Chapter 23 The Elder Vine
The Elder Vine
They returned to Glen Ellen to finish what they’d started all those years ago. Otis moved the wines to barrel. Rebecca began working on both selling the winery and building a new one on Red Mountain.
While the land was under contract, they flew up a few more times to meet with a soil scientist and other experts, ensuring that their particular site would suit them well.
They had many discussions on which varieties would thrive and how they should be planted to best take advantage of the slope and sun.
“This is a place for syrah,” Otis finally said, after digesting everyone’s opinions. He felt it in his bones. He’d learned the magic of syrah traveling through the Rh?ne Valley in France over the years, and he’d played with it down in Sonoma, but he had by no means learned to harness it.
“I don’t care that the Aussies have butchered it. I don’t care that it’s trendy. It won’t be forever. All I know is that I want to dedicate this place to syrah. We can dabble with others, but we must master syrah.”
They toured the local high school and visited the nearby restaurants. Aside from some lovely Mexican food, it was a far cry from the culinary boom happening in the Sonoma Valley. Nevertheless, Red Mountain’s time would come; Otis knew it with a curious yet confident certainty.
Cam flew in from Denver to join them on the day of closing. After signing the papers in Richland, they drove to the property and met with an architect from Seattle. They knew what they wanted, a place that evoked feelings of the Old World, a slice of Europe, the beginnings of a new chapter.
As Otis had learned, it was nearly impossible to get a construction loan from a bank, so the solution was mobile homes.
That was why there were so many, including the two he could see from his property.
Sonoma had once been that way too. It was pure farm country, nothing more.
They were grateful that the good fortune of Lost Souls had armed them with the cash it took to build their dream house.
After the architect left, Otis stood in the center of where they would build the winery, and he raised his arms to the sky.
Taking in a deep breath of new beginnings, Otis howled like he hadn’t howled in many moons. “ Ahhhwoooo! Ahhwoooooo! ” The energy rose from his toes and up his spine, shooting out toward the heavens.
Bec, Michael, and Camden joined him, smiles stretching wide, all of them shaking out the past, shaking out everything but this moment.
A series of coyote calls came back from somewhere up the hill.
Otis lost his breath. “You hear that, guys? A welcome call.”
His every cell shimmered with delight, and Otis knew he would dedicate the rest of his life to this new terroir.
Not by working his tail off but by finding the balance.
By being the man he was meant to be, by becoming the man Rebecca deserved, a man his kids could look up to.
Like Mike had said more than once, Red Mountain would be a second chance.
He would not mess it up.
So that Mike could get started with the second semester of his junior year in his new school and so Bec could manage construction of the new house and winery, they rented a house in Benton City, and Bec and Mike preceded Otis to their new state.
They bought an old Chevy farm truck with limited miles but unlimited dents and scuffs and put a Redmtn license plate on the back.
Eloise and Aunt Morgan made the eight-hour drive from Bozeman and stayed for a while.
Otis sneaked up there as much as he could.
His constant goodbyes began to break the connection between him and Lost Souls.
On Mother’s Day, Rebecca and Otis planted their first vines, a syrah block that would be their new baby.
A coyote appeared in the broad daylight and watched them for three days straight.
They took turns with the posthole digger, the other plopping the baby vines into the earth and covering them back up with the dusty soil of this new promised land.
They planted hundreds of vines per day, watching as each carefully selected block of land came to life.
Along with syrah, cabernet, and merlot, they planted a few test rows of other varieties to see which thrived.
They’d have to wait two to three years before they’d get enough fruit to make wine, but that was okay.
Otis was tired of rushing.
Almost a year later, in March 1995, Rebecca, Otis, and Mike moved into their new abode.
It was everything they’d hoped, a stone cottage with three bedrooms in the center of thirty acres.
From the looks of it, one might not know she was in the New World at all, and that was the point.
This home and the stone winery up the hill were a nod to his European upbringing and to the great master vintners of long ago.
The back deck looked over the Yakima River to Mount Adams. Fencing lined the entire property to accommodate the sheep and chickens they’d brought up from Sonoma.
After losing a couple of chickens to coyotes, they adopted a Great Pyrenees named Rosco from a local animal shelter.
He slept outside to protect the livestock and poultry.
The winery featured their first tasting room, and they’d allowed the architect to give it a look of modernity with walls of thick glass, creating an immersive tasting experience offering a near-360-degree view of the Columbia Valley.
When a visitor posted up to the concrete bar, illuminated by the naked Edison bulbs dangling above, Otis wanted them to feel the vines surrounding them.
They planned to keep the wine production small and to eventually go mailing-list only, but they wanted people to know that they could visit Red Mountain to taste the latest vintages.
This was how a growing region was built, with an invitation for drinkers to come walk the land and see what they’d tasted in the bottle.
One day there would be bed-and-breakfasts, dinner spots, performances, cultural celebrations.
Rebecca and Otis would host their own events at the winery: harvest parties, concerts, book readings.
For Otis, the definition of terroir continued to evolve.
It wasn’t only about the climate and soil; it was composed of the people and the culture, the energy buzzing around.
A stunning and well-over-budget underground cellar accommodated their growing wine collection.
Beyond a thick wooden door and down a set of stone steps, large columns propped up arched brick ceilings.
Wall sconces and candles were the only source of light.
Concrete shelves held thousands of bottles of wines from all over the world, dating back to the 1940s, including several special bottles of Burgundy that had been hidden behind false walls by winemakers who refused to let the Nazis take their wines from them.
In the climate-controlled barrel room, a fancy bottling machine took over one corner. A new forklift waited to move barrels and bins. For fun, they’d imported some clay amphorae, which were alternative fermenting and aging vessels that had been used in other parts of the world since ancient times.
The garage doors opened to the crush pad, where a new crusher/destemmer and fancy bladder press waited. He’d decided he’d buy some fruit from the older vineyards on Red Mountain this year, to test the equipment and begin to understand this new frontier.
With careful water management, their baby vines took root.
Otis said it was the Puccini and Ravel he’d been playing for them in the mornings.
The animals seemed happy too. Chickens were easy, but sheep could be finicky.
They seemed to take to the new land and had grown extra wool to get through the more aggressive eastern Washington State winters.
Though they let Rosco come inside on occasion, he spent most of his time out with the animals and seemed perfectly content.
Mike excelled in this new community and his new school, nearly claiming valedictorian senior year, an impressive feat despite it being a small-town school. Otis elicited countless eye rolls when he’d say, “Thank God he got his mother’s looks, but he did get my brains.”
Several schools offered Michael a full ride; he chose UW in Seattle.
Otis and Rebecca would sit out on their new deck looking west and clink their glasses and agree that it had all worked out.
They were grateful to have found a medicine that helped Michael get out of his own way.
Sure, he still had some bumps, but that was life.
A few days after graduation, Otis and Mike were changing the oil in the new Kubota tractor, both covered in grease, when Mike said timidly, “I don’t know if I want to come back and farm, make wine.
” He still wore black jeans and a white T-shirt, only these were his more raggedy ones.
His arms finally had some muscle to them, and all the Washington sun had tanned his pale skin.
What’s more, a certain confidence had sunk into him since moving.
Otis pulled his head up from the engine and wiped the grease off his fingers with a rag. An involuntary tightness twisted his insides, the leftovers of an overbearing father. “No?”
“I’ve been thinking about law school.”
Right then, Otis let go of his hopes of passing the torch to his sons, but he told himself it was okay. He would not be his father. “You’re telling me like you’re worried I’ll get mad at you.”
“I know you want someone to take this place over, to carry on the tradition. I wish that it was me, but I don’t feel the call.”
Otis took his arm. “Hey, you have to find your own destiny. If this isn’t it, so be it. Find your true north, son. That’s all that matters.”