Chapter 14
Fourteen
Barely one foot in the store and my gaze is drawn to a full wall of windows across from me. The panoramic view of lush, vine-covered hills demands my attention then holds it captive.
The darkness of the room comes into focus next. The dusty boxes littered throughout the large room confirm that nobody’s been in here in a while.
But then.
Nancy flips a switch, and my eyes go to the ceiling as a light comes on.
Only it’s not just a light, it’s a masterpiece.
Clusters of purple glass globes and fanned-out leaves bigger than my hands fill the openings between wide beams, illuminated by warm bulbs.
Other than the industrial metal rods artfully connecting them, it’s all glass. A grapevine of glass on the ceiling.
I don’t know much about glass—ironically enough, everything I learned came from high school and my time reading a book on it with Gavin—but I know enough about high-end design furnishings to know that what’s on their ceiling is likely custom made and expensive as hell.
“That’s impressive.”
Neither respond.
I open a box: a case of wine. Same as the next and the next. “These your grapes?”
Nancy clears her throat. “They are. We use a crush facility out of Charlotte.” I have limited knowledge on the wine industry, but I do know a crush facility is where grapes are sent to be made into wine for vineyards who don’t want to invest in their own equipment.
“The Etched Reserve was voted best of North Carolina two years in a row. The Murrine Rosé once. Chambourcin and Seyval blanc are the grapes we grow.”
“Interesting names for the wine,” I say. Annealed Reserve, Torch Red, Incalmo Port . . . they aren’t familiar.
“Glass terms,” Nancy says.
At my raised brows, Gavin adds, “Greg’s idea.”
I nod and exchange one bottle for the next. “You sell any?”
“Three restaurants in town.” She smiles too big for the implication. “They do well.”
No way they do well enough to carry the costs involved.
I return the bottle to the case. “That’s the only source of revenue?”
“It is.”
Gavin gives me a grim look. I don’t need to know anything about wine to know this isn’t sustainable.
She isn’t breaking even; she can’t be. It helps explain why she’d sell if that’s as far as she’s willing to take the business.
She’s nowhere close to tapping into the full potential of this place if she has boxes of award-winning wines sitting in dusty boxes and a usable space that’s sitting vacant.
Across the dusty counter of the horseshoe-shaped bar that juts into the middle of the room, my attention once again goes to the back wall of windows and the rows of vines reaching for the horizon.
“You have any numbers I can look at?” I ask. “And the offer?”
“Of course,” Nancy chirps. “Inside. I need to check on Addie anyway.” With a laugh she adds, “She’s watching Overboard for the millionth time. The girl just loves Goldie Hawn.”
The door closes behind her, and I continue my assessment, Gavin tracking me as I go.
“What are you doing right now?” he asks, genuinely curious. “What do you see?”
I blow out a long breath and open yet another case of wine.
“I see lost money because cases of wine are sitting here. I see zero return on the crush facility expenses. I see . . .” The room is big and there’s a lot of light.
Shelves for retail. A huge bar that could hold fifteen-plus people at a time for tastings.
A river rock fireplace. And of course, the ceiling covered in a light fixture way out of their budget.
“Unmet potential to tap into the booming agritourism industry in the area but also an easy fix.”
“How so?”
“Place is gorgeous, you have the inventory, structures seem to be in good condition. They have any red flags on inspections when they bought the place? Water quality or rights issues?” He shakes his head; that’s good news.
“All you need is a few people and some contacts to help push the inventory and it could be profitable.”
Out the back windows, a late-forties, early-fifties man walks into view.
He’s wearing a white button-up shirt—unbuttoned—flowy pants with elastic bands at the ankles, and no shoes.
His hair hits his shoulders—partially covered by a bandana—and a pair of headphones hugs his head with a cord leading to the pocket of his pants.
He catches me looking and waves a set of hand shears.
“Who the hell is that?”
“Banyan,” Gavin says. “Fills his court-ordered community service hours by taking care of the vines.”
My eyes bug out of my head. “Court ordered?”
Gavin chuckles. “Got arrested for public nudity, but he’s harmless. A Buddhist. Pretty funny, actually.”
Banyan snips at a vine.
“I thought community service meant picking up trash on the side of the road in a neon vest.”
“Usually,” Gavin says, “but Mom lets the local 4H chapter come out here for field trips, so it qualifies.”
I watch Banyan, bopping his head while he what I’d dare call pets a leaf, for a full minute.
At the next box I come to, I expect more wine but find it filled with wineglasses.
Stemless and tinted with a subtle shade of green and dinged with a purposeful hammered texture.
I take one out. It’s handmade, I can tell by the slight abnormalities, but artfully done.
I exchange it for another, same design and texture, just with a tinge of blue. The next purple. The next red.
“You guys have a thing for glass?” I ask, holding one up to the light.
“Glass?”
“The ceiling is covered in it and—” I gesture with the glass in my hand. “These are handmade.” There’s a stamp on the bottom. “HS?”
Gavin takes one and runs a finger along the lip.
“You grow up to be a glassblower, Davy Crockett?” I tease.
He laughs a little. “That what you think?”
My gaze drops to his grass-covered boots. Gavin did not make the glass.
“Friend of my dad’s,” he explains in my silence. “Made all this when they first bought the place. Gave them a good deal. Went with the Glass of Vine theme.”
I glance at the grapevine-covered ceiling. Some people are so good at what they do it’s criminal. “He’s good.”
The door opens and Nancy appears with—of course—a smile on her face. “Addie will be out in just a minute. She loves new folks.” She waves a manila envelope, spiral notebook, and calculator my way. “Brought the numbers.”
My eye twitches.
“Your numbers are in a notebook?”
Her eyes narrow. “Where else would they be?”
It’s hard not to cry.
“Who takes care of the property?” I ask.
Gavin clears his throat. “I do.”
I do a double take. Even with the nudist working the vines, property maintenance of this place is probably ten to twenty hours a week in peak growth season. It explains why he gets home so late every day. “Don’t you work full time?”
It’s Nancy who responds. “Once this deal goes through, that’ll be fixed.”
“I don’t mind,” Gavin says. To his mom: “I don’t.”
Here’s what I know about family and business—from my own and years of working with others—it’s a tenuous game of tug-of-war.
It’s obligations versus wants. It’s heart versus head.
It’s seeing how bad things are but not wanting to voice it.
It’s wanting to do it your way but having to bend for theirs.
Much like the clusterfuck Old Vines was in where neither my mom nor sister wanted to tell me how bad it was, this is the same thing.
A family dealt a blow—several—and a business going down as collateral damage.
“The offer you have—” I eye the envelope in her hand. “What are your concerns?”
Nancy says, “None,” at the same time Gavin says, “It’s less than what they paid for the place by nearly two hundred grand.”
I turn toward the window and watch the weirdo with hand shears work his way down a vine, his lips moving like he’s talking to it, while Nancy fills me in on the other details.
They bought the place for just shy of a million then pumped money into it—explains why it looks so good. The current offer is eight hundred thousand. “They based that price on the fact the store isn’t open and it’s a risky buy,” Nancy finishes.
The potential buyer isn’t completely wrong—there isn’t a strong cash flow and profitability is unclear—but given the state and attention to detail, risky is a stretch.
Even without the confidence I’d have with thorough research and knowing there’s not a steady stream of revenue, there’s no way in hell this place has depreciated that much.
I reassess the space. The view, the bottles of wine, the light fixture that could be studied by art school students as a masterclass on design. “When do you have to sign by?”
“Friday.”
Two days.
The bones are good. The building is perfect. It needs to be cleaned up, polished, and people need to be hired. Glass of Vine is clever, especially considering the glasses in these boxes, and the logo is good. Artistic even. A delicate wineglass wrapped with a vine and filled with grapes.
My gears turn.
This business is smaller than anything in my portfolio with the firm, but the sob story might be strong enough for them to want it—maybe even help my angle of working while I’m not supposed to be working—but even if they did, the day-to-day would be significantly different.
Once a typical deal is done, my involvement includes high-level board meetings with CEOs.
Strategy work. KPI reviews. There’s none of that here.
There’s Nancy with a notebook, Gavin with a mower, and some freak in the vines with headphones.
Nancy can’t keep running it—she isn’t now—The Family would likely want to bring in a professional CEO or team to manage the project, but it’s so small I don’t know how they’d justify the expenses involved.
I could do it—oversee the day-to-day—at least for the few months I’m here. Get it to a place where it’s thriving before we hire someone else to take over. It wouldn’t be the norm and it’s outside of my wheelhouse, but I can learn. And I have nothing else to do.