The Winemaker by Noah Gordon Read Free Book Online

large groups of Garnacha, Samso, and Ull de Llebre, all mixed in among one another. Generations of his forebears had made wine from them, to be turned into a raw, indifferent vinegar. His ancestors hadn’t cared about varieties, so long as they grew black grapes that gave sufficient juice.
    That’s how they had survived. He should be able to survive in the same way, he told himself. But he was troubled; it seemed to him that his change of fortune had happened too easily. Would he be able to meet the challenges of this responsibility?
    He wasn’t supporting a family, he told himself, and he had few personal needs save for the simplest of foods. But there would be expenses for the vineyard. He wondered if he could afford to buy a mule. Padre had sold his mule when his two sons became old enough to do a man’s work. With three men in the vineyard, they could handle the work without having to fuss with the care of an animal.
    But now he had only his own labor, and a mule would be a godsend.
    Over the years, all of the easily useable land had been planted with vines, but as he walked, he saw the last of the late afternoon sun still striking the top of the hill that composed the rear border of the property. Only half of the slope was planted with vines;the steepness was very close to the angle Leon Mendes had told him was more than forty-five degrees. That was too steep to work with a mule, but Josep had spent many hours planting and tending vines in France, working with hand tools on similarly steep hills.
    Most of the older vines were Ull de Llebre. But one section of the hill was planted with Garnacha, and he climbed to where the vines were beautiful and aged, perhaps a hundred years old, with gnarled lower portions as thick as his thighs. There were a handful of hard raisins clinging to the dried tendrils, and when he picked and ate them, he found them still full of lingering flavor.
    He went higher, several times going down on one knee as his feet failed to gain sufficient purchase on the roughness of the hill, here and there pausing to pull gorse and weeds. A lot of vines could be planted here! He could considerably increase the production of grapes.
    He realized that perhaps he had learned some things that his father hadn’t known. And he was willing to work like a farm animal, and to experiment in ways his father wouldn’t have tried.
    That night he would begin to sleep in his father’s bed.
    He understood that what had occurred was miraculous, as important to him as the day the king and General Pedro Pablo de Aranda had given the land to Sergeant Jose Alvarez. In that moment all doubt left him, and he was flooded with the happiness that had been eluding him. Filled with thanksgiving, he sat on the warmed earth of the slope and watched as the sun smeared the horizon with redness before disappearing between two hills. In a short time, dusk settled on the small, vine-filled valley of Santa Eulália, and night began to fall on his land.

6
    A Trip to Barcelona

    On Saturday morning Josep hoed and dug for two hours, breaking the ground along a poor row where very old Ull de Llebre vines were scraggly and the hardpan earth chipped like rock. But he stopped working while the day was still early, not knowing how long it would take him to reach the textile mill where Donat worked. He made his way to the Barcelona road; the long walk from France was still fresh in his memory, and he had no desire to go to the city on foot. Instead he stood and waited for a likely vehicle, allowing several private coaches to pass; then, sighting a large wagon laden with new barrels and pulled by four huge draft horses, he held up his hand and pointed down the road.
    The driver, a red-cheeked man built as generously as his horses, pulled on the reins long enough for him to clamber aboard and affably wished him a fine morning. It was a fortunate ride. The horses clopped briskly, and the driver was an even-tempered soul content to spend the time