Chapter 23 The Elder Vine #4
“I don’t know the first thing about wine, but we’ll find a good use for it. Thanks.” He took the bottle from Otis’s hands.
“Vance!” came a loud male voice from inside. “You’re missing it.”
“I’m coming!” Back to Bec and Otis, he said, “We’re watching the WSU game. Anyway, good to meet you. Thanks for the gifts.”
“You guys staying awhile?” Otis asked casually.
“Until it’s too cold. We don’t have heat in there.”
Otis made a quick prayer for an early winter, as Rebecca said, “Let us know if you need anything.”
Once they were out of earshot of the trailer, Otis said, “Don’t say it, please.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“Lesson learned, okay?”
Rebecca took his hand.
A week later, Otis and Rebecca hiked up to the Hedgeses’ property. They sat around a table in front of a chateau that approached completion. Their view was unparalleled on the mountain, offering unimpeded looks at the treeless Rattlesnake Hills and the great Mount Adams off toward Seattle.
Anne-Marie expertly opened a bottle of Taittinger Champagne with a saber—a long-held tradition—and they toasted to the future of Red Mountain. Soon the conversation moved to wine and stayed there.
Buzzing now from the lovely bottle of Champagne, Otis couldn’t help himself. “We met our new neighbors. You might have heard them partying last night. Up past midnight blaring metal music. Do you even know what metal is? I wish I didn’t.”
“Otis, please behave yourself,” Rebecca said.
Anne-Marie laughed. “You sound like me reining Tom in.”
“It’s a full-time job, Anne-Marie. He wants this to be Burgundy yesterday.”
“My kind of guy,” Tom said. “We have work to do.”
Another bottle of Champagne later, the discussion led to the infamous Mitch Green. Otis and Rebecca had heard the name, the Red Mountain hermit who made undrinkable wines, the man who would hold out a hand with dirty fingernails and offer you warm cheese from his pocket.
“He really exists?” Rebecca asked.
“Oh, does he.”
“I was thinking I might keep avoiding him,” Otis said. “I hear, once he gets to know you, he’ll show up at your house uninvited.”
“That’s true,” Tom said, “but visiting him is a rite of passage.” Tom stood and filled their glasses. “Let’s go find him.”
They strolled down the Hedgeses’ property, talking farming techniques, then crossed Sunset Road and descended down the hill for a while.
Soon a patch of vines came into view, a slopy vineyard of ups and downs.
After a few more minutes, they came upon Mitch’s house, a single-story effort from the seventies.
The man himself appeared, wobbling on a cane out from the garage door of the shed next to the house.
He was bald and wore a flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves, showing hairy arms.
“Tom Hedges! How the hell are you!” He coughed like he had emphysema.
“Mitch!” Tom looked over to Otis and Rebecca. “Brace yourselves.”
After short greetings, Mitch invited them to sit.
He did not pull cheese out of his pocket, but he did provide a rather warm Camembert to go with his cabernets.
They tasted through the lineup and spoke about the good old days.
He’d gone to Davis before “escaping” to the Pacific Northwest. Word was that his family had chased him out of California.
The wines were on the edge of undrinkable, though Otis admired the man’s passion.
It was just that his palate was shot or that he’d suffered too much trauma in Vietnam.
He spoke in often-incoherent sentences as he rambled about the sad state of the wine industry.
After he ran out of words, he said, “Anyway, I know you came to see the vine.”
“The vine?” Otis asked, raising a curious eyebrow.
“I thought they might be ready,” Tom said, grinning from ear to ear.
Mitch led them up a hill, taking his time with the cane.
Otis’s curiosity had certainly been piqued.
They stopped before a healthy syrah block.
Though Mitch had his shortcomings, the man knew how to farm.
They followed him down a row, until he came to an abrupt stop and set his gaze on one particularly interesting vine.
Otis wasn’t sure at first what they were witnessing, only that it was a sign of some sort, a miracle. There before them stood a vine that glowed with energy. The trunk was twice the thickness of the others and swirled in wild abandon. The vines around it leaned toward it, as if being pulled in.
Otis had a feeling not dissimilar from when he’d first walked the rows of riesling in the Mosel, this tingly sensation of being in the presence of God.
Finally, he was able to get out a word. “What are we looking at?”
“You tell me,” Mitch said.
Otis stepped closer, amazed. “Either an experiment with a powerful fertilizer or something far more serious.”
“It’s not fertilizer.”
Otis nodded. Then his suspicions had been correct. He’d stepped into the chapel of Red Mountain.
Before he could even move, Rebecca knelt down and touched the trunk. “How old is she?”
“No one knows. This is the oldest block on the mountain, as far as I know. Guy who sold this land to me said it had been here long before him. Even before Jim Holmes and John Williams planted.”
Rebecca turned back and showed a twinkle in her eye as she connected with Otis. “She’s beautiful.”
“You see how the other vines grow toward her?” Mitch asked, pointing with his cane. “No matter how I prune, they go to her like sunlight.”
Rebecca waved Otis over; he knelt next to her. She guided his hand to the trunk of the vine. The whisper he once detected in Carmine’s vines was there, a steady buzz of absolute peace, both a feeling and a sound.
“This is the heart of Red Mountain right here,” Tom said. “I’m not much of a mystic, but you tell me this land’s not meant for something special.”
Mitch jabbed his cane into the dust. “It’s not only these vines that grow toward her. Every vine I’ve planted. She’s the heartbeat.”
“The heartbeat,” Otis whispered, gliding his fingers up into the leaves. “Does she have a name?” Not all grape vines were feminine, but this one was as feminine as Aphrodite.
Mitch shook his head. “I never could name her. Didn’t feel worthy of it. But she has a personality. Snaps at me if I don’t pay attention.”
Everyone laughed.
Otis turned to their new friends. “You’re only now showing us?”
“You have to plant some roots first,” Anne-Marie said, “before we show you her secrets.”
“There are more secrets?”
“They’re endless,” Tom said. “You’ve found a place begging to be tended to, begging to be discovered. A place that will one day grow some of the most important grapes in the New World.”
Otis could have damn near cried.
That night, the coyotes howled their songs and sent tremors through Otis’s bones.