Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty Three
Bianca
I don’t want to go anywhere.
If I had it my way, I’d be in that ridiculous bed with the iron headboard and too many pillows, staring at the ceiling and replaying every moment in Chef’s dining room until I’ve wrung it dry.
Instead, I’m in the back of Giovanni’s car again, a tote with books and other things at my feet and my knives across my lap, pretending I’m not aware of him three feet away. The driver takes a right and not a left, which means we’re not heading for the city. We’re not even leaving the property.
“Not far,” Giovanni says, because he reads minds apparently.
“I gathered.” My voice is dull around the edges. I hate that he’s seeing me like this, gray and flat, but my insides feel wrung-out, but I don’t have the energy for a performance.
The road curves between rows of vines that still look asleep, the posts dark with the night’s damp.
A squat complex of stone and steel rises at the far edge of the vineyard—modern lines grafted onto an old backbone.
Tall windows. A broad plank door. To the left, a low building with a long overhang and two enormous sliding doors painted red.
Next to the doors, in elegant script, it says Albori.
For a second I think I’m reading it wrong.
Then my brain catches up. Albori? Not just a pretty word stamped on a cork.
The Albori. The label I’ve ordered a hundred times at Luce di Bologna, the bottle I’ve poured for tables when I wanted a sure thing.
We served it with ragù on Tuesdays and with grilled pork on Fridays because it paired well with almost anything.
I couldn’t see much when we got in last night, and I was too anxious on the way out this morning to really look around.
This winery is where one of my favorite wines comes from. His place. His vines. Giovanni Conti’s family makes one of my go-to wines. The realization leaves me a little stunned, a little impressed, a little annoyed at myself for not seeing it sooner.
I realize that the cute little vineyard I saw from my balcony this morning is just a fraction of it. I press my palm to the knife roll in my lap and stare at the name on the wall.
The car stops in a gravel oval. He doesn’t wait for the driver to get his door; he rarely does. “Come on.”
“I don’t have to change?” I look down at my black sweater, jeans, and boots, which I love, as evidenced by the wear.
“You’re fine.”
Inside, the air is cool and faintly sweet: ferment ghosts, old oak, clean steel. The space opens wide, cathedral high, with catwalks and piping that look too architectural to be only practical.
On one side, stainless steel tanks are lined up. On the other, rows of French oak barriques rest on their sides in tidy ranks. Between them, a long table is set up under a pendant lamp: glasses, bottles wearing neutral labels with tiny handwriting, little plates of food arranged artfully.
A woman in a navy jumpsuit and ponytail looks up from a stack of notes. Early thirties, warm eyes. “Buongiorno,” she calls, then clocks me and smiles for real. “You must be Bianca. I’m Alessia.” She wipes her hands and comes forward. Firm shake. “I’m one of the enologi here at Albori.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say, automatic politeness barreling through my inner giddiness at meeting one of the winemakers.
“Alessia, thank you for arranging this,” he says mildly, then gestures at the table. “These are a few of our unreleased labels. I thought you would enjoy a tasting.”
A tasting. Unreleased Albori wines. Are you kidding me? My skin practically twitches with excitement.
Alessia gestures to the table. “He told me you like clarity and hate gimmicks.”
I look at him again. I didn’t realize he’d been paying such close attention. That’s stupid. Of course he is. That’s what he does. “He’s right,” I say.
“Good.” She points, practical. “We’ll start with three tastings.
One white, one sparkling, one red. All unreleased.
All final blends, but the labels aren’t printed and the glass isn’t decided, so if you hate the cork, lie to me.
” Her smile makes it a joke. “I brought small bites with each—not too much, just enough to guide you.”
She goes through each option, and my heart aches a little more at each one.
The table is a cook’s seduction: slivers of Parmigiano with proper tyrosine crystals; a little cup of warm crescentine and a saucer of mortadella mousse dotted with toasted pistachio; fennel salad with orange and a little green olive chopped into it to really wake it up; paper-thin slices of rare roast beef with truffle salt; grilled radicchio with balsamic.
A little bowl of cherries sits at the end like a period at the end of a sentence.
I take a breath I didn’t know I needed. Food is a language I can definitely speak.”
We start with the sparkling. “Grechetto gentile. What you probably know as Pignoletto,” she says, lifting the bottle.
“Metodo classico. Twenty-four months on the lees. Brut nature.” She pours.
The wine is pale gold with tiny bubbles that cling delicately to the glass.
I stick my nose in and get citrus pith, bread dough, the faint scent of wet stone.
“Taste without the bite first,” Alessia says.
I do. It lands on my tongue taut and straight-backed, like a dancer warming up at the barre.
Lemon peel, green apple, a whisper of almond.
The finish is long enough to make a point but not linger unpleasantly.
I swallow and take the smallest bite of mortadella mousse on a warm crescentina.
The fat and the bubbles move together like well-trained dancers.
The wine is sharp and cutting; the mousse softens yet elevates it.
“Breakfast wine,” I say, deadpan.
Alessia laughs. “Don’t tell my mother, or she’ll insist I pour it at church.”
“It’s clean,” I say. “No perfume cloud. The mousse got better. You did right not to dose it.” I catch myself and shut up before I start asking sugar grams like a nerd at a conference. “What do you want to call it?”
Alessia lifts a shoulder. “We argue about names every week. Marketing wants something cute. I want something elegant and sexy.” She glances at Giovanni. He’s already watching me, unreadable. “Gio says we should call it what it tastes like, not something— What’s the word? Gimm…?”
“Gimmicky,” he responds, and reaches for the glass, not rushing. “Names can wait. Tell me if it works.” His attention stays on me, not the bottle.
But I’m still stuck on Gio. She calls him Gio.
I don’t know if that’s adorable or terrifying.
I sip again, then nod. “It works.” He gives the smallest smile, like that was the only note he needed, and gestures for Alessia to pour the next wine.
We move to the white. She pours a pale straw wine that throws off a different kind of light. Softer, warmer. “Albana secca,” she says. “Old vines, hillside parcel. Ten percent in old tonneaux, the rest in steel. No tricks.”
Albana can be a mess if you don’t respect it.
This one isn’t. Nose: pear skin, chamomile, a little honeycomb if you squint.
On the palate: a roundness that’s not too buttery, a bitterness at the end I like in the same way I like the last sip of very strong tea.
With the fennel salad, everything lines up perfectly: anise talking to chamomile, the olive waking the acid right up to come alive on my tongue.
“Anchovies,” I say out loud to no one, because I can already taste a tin opened and the way the Albana will handle it.
“Raw artichokes shaved thin with lemon and Parmigiano. You could do a passatelli in brodo and let this be the surprise at the table. No, too on the nose. Save that for the sparkling.”
“The Albana wants oil and salt,” Alessia says, approving. “It hates sugar.”
“Sugar is a bad friend,” I say, and Alessia’s mouth twitches as if she agrees.
Giovanni takes a measured sip, glances at the fennel, then back to me. “Would you put it on a menu?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer. “By the glass. With a chalkboard note: ‘Albana—anchovy, fennel, raw artichoke.’ People will order the plate just for the wine.”
He nods once, satisfied. “Good. Then let’s see if the red earns dinner,” he says, and tips his chin for Alessia to pour the next bottle.
She left the red for last, and I already know why.
Before she even pours, I smell cherries. Real ones.
She pours. Clear ruby. No ink. The rim is bright. I look at it almost reverently, like a piece of clothing I want but shouldn’t spend the money on.
I take the glass to the light and then to my nose and freeze, because it smells like something I know and didn’t know I missed.
I was right. Real cherries. The kind with the pit you have to dig out for a pie. Under it, blood orange. A hint of rubbed sage. And something earthy that gives it just the right amount of balance.
“Sangiovese,” I say, because if it isn’t, I’ll set the winery on fire.
Alessia laughs in surprise. “Sangiovese di Romagna. Two parcels. One higher, one lower. We kept the maceration in check to keep the tannin fine, then we let the élevage do its job. A year in large-format Slavonian. Three months in cement. Nothing to hide mistakes.”
I am too far in to pretend I’m not excited.
I take a sip and then close my eyes because looking at anything will distract me from tasting it.
It glides across my tongue like a lover, leaving behind: sour cherry, red currant, a smack of orange oil, then the savory sage that reminds me of the kitchen on Sunday.
The tannins are silk thread, not rope. The acid is exactly what it should be: a spine.
The finish leaves a blush of something that makes my cheeks warm. Not oak. Heat? No. Joy? Maybe.
Giovanni doesn’t say a word. I can feel him across the table like a wall radiating steady warmth.
Alessia gestures to the roast beef, to the radicchio. “With food now.”
I take a slice of the beef and drag one edge through truffle salt, almost like it’s a sin. The wine picks up the truffle and carries it past the beef into something longer, deeper, cleaner. Truffle turns dirty quickly if you mishandle it. The wine keeps it in the right spot.
“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay.” I take a wedge of the Parmigiano, probably older than me, and let it crunch and bloom under my molars. The wine loves it. They become a thing together, a thing I don’t have a word for— either in English or Italian.
In my head, the tomatoes in the market call to me, and a skillet lands on the stove.
“Tagliatelle al ragù,” I hear myself say. “But not the heavy kind. Light and delicate. Pork and beef, soffritto lazy and patient, a little milk to pull the edges round. Or grilled lamb ribs with a salsa verde that’s more herb than oil, barely anchovy, capers rinsed.”
Alessia smiles like a proud mother. “Radicchio al forno,” she says, tapping the plate.
“You already tasted it. Balsamic that’s seen life but not too much.
Or crescentine with”—she glances at my face and corrects herself—“with nothing, actually. Let the wine do the talking, and you keep your hands in your pockets.”
“Wild boar, if you’re going to be a show-off,” I add, “but you don’t need the hunter story. Roast chicken with garlic and lemon and rest. The fat will make the cherries sit up straight.”
I’m not wallowing anymore. I realize that only because my chest hurts in a different way, the way it does when I see something that I want to run toward and build on.
I taste again. I try to invent flaws. Too much acid?
No. Not Italian hot sauce; this is line and length.
Tannin asleep? No; it’s awake, it’s just a little shy.
Oak? A sturdy chair in the corner. Fruit?
Red, alive, no jam. Heat? Integrated. Finish?
Clean; it leaves you ready to dance instead of ready to nap.
“What’s the name?” I ask, feeling suddenly possessive, like I need to know what to call the thing I’ve already started cooking for.
Alessia glances at Giovanni. “Working title is Vigna Torre,” she says, nodding toward the stone tower on the hill. “But we haven’t decided on anything yet.”
“Primo Raggio,” I say before my brain catches up. First ray of sunshine.
Both of them look at me. Heat climbs my neck. “Sorry. Not my job.”
Alessia’s smile goes slow. “Primo Raggio,” she repeats. “It tells you what it is without hitting you over the head with it.”
I take another sip and set the glass down, and when I look up, he’s watching me with a look I don’t want to define here with a stranger around, so I break the stare first and reach for a cherry like a coward.
I pinch the top, twist, split, pop. The pit is smooth and cold in my fingers. The wine and the cherry kiss and laugh at each other like cousins who haven’t seen each other since August.
Giovanni doesn’t look away from me. “We’ll keep it on the list,” he says, voice even, like this is just business and not a small flicker of something shared. He tips his chin toward the glass. “Either way, it’s yours for dinner if you want to cook to it.”
“I do,” I say, and I mean it in more ways than one.
“If you could cook anything with it tonight,” she says, “what would it be?”
“Lamb shoulder,” I say without thinking.
“Low and slow with anchovy and rosemary pounded into a paste with garlic and lemon peel. Cannellini beans on the side, soft but not beaten, finished with the lamb juices and chopped herbs. Salad of puntarelle if I can find it, faint anchovy in the dressing to carry the flavor throughout, crisp.”
Giovanni hasn’t moved much, but I know he’s listening. He doesn’t miss anything.
The table is almost empty—two heel ends of crescentine, a smear of mortadella mousse, a lemon wedge that’s wrung dry. I’m not empty. A current has come back to life under my skin, that thing that moves my hands before my head and says: go. Make. Feed. Fix the world one plate and fork at a time.
I stand up too fast, and the chair legs scrape. “I have to go to the market,” I say. “I can’t wait.”
Alessia’s smile turns lighter. “Good sign.”
Giovanni rises. “Thank you,” he tells her.
“Prego,” she says, then to me, “If you cook the lamb, I need to know how it turned out.”
“If I cook the lamb, I’ll bring you some,” I say.
We step back into the cool air of the cellar. The smell of oak and steel lingers. Outside, the air is cool and fresh. I’m a little surprised that the sun is still so high in the sky. I expected it to be darker.
“Albori,” I say as we walk. “It suits.”
Giovanni nods once. “It does.”
“Market,” I repeat, because now I have a list forming in my head and the only cure is a basket and a vendor who doesn’t roll his eyes when I squeeze each tomato.
He opens the car door.
I tuck the knife roll on my lap again, and for the first time all day, I feel sure of something.