Chapter 1
Alessia
Iknow my vines better than I know myself—certainly better than I know my husband of ninety days.
My world is Tenuta Pietra Alta, the Alighieri estate in Bolgheri, where I make wine. Vines run like green seams across the hills, stitched into soil the color of rusted pennies and old blood.
Pietra Alta means high stone, and the vine growing in this terroir absorbs all of the goodness the earth offers to produce the wine that I make.
Stone is everywhere here—stone walls, stone terraces, stone outcroppings that break through the earth like knuckles. Even the air feels mineral at dawn, salted faintly by the Tyrrhenian Sea in the distance.
The estate has its own rhythm, indifferent to weddings and mergers and the politics of Florence.
The vines don’t care that my last name is Alighieri.
They don’t care that my father has decided that, as a woman, I cannot be the head winemaker, and as a woman, my purpose is to bring a man to the family to run The House of Alighieri.
The vines care about sun and wind and water and the relentless arithmetic of time.
They don’t care that my sister is furious on my behalf.
Alba is the fiery one. She says what everyone else swallows. At twenty-seven, she's the successful Alighieri daughter.
She runs the hospitality arm of The House of Alighieri—three Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy, three more spread across the globe, and every tasting room across our estates in Europe and Napa. The places where critics, investors, and royalty drink our wine and decide what it’s worth.
My father knows very little about hospitality and values it even less, even though it accounts for nearly 18% of the company’s annual revenue. He calls it image. Necessary, but ornamental.
The estate I manage brings in far less—at least on paper. Once again, he has given to his daughter what he deems less important.
Our flagship wines come from Chianti and Brunello di Montalcino—historic, recognizable names that anchor the brand. Those are the bottles he sends to auction houses and heads of state.
Beyond them, the family portfolio stretches wide: Barolo in the north, a smaller but fiercely protected holding on Mount Etna, legacy vineyards in Montepulciano, and newer experimental parcels in Umbria and the Maremma. Some are profitable. Some are prestigious. All of them are watched carefully.
Bolgheri, and Tenuta Pietra Alta in particular, does not shout for attention. It makes money quietly. Reliably. It holds when others don’t. As my father, the great Duca Cesare Alighieri, says, “There isn’t much she can harm there.”
But what he doesn’t know is that I intend to build. I had to sell my soul, marry Niccolò Alaric to become the official winemaker at Tenuta Pietra Alta—and now that I’m here, I’m going to make it the biggest, the best, the most prestigious estate in The House of Alighieri.
And this is why I don’t have time to worry about the state of my marriage. We’re knee-deep in diradamento right now, the green harvest that decides whether a vintage will be merely good or exceptional. As we prepare for vendemmia* in the fall, every choice matters.
Diradamento* means walking every single row and judging every single vine. It means deciding which clusters live and which are sacrificed so the remaining grapes can ripen with concentration and balance.
It’s ruthless work.
Emotional, too, if you let yourself feel it.
The process is done entirely by hand, by a small, trusted crew.
There are no machines for this. No shortcuts.
When you have over a hundred acres of vines as we do in Tenuta Pietra Alta, it means weeks of long days under a merciless August sun, shoulders burning, fingers sticky with juice and dust, backs aching as the hours stretch on.
We start at dawn to steal what cool we can, moving slowly and deliberately.
Too aggressive, you weaken the vine. Too cautious, you dilute the wine.
Every cut is a judgment call, informed by soil, slope, canopy growth, rainfall patterns—terroir*—and instinct earned the hard way.
This is the kind of work that doesn’t tolerate distraction.
My phone buzzes in my pocket anyway.
I ignore it at first. But when it vibrates again—then a third time—I know it’s Alba. She doesn’t call once. She storms.
I step out of the row and answer, pressing my earbuds into my ears while I wipe my hands on my jeans.
“He was seen with her again,” Alba says without preamble, her voice sharp enough to cut glass.
My sister is in Rome.
There was an Alighieri event last night—one I had not been invited to. My husband went, and on his arm was the company's head of PR, Chiara Jossa. He’s known her all his life and brought her along from Cantina Alarico when he merged his family winery into mine—and took over as CEO.
“They work together.”
Alba exhales hard. “They weren’t hiding it, Alessia.”
I stare out over the vines, their leaves shivering faintly in the breeze.
“I’m working.” My voice barely carries.
“I know you are.” Alba's next words come quieter. “You're killing yourself out there while he's being photographed with another woman who is rumored to be his mistress.”
I swallow. The cut clusters at my feet bleed faintly onto the dirt, already forgotten by the vine they once belonged to.
“It doesn’t matter.” My chest tightens around the lie, because it does.
I may not be in love with Nico, but he’s my husband, and I care for him. He may not be in love with me, but I deserve the respect he’s not giving me.
Alba makes an angry sound. “People are talking. And Papà pretends not to notice while privately blaming you for being…absent.”
“I can’t run off to every event, Alba. I have an estate to prepare for harvest.”
I picture Nico in Rome—tailored suit, effortless smile, Chiara on his arm like a memory he never let go of. I picture myself here, dust-streaked and sunburned, deciding which grapes are worthy of the future.
One marriage.
Two disparate lives.
“You’re invited tonight,” she reminds me sharply.
I sigh. It’s less an invitation, more a summons from Nico and my father.
I’m to be in Florence by seven tonight for the anniversary of the launch of Valdoria, the first wine to get a hundred points by Robert Parker in the eighties, putting Alighieri on the wine map of the world.
The party is being held in Florence at the Palazzo Alighieri, where my father lives.
Where Nico lives.
Alba has apartments there that she shares with Antonella, our youngest sister. But Toni’s hardly ever there as she’s finishing up her master’s in architecture at Politecnico di Milano.
“I have to go,” I tell Alba. “We’re behind schedule.”
She sighs, frustration and helplessness tangled together. “I hate that you’re being made to pay for his freedom.”
“Alba, let it go. I have.”
“You have something to wear for tonight?” she asks.
I laugh softly. “I’m sure I have something appropriate in my closet.”
“How are you, Alessia?”
“Busy,” I retort. “It’s green harvest, Alba. You know how it is.”
“I do.” But she’s assenting not just about what she knows of green harvest but more about what she knows about me.
I am the quiet Alighieri sister. The dull one.
Alba is beautiful, while I’m plain. She’s delicate and feminine, while my hands are rough like a farmer’s. But then, a winemaker is a farmer—a worker.
I end the call before she can say anything else.
The vines are waiting.
Diradamento doesn’t pause for scandal, and it doesn’t care who my husband is seen with. The work demands everything I have—my focus, my judgment, and my equanimity.
I step back into the row, lift my shears, and make another cut.
I lift a bunch, thumb the grapes to test their firmness. The berries are small but swelling fast, tight-skinned, and promising.
But a generous vine will ruin itself if you let it. It will feed everything and perfect nothing. Sacrifice is part of the job.
“Alessia?” a voice calls from behind me. “Are we starting next on the merlot block or the cab?”
I turn. Edam stands a few paces back, his hair pulled into a knot, sleeves rolled, sun already catching the sharp lines of his forearms.
He’s in his early thirties—older than me by a year, maybe two—but he has the alacrity and energy of a teenager.
Dirt streaks his cheek, and he makes me feel old.
“The merlot,” I tell him. “It’s running ahead.”
“Got it.”
He signals the others with a quick wave. They fan out between the rows, the soft metallic snip-snip beginning like the buzz of insects.
“Merlot is a pain in my ass,” Edam complains.
Even though the varietal is relatively easy to grow because it's adaptable, self-pollinating, and thrives in various climates, achieving high-quality wine grapes requires careful pruning to manage their prolific nature.
A laugh lifts behind me—bright, female, warm as fresh bread.
“Merlot is a dramatic grape.” Lucia steps into the row beside me with a bucket. Her dark hair is tied up with a scarf that used to be pretty, but is now a work rag. Her nails are as dirty as mine. Her hands are strong, scarred, and competent. “It likes attention.”
“Just like a woman to make wanting attention sound like a virtue,” Edam teases.
Lucia grins. “Spoken like a man who doesn’t know how to appreciate something valuable.”
“Oh, I know how to do that, cara* Lucia.” He winks at her.
I smile.
These two have been flirting for two vintages—and I have a feeling they’re sleeping together, but they haven’t said a thing to me, so I’m allowing them their privacy.
Lucia nudges my shoulder gently. “If he had been born a grape, he would be a Sangiovese. Stubborn. Acidic. Prone to sulking.”
I smile despite myself. This is obviously their foreplay.
Sweet.
“Sangiovese is noble,” I muse.
“Exactly.” Lucia’s smile softens. “And you, signorina*, would be—”
I roll my eyes.
“A Cabernet Franc,” she says triumphant. “Quiet. Elegant. Everyone underestimates it until it’s too late.”
I snip a cluster and let it drop into the bucket with a soft, heavy sound.