A Study in Sparkling

Prologue Satoshi

You might think you know sauvignon blanc backwards and forwards, but a good Sancerre will make it feel like a revelation.

It wasn’t the first time I’d met her, or the second, or the hundredth.

Fiona had been one of my regulars for two years now, ever since I’d first opened my wine bar Tsundoku.

I’d thought nothing of it when she and her husband had walked in that particular Tuesday, except that I was happy to see her, because I was always happy to see her.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been in love either.

I’d loved my ex-boyfriend Kieran very deeply, until I hadn’t.

In both directions – falling in love, and out of it again – it had been a slow thing, sparkling wine made méthode traditionnelle, a love maturing slowly through first and second fermentations into something beautiful and effervescent, until it was left in the glass too long and went flat.

This time, though, it was a simple pop of the cork from the bottle: a sudden explosion – a release of pressure – and a deep, profound sense of relief.

Of course, I thought dazedly, as I looked at the woman who had suddenly become the centre of my universe. Of course it’s her.

The first time I didn’t fall in love with Fiona

Two years ago, I stood leaning against the beautiful Huon pine of the bar, taking in the space I’d spent so much time and effort and money creating: the warm wood of the tables, the rich jewel tones of the velvet chairs, the shelves overstuffed with second-hand books.

I’d put my whole heart and soul into Tsundoku, overriding all my older brother Isamu’s objections that surely this wasn’t what I wanted to do with my share of the money we’d inherited from our father; that yes, I technically was a part-owner of his winery Bibliophile, and was well within my rights to set up an urban cellar door for it, but didn’t I – who had been working as a sommelier in some of the finest restaurants in the world since I was barely of legal drinking age – have anything better to do than that; that fine, he’d partner with me if I was so set on it, but what did I mean it was also going to be a bookstore?

I’d lovingly chosen every wine on the list, painstakingly collaborated with the chef on the menu, meticulously selected all the fixtures and glassware and books to create the venue of my dreams.

Everything was perfect for today, the opening day of my beautiful bar – except no one was here.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I normally didn’t look at it during service – the head somms I’d worked under in Geneva and Paris and Tokyo would have fired me on the spot – but I was in charge now, and there was no one around to see.

It was Isamu. How are things going?

I exhaled. At least figuring out how to answer without technically lying would give me a distraction from—

The door opened, and a woman poked her head in. ‘Hi,’ she said brightly. ‘Are you open?’

‘Yes!’ I said, dropping my phone in my enthusiasm. ‘We are!’

She laughed. It was the first thing I noticed about her, that laugh, bubbling out of her like shaken-up champagne.

‘Sorry,’ she said, coming inside and perching on a barstool.

She was a petite woman, somewhere in her thirties, with dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail that wisps were starting to escape from.

‘I didn’t mean to scare you. Only I’ve been stickybeaking for weeks watching this place take shape, and I’m so excited you’re finally open. ’

‘You don’t need to apologise. I’m so excited you’re here. You’re my first customer.’

‘I won’t be the last. This place is beautiful.’

‘You think so?’

It was the kind of needy, anxious thing I almost never let slip out of my mouth – as a young Japanese man, I’d already had to work harder than most to prove myself in the largely old, white world of wine – but she didn’t pounce on the vulnerability.

‘It’s stunning,’ she told me, lines crinkling at the corners of her eyes.

‘The perfect combination of refined and relaxed.’

‘Do you want to do my marketing?’ Something in me started to unknot, my shoulders coming down from around my ears. ‘That was exactly what I was going for, only the words I was using weren’t half as good.’

She grinned. ‘Hazards of the profession. I’m a copywriter. What words were you using?’

‘I wasn’t, really. I just knew that I wanted it to feel like… home.’

I gestured at the bookshelves. ‘I never really had one growing up. My father was a contract winemaker, and he did one- or two-year stints in various wineries all around the world. We moved here when I was thirteen, and it was the sixth country I’d lived in.’

‘Sixth?!’

‘New Zealand, France, South Africa, the US, France again, Japan, then here.’ I ticked them off on my fingers, accidentally counting France on two fingers instead of one and having to readjust. ‘Anyway, for obvious reasons, we travelled light. But he died when I was fifteen and the rest of my family settled in Tasmania permanently – and my brother Isamu and his wife Noriko started accumulating books. I’ve been working overseas for several years, but when I moved back to open up this place, I crashed in their spare room for a while.

When I saw their library, it all just sort of clicked, the vibe I wanted. ’

‘Well, you’ve achieved it.’ She had a lovely smile, a truly warm one. ‘My family’s bookish too, and this does feel like home.’

‘Thank you.’ I took a glass down from the overhead rack. ‘Can I offer you Tsundoku’s inaugural glass of wine? On the house?’

‘You don’t have to do that!’

‘I want to.’ I took a bottle of Bibliophile pinot gris out of the fridge and poured her a glass. ‘You’ve made my day. And it’s also a naked ploy to tempt you back for another one.’

She laughed again. There were five freckles on the left side of her nose, a perfect constellation. ‘No temptation necessary, trust me. My husband and I are a bit pretentious about wine, and I’ve been dying for a good bar to open up in Bellerive.’

‘Then we’re going to get along great, because I’m extremely pretentious about wine.’ I offered her my hand. ‘Satoshi.’

She took it. ‘Fiona.’

I didn’t fall in love with her that day. But when she left – after that first glass of pinot gris, and a second of chardonnay that she’d insisted on paying for – I’d breathed a long sigh of relief. My beloved dream bar might actually make it.

The thirty-fourth time I didn’t fall in love with Fiona

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Of course.’ I gestured at Fiona’s empty glass – I’d just poured her a splash of the new release Bibliophile rosé to try – and filled it when she nodded. ‘Is it why Isamu made a rosé out of blaufr?nkisch when everyone else in Tasmania uses pinot noir? Because I have questions about that too.’

‘Ha! No. I like this a lot, actually. It’s got personality. It brought a gun to a knife fight.’

I hated to admit it – Isamu and I had argued a lot about this particular wine – but Fiona was right.

The past nine months had proved that she had astonishingly good wine opinions for someone with no formal training, as well as a knack for articulating them.

We’d come to an arrangement where, if I poached some of her phrasing for my tasting notes on Tsundoku’s website, I’d give her a glass for free.

I’d definitely be including brings a gun to a knife fight on this one.

‘I wanted to ask you about those.’ Fiona gestured to the pins I habitually wore, dotted on my dove-grey work waistcoat.

‘Which ones?’ There were a lot of them: wine qual pins, flags, books, wineglasses. Kieran had told me once that I looked like a cross between an army veteran and a Christmas tree whenever I got dressed for work.

‘These ones.’ She reached across the bar and touched her finger to my progress pride pin, and then the pansexual flag. ‘Where did you get them?’

She looked down into her glass. ‘Lex finally told us they’re non-binary. And Matt… well, let’s just say I wish he’d reacted a bit more sensitively.’

Lex was the eldest of Fiona’s three kids.

They were a real bookworm, and Fiona regularly brought them into Tsundoku during our afternoon cafe hours to browse the shelves.

(Bless you for giving me all three things I need within walking distance of my house, she’d told me once, a bar, a bookshop and somewhere to get coffee that’s open at school pick-up time.) It had been clear to me fairly quickly that Lex was in a questioning period, and while Fiona and I hadn’t discussed it explicitly, she’d been quietly passing me request lists of queer middle-grade books to plant in my otherwise adult-centric bookshelves for months.

Fiona sighed. ‘I know Matt doesn’t want Lex’s life to be harder, but I can’t seem to get across to him that he’s making it harder every time he says something like, “I love you, kiddo, but you never know, you might grow out of this once you hit puberty.” ’

I had to restrain myself from making a face. As much as I liked Fiona, I’d never particularly warmed to her husband.

‘I don’t want to make Lex’s life harder either by being too performatively supportive, but it feels like I have to do something,’ she said. ‘So, I thought… they’ve always liked your pins. What if I got them some of their – Oh, no, Satoshi, you don’t need to do that.’

I’d already unpinned the pride flag from my waistcoat. ‘I’ve got a million of these. I can spare one for Lex. I don’t have a non-binary flag, but I can get one.’

‘Thank you. I’ll pay, obviously – just let me know how much.’

I shook my head. ‘They’re cheap as chips. And I feel like it’s my duty to pay it forward, you know? Coming out is exhausting. You have to do it over and over again. These—’ I tapped the pin ‘—have been a very handy short cut for me. It’s the least I can do.’

There was a look in Fiona’s eyes which told me she’d find a way to pay me anyway – I was probably going to end up with an extravagant tip – but she nodded. ‘Is there any advice you can give me? On supporting them? I don’t want to pry or make you go over painful ground, but…’