Chapter 5
Bianca
“ W e need to have a team meeting,” I announce the next morning in the kitchen.
Rosa gives me a sour look. “What does that mean?”
“You, me, and Allegra. We have to talk.”
“About what?”
“About why a pizza box is square when a pizza is round.” I exhale with exasperation.
“Bee!” She scowls. “Okay, I presume we need to talk about Caparelli.”
“Yes. There are all kinds of rumors going around and honestly, I don’t know if we’ve evaluated all our options.”
“Like what?” Her forehead pleats.
“Let’s talk to Allegra. What is the time difference? And where is she right now anyway?” I pull out my phone. “I’ll message her.”
To my surprise, she responds right away and says she can video chat with us. I call her, and Rosa and I sit at the kitchen table with my phone propped up in front of us.
“What’s happening with you?” I ask Allegra. “Where are you now?”
“Romania!”
“Oh wow. Okay.”
“What’s the hockey player like?” Allegra asks. “Does he have teeth?”
I blink. “Uh. Yes, he has teeth. I think.” I squint. “He doesn’t smile much, so it’s hard to know. But he ate a corn dog the other night with no problems.”
“You had dinner with him?” Allegra gapes at me.
I wave a hand. “No. I was at the fair with Millie and Ana and they invited him, too. He’s kind of a grumpy bear.” A very attractive grumpy bear. But I’m not admitting that out loud.
“Ah.” Allegra smirks. “Nothing wrong with a bear.”
“I have no constructive response to that.”
She grins. “Why did you call this meeting?”
I take a breath. “There are rumors going around town about us.”
“What else is new.” Allegra rolls her eyes.
“Apparently Geno is thinking of contesting the will.”
Allegra snorts.
Rosa shakes her head. “James said the will was airtight.”
“Did you know about this?” I ask her.
She bites her lip. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
She averts her gaze. “I didn’t want to bother you. It’s just a rumor.”
I throw my hands up. “Rosa! We’re a team! Don’t hide things from us.”
She rubs her forehead. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“You have to tell us what’s going on,” Allegra says, thankfully backing me up.
“I know. I will.”
“Has Uncle Geno said anything to you about that?”
“No.”
“Do we trust him, though? After all his efforts to undermine us here?”
Rosa nibbles on her bottom lip. “No. I don’t trust him.”
“So he could very well be planning to contest the will.”
“I guess so,” she concedes. “He could tie things up for a long time.”
“Let him try.” Allegra waves a hand. “This is clearly what Nonna wanted.”
“Well, we can’t do anything about it until we’re notified legally, so…” I pause, not sure where to go next. “I’m going to talk to Uncle Geno. There’s another rumor.”
“What?” Allegra asks.
“That we’re going to sell Caparelli to him.”
“What!” Allegra gasps. “No!”
I huff out a laugh. “Have you thought about it, though?” I glance sideways at Rosa.
She frowns. “No. Of course not. We’ve talked about that. Nonna wanted us to have this winery.”
“Maybe we were all caught up in the emotion of it,” I say slowly. “I know that’s what she wanted, but I have my job in Argentina, and Allegra is in Romania. Maybe selling is a reasonable option.”
Her brows twitch toward each other, but she says nothing.
“Is this what you want to do?” I continue. “Because we don’t have to do this. It’s going to be a lot of work, and a lot of money, and…well, obviously it would make Uncle Geno happy if we sold to him.”
“Would it, though?” Rosa asks. “I think he wants us to just give it to him.”
I purse my lips. “You could be right.”
“No,” Allegra says, unequivocally. “We are not selling.”
“But you’re not even here, Legs,” I say gently. “Are you going to come home and help with this?”
“I just have a little issue I’m dealing with here.” Her gaze slides off camera. “I’ll be home. I’m just not sure when.”
I swallow my sigh. Sure. Great.
“I’ll admit I had the same thoughts,” Rosa says.
My head snaps around to stare at her.
“Handing the reins back to Uncle Geno and the cousins would be so much easier, so much less stress.” She lifts her hands. “But I don’t want to see Nonna’s legacy swallowed whole by the rest of the family business.”
“Same,” Allegra says.
“I’m prepared to work at this,” Rosa adds. “Jake’s here to help. You’re here now.”
“Not for that long, though,” I remind her. “This is a lot for you to handle if I go back to Argentina.”
She bites her lip. “Is that what you want, Bee? Do you want us to sell?”
I pause. Since I’ve been back, I’ve thought a lot about it. It would be easier. I could go back to Argentina and not worry about my sisters and this beautiful place. But… “No.” I just can’t do it. “But I want to make sure you two are all in with this crazy plan.”
“It’s what Nonna wanted, and I think we should at least try.”
I meet Rosa’s eyes, then turn back to my phone and stare at Allegra in the camera.
“I agree,” she says.
“Okay.” I nod and lift my chin. “Then that is what we’ll do.”
I’m not only relieved, I’m happy. I don’t want to sell to Geno. But I felt we should talk about it again.
“I have another suggestion.” Rosa bites her lip and her eyes meet mine then skitter away.
“What?” I ask slowly.
“We could sell the grapes.”
I blink. And blink again. “Sell the grapes? Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. It would be one way we could make money.”
It’s not a crazy idea. There are lots of wineries that don’t grow their own grapes, or all of their own grapes. They buy grapes from vineyards and make their wines from them.
“Then we’d really have no wine,” I say. “How would that help us bring Caparelli back to life?”
Her lips tighten. “It would just be a slower path. We could use the money to do other things this year. And then next year we could start making wine.”
“I don’t want to wait that long.” I look at the phone and see Allegra’s conflicted expression. “What do you think, Legs?”
“I don’t know.” She makes a face. “Okay, I do know. I’m coming home. Soon. And maybe I don’t make the wine, but I want to help sell the wine. I have so many ideas! And I want to contribute. So I don’t want to sell the grapes and wait until next year.”
Relief slides warmly through my veins. I smile at Allegra then look at Rosa.
“Okay,” she says with a hitch of one shoulder.
“Okay, the other thing.” I glance between my sisters. “I met Jansen Beck, who bought Take Flight. He might need some help.”
“That’s not our problem,” Rosa says, evidently still a little bitter on behalf of the Wright family for having to sell.
“Not, of course not. But good neighbors help each other. Although we do have a lot of work to do here.”
“This is enough work,” Rosa agrees.
“Well, there’s another angle I thought of yesterday. Jake said Jansen has a beautiful modern lab over there. We don’t have a lab at all. I mean, we have space for one, but all the equipment is either gone to Belmonte, or it’s out of date. We need to test the grapes, test the juice once we’ve harvested. I could make a deal with Jansen that we get to use his lab in exchange for me helping him.”
“Huh.” Rosa tilts her head and looks at Allegra.
She wrinkles her nose. “You do what you think is right, Bee.”
Yikes. I look back at Rosa.
“Well, that’s a good point about the testing,” she says slowly. “But we do have some money we could use.”
“We’re going to need funds for harvest. And barrels. And a million other things.”
“The tasting room!” Allegra pipes up.
Oh boy. There was a tasting room here many years ago. “We have no wine to taste, Legs,” I remind her.
“We will!”
I smile. “Yeah. We will. And that raises another question. But first—if I make that deal with Jansen, you’re both okay with it?”
“Sure,” Rosa says slowly.
“Of course,” Allegra replies.
“Do you think I’m letting down Nonna by helping another winery and not focusing on Caparelli?” I bite my lip.
“Nonna would have wanted to support a neighbor,” Rosa says firmly.
“I agree,” Allegra says. “Remember the time the Crowleys had their baby way too early, right in the middle of harvest, and Nonna went over there and helped keep things going while the Crowleys were at the hospital with the baby?”
Nonna did always do stuff like that. I smile. “Okay. I wish Uncle Geno felt the same.” My lips push downward. “It’s ridiculous that he doesn’t want us to run Caparelli. Neighbors help neighbors. Family helps family. Right?”
“Right.” They both appear dubious.
“Okay. We need to have a clear plan. Not just financial, but also branding, marketing, production.”
“I have a lot of that figured out,” Rosa says. “But we do have decisions to make.”
“Let’s do it.”
We spend time going over Rosa’s plans and analysis and estimates, talking about expenses, barrel needs, bottling costs, and capital expenditures. Then we move on to salaries, benefits, supplies, repairs/maintenance, utilities, packaging, bottling, and warehousing costs.
We argue about a few things; we all have different priorities when it comes to the winery. For me it’s all about the wine, of course. But we manage to come to consensus on the decisions we need to make now.
“Okay, I think that’s good for today,” Rosa eventually says. “Next we need to work on our sales and marketing plan. We really need to nail down our branding.”
“I can help with that!” Allegra says.
“Okay.” I sit back in my chair. “Anything else you want to tell us before we end the call?” I ask Allegra.
She frowns. “What? What do you mean? What would I have to tell you?”
I pop up one eyebrow. “I don’t know…maybe what you’ve been doing, who you’re with, what the weather there is like?”
“Ahahaha. Funny. Okay. Gotta go. Bye!”
Rosa and I exchange glances as I tap the screen on my phone to end the call.
“She’s acting weird,” Rosa says.
“She always acts weird.”
She snorts. “True.”
Okay, that’s settled. Why am I so invested in this? I don’t even plan to stay long enough to see how the wine turns out.
But I care.