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. A “second” wine from a second growth Bordeaux château – under a fiver – and the supermarket buyers will be beating a path to your door.’

‘Why hasn’t Château de Cluzac declassified before?’

‘From what I hear, your father would have died first.’

Halliday picked up a yellowed tennis ball which lay on the path and tossed it from hand to hand.

‘Ever been to Australia?’

Clare shook her head.

‘We make some great wine.’

‘I’ve heard.’

‘Two per cent of the world’s output and seventy-five per cent of the world’s know-how. We’ve just signed a two-hundred-page agreement. Took five years to draw
up: Australia to stop using European wine names – champagne, burgundy, chablis, port, claret and so on – and the EU recognises our winemaking techniques and renounces the right to geographical names such as Coonawarra…’

‘No more Coonawarra claret?’

‘Right, mate.’ Stooping, Halliday rolled the tennis ball along the tended path, where it was studiously ignored by Rougemont.

‘What’s up with him?’

‘He still misses my father.’

‘In Australia we arrange our wineries differently. It doesn’t make any sense to build the same high-tech processing plant in a dozen different locations, so we truck our grapes – hundreds of miles sometimes – for pressing. It’s like trucking the grapes from Burgundy to Bordeaux. Only back home it’s not illegal.’

‘You travel a lot?’

‘You could say I collect a good few air miles. It’s damned hard. Ill-equipped locations, five time zones, not much sleep, no weekends off, no lunchbreaks, a workforce that doesn’t speak the language… August I’m in California for the early white sparkling wine varietals, then it’s back to Europe for the long vintage sessions. I usually finish up in Germany with the
late-harvested
November grapes. With the northern hemisphere wrapped up by early December, I’ll take a Christmas break. January, I’ll start again with the southern hemisphere. Fortunately the South African
harvest is in March. Wines in other parts of the world may have bigger extractions, stronger flavours, more powerful body, but none of them has the elegance of Bordeaux.’

‘What exactly do you do?’

‘Fly in before the harvest. Tell the growers how, when and in what order the grapes are to be picked. Clean out the winery, supervise the vinification, maturation and bottling.’ Taking a coin from his pocket, he spun it in the air before catching it and turning it over on the back of his hand. ‘Most growers look for safety. The winemaker takes risks.’

‘You really like making wine.’

‘It’s a good job. Wine makes people happy. It’s like fine food, good music, a beautiful painting. Tell you a secret, Clare. I’ve just bought myself a half-share in a vineyard in Chile…’

‘Why Chile?’

‘Five thousand kilometres of coastline to temper the sun and keep the rainfall low. No restrictions, no Appellation Contrôlée, you’re free to express your ideas. It’s always been my dream…’

Taking his wallet from the back pocket of his
sun-bleached
jeans, Halliday took out a bunch of business cards and gave one to Clare.

‘Any problems, send me a fax. Barossa will know where to find me…’

The oenologist was as condescending with his doubts about her ability to cope as was Big Mick with his ‘little Clare’.

‘Hang on.’ Clare stood stock still. ‘I just thought of something. How does “little Clare” grab you?’

‘“Little Clare”?’

‘“Petite Clare”. Château de Cluzac’s second wine?’

‘Brilliant! Clare. Claret. Couldn’t be better. Now all you have to do is market it.’

As Halliday replaced the rest of the business cards in his wallet, Clare caught a glimpse of a small boy’s face, mischievous eyes peering out from the photograph slot.

‘Your son?’

‘Billy. He’s just turned five. I’ve taught him to do card tricks. He could read a newspaper when he was four.’

‘He looks like you.’

‘More like his mother.’

‘You must miss him.’

‘You can say that again.’ The wallet was snapped shut.

Clare changed the subject.

‘When’s your next visit?’

‘I’ll be in and out. I keep a pad in Bordeaux. The Rue Ferrère. I’ll be here for the marathon…’

‘Marathon?’ Light on his feet, Halliday looked like a runner. There had been no marathon in the Médoc when Clare was a child.

‘Châteaux du Médoc et des Graves. Beginning of September. Pauillac, St Julien, Beychevelle,
St-Estèphe
… Last year there were more than six thousand runners. I came fifth.’

‘I must tell Jamie.’

‘Tell him if he wants to run he has to register.’

Little by little, feeling her way, taking one day at a time, Clare was coming to terms with the château. Conscious that she was surrounded by cynics such as Halliday Baines and Big Mick, by several jealous neighbours who preferred the status quo, and by declared enemies such as Claude Balard and Philip Van Gelder, her once micro-thin skin, susceptible to every pinprick from her father, was becoming as thick as that of the grapes.

By dint of her working in her new office from 6.30 a.m., beating Monsieur Boniface to her desk, and very often not crossing the courtyard to her bed before the small hours of the following morning, everything at Château de Cluzac was now ready to receive visitors. She confidently expected the coaches, carrying tourists from Europe, the United States and Scandinavia, which would shortly be criss-crossing each other on the Route des Châteaux, to relieve her cashflow problems and swell the severely depleted Cluzac coffers.

The new pancarte had been erected, this time protected by barbed wire. A section of the park had been designated an ‘aire de pique-nique’ (to the dismay of Monsieur Louchemain) and was furnished with litter bins as well as wooden chairs and tables. The room adjoining her office, under the supervision of Petronella, had been set up as a shop, and she was going to call on Hannah to collect the ‘Château de Cluzac’
T-shirts
. The cellars, Jean Boyer notwithstanding, were ready for inspection. She had her own spiel ready. And the moat, home previously only to swans and water lilies, had been stocked with trout for paid fishing.

In the calm before the storm, for she would not be able to get away again before the harvest, she had come back to England not only to see Jamie and to visit Grandmaman, but to talk to David Markham, a senior director of Christie’s, about including several lots of Château de Cluzac among the Château Mouton-Rothschilds and the Château Petrus, in the next fine wine auction.

By the time Jamie opened the door of the cottage, the Tatler had slipped on to the floor, and Clare was asleep on the sofa. She was dreaming that Claude Balard had vandalised her sign once again and was threatening to drive her out of the Médoc. When Jamie put his lips to
her forehead, she screamed and pummelled him in the chest.

‘Steady on!’ He grabbed her hands.

Clare sat up.

‘It’s you. Sorry darling. I thought I was in Bordeaux.’

‘Who were you hoping to kill?’

Before they had said hallo, Clare unburdened herself to Jamie about Claude Balard, and about Big Mick and Halliday Baines, and her trouble with the sign, and her troubles with her staff, and her cashflow problems, the true nature of which she had only indicated to him during their nightly telephone conversations.

‘Sorry to dump on you.’

‘That’s what the man’s here for.’ Squatting in front of the fridge in the kitchen, Jamie removed a bottle of Chardonnay.

Watching him, through the open door, Clare said, ‘If I see another bottle of wine I’ll scream…’

‘Not again!’

Pouring out two whiskies, Jamie brought them over to the sofa.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

‘I didn’t decide until this morning. It’s the last
opportunity
before the vendange…’

‘I’m not complaining…’ Jamie outlined the contours of her features with his hand before pulling her face to his own. ‘I ache with missing you. It’s the best surprise in the world. I must make a quick phone call. I promised Miranda I’d be at Quaglino’s at nine. It’s Barnaby’s birthday…’