A Good Year by Peter Mayle Read Free Book Online Page B

cellar table, where there was a corkscrew and a none-too-clean glass. Shaking the glass to dislodge the remains of a dead earwig, Max wiped it with his handkerchief before opening the bottle. He poured, then held the glass up to the light, allowing himself to have an optimistic moment contemplating the fortunes to be made from boutique wines.
    He sniffed. He gargled. He shuddered, and immediately spat before rubbing his teeth with a finger to remove what felt like a thick coating of tannin. The wine was one step up from vinegar, enough to pucker the liver. Awful.
    Maybe it was just an unfortunate choice of bottle. Max selected another one, going through the same procedure to arrive at the same undrinkable result. Not quite the gold mine that Charlie had in mind. Max decided to call and tell him the worst.
    “I’m in the cellar, and I’ve just tasted the wine.”
    “And?”
    “Young, of course.”
    “Of course. But promising?”
    “Could be. Lacks finesse. Needs some discipline, a firm hand, a smack on the bottom.” He stopped, unable to keep it up. “Actually, Charlie, it tastes likes a gendarme’s socks. I couldn’t even swallow it. That bad.”
    “Really?” Charlie sounded more interested than discouraged. “Well, that could be the fault of the maker rather than the grapes. It often is, you know. What we need is an oenologist.”
    “We do?”
    “A wine expert. I’ve been reading about them. They’re magicians, some of those boys. They fiddle about with the blending of grapes from different parts of the vineyard until they get the right balance. It’s like a recipe, really, except that it’s for wine instead of food. They can’t turn plonk into Petrus, obviously, but they can make a huge difference. Ask around. There must be a few not far from you. Anyway, how’s the chateau? No, don’t tell me. I’ll pop down for a couple of days when I can get away. Line up the ladies.”
    Max was pensive as he left the cellar. Where would he find a wine magician? It was not the kind of listing you’d see in the Yellow Pages. Perhaps Maître Auzet would know. He’d ask her when they met for lunch.
    At the thought of food, his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since his rubber airline breakfast that morning. He took his suitcases up to the rather grand bedroom—large fireplace, several bad oil paintings—that had been Uncle Henry’s, and after changing out of his suit, he went down to the village for an early dinner.
    It was happy hour in Saint-Pons. Leather-faced men dusty from the fields were lined up at the bar of the café, loud and talkative, their accents as thick as the smoke from their cigarettes. Max ordered a Ricard and found a seat in the corner, feeling pale and foreign. Through the open door of the café he could see a game of
boules
in progress, the players moving slowly and noisily from one end of the court to the other. The evening sun slanted across the square, painting the stone houses with a coat of honey-colored light, and the café jukebox was having an Aznavour evening. Max found it hard to believe he’d been staring out of his window at a gray London sky only twenty-four hours before. This could be a different planet. And, he had to admit, a much more pleasant planet. The only blots on an otherwise sunny landscape were the disappointing quality of the wine and the prickly disposition of Monsieur Roussel.
    A few kilometers away, Roussel and his disposition were engaged in a heated discussion over dinner with Madame Roussel, an admirable woman who had somehow managed to retain her optimism despite many years of marriage to a resolute pessimist.
    “. . . it cannot be anything but trouble,” Roussel was saying. “Change is always bad, and he is young. He will want to take out the vines and make
un golf . . .
”
    “More couscous? Or are you ready for the cheese?”
    Roussel held out his plate for another ladle of the spicy stew without interrupting his gloomy predictions “. . .