Vintage Ladybug Farm (15 page)

Lori pressed her hands together excitedly, watching as, one by one, the others tasted the wine … everyone, that was, except Ida Mae, who looked at them all as though they’d lost their minds.

“Well?” insisted Lori, eyes shining. “Do you taste it?”

Lindsay held out her glass. “I don’t even taste the chocolate,” she admitted. “Of course, I just brushed my teeth.”

“Funny,” observed Bridget, “how wine doesn’t taste nearly as good before lunch as it does after dinner.”

“Wait a minute,” Paul said. He held out his glass, then brought it back to his face, inhaling the aroma. “There is something familiar about it.” He looked at Derrick, who nodded.

“Loire valley Beaujolais?” he suggested.

“Not Beaujolais,” Dominic disagreed, taking another sip. “It’s young, but you almost think if it aged another few years …”

“What does it remind you of?” Lori insisted.

“Odd,” said Cici, examining the glass. “It’s not sweet, but it makes me think of something sweet.”

“Chocolate?” suggested Lindsay.

“Ida Mae’s fruitcakes!” Lori exclaimed impatiently. “The Blackwell Farms ’63!”

The Blackwell Farms Winery had become famous for its ’63 shiraz, the last bottle of which had sold at open auction for in excess of $8,000. Ida Mae, oblivious to this, had been using it to marinate her Christmas fruitcakes for years—thus gaining the well-deserved reputation for the most exquisite fruitcakes in the county, perhaps the world. The last of the ’63 shiraz, however, had been used on the last fruitcake the year the ladies moved into the house.

For a moment, everyone stared at her and then re-tasted their wine. Even Ida Mae took a careful sniff, frowning. “Don’t smell a thing like fruitcake,” she declared.

“Maybe.” Paul took another sip. “There’s something there.”

“I knew it was familiar,” Derrick agreed. He smiled at Ida Mae. “The best thing I ever tasted at Christmas!”

“Not quite there,” Dominic said thoughtfully, gazing at Lori. “But close.”

Cici said, “I don’t know how you expect us to taste anything this time of morning.” But she took another sip anyway.

“No, he’s right.” Bridget sniffed the wine again, then re-tasted. “It’s … reminiscent.”

“Sorry,” Lindsay told Lori, setting aside her glass. “Tastes like toothpaste to me.”

All eyes turned to Ida Mae as she sniffed the cordial glass again, stared at it, and then took one small, very careful taste. She smacked her lips. She looked at the glass. She set it down with a clack on the side table. “It ain’t Blackwell Farms wine,” she pronounced. “But,” she added as she turned to go, “it’s close.”

Lori whirled back to them, beaming. “See? Was I right?”

Dominic smiled, lifted his glass to her in a small salute, and put it on the side table beside Ida Mae’s. “You did good, kid,” he told her. “You’re starting to develop a real palate, and that’s not something that comes with a college degree.”

She glowed under his praise, and then he added, “But you know, last year’s vintage has nothing to do with this year’s crush.”

“I think it does,” Lori replied confidently. “Especially if you blend Ladybug Farm wine into it. Don’t you see it’s perfect?” She turned from one to the other of them, her excitement all but sparking in the air. “You wanted a unique wine brand, and this is it—the taste of the glory days of the Blackwell Farms winery with the jazz of the contemporary Ladybug Farm grape! Wait, I have to write that down. That could be our marketing copy.”

Cici gave a weak, uncertain chuckle. “Lori, I don’t know anything about wine-making but I’m pretty sure that mixing fresh grapes into aged wine is probably not a good idea. And we don’t have any actual wine. We won’t even have grapes until fall. Maybe.”

“Except she’s not talking about this year,” Dominic said, with an approving glance toward Lori.

“Right.” Lori gave a single adamant nod of her head. “This year, we bottle and label the wine we make from the crush. But we hold some in reserve. Next year …”

“We blend our own wine into the reserve,” added Dominic thoughtfully. “A special edition.”

“Exactly! And a winery is born.” Lori held up her palm for a high-five, and Dominic slapped it with a grin.

Then he grew serious. “You asked them about fermentation and pump overs? What about ML inoculation? Did they use CO2 in the cold soak?”

Bridget, Lindsay, and Cici exchanged blank looks while Lori and Dominic engaged in a few intense moments of technical conversation. Paul murmured, “I think we need to renew our subscription to
Wine Spectator
.” And Derrick nodded agreement.

“Young lady,” Dominic decided after a few more moments of rapid-fire questions and answers, “I think you just might have a future in the wine business. California’s gain is our loss.”

Lori’s cheeks colored with gratification, and Cici gave her daughter’s shoulders and affectionate squeeze. “I agree,” she said.

“Good,” said Lori. “Because they said they’d waive storage fees if we ordered before the end of the month, so I told them they could ship two hundred barrels.”

“Two hundred!”

“Lori, are you crazy?”

“Lori, we can’t possibly—”

Dominic held up a quick, placating hand. “It’s okay,” he assured them. “We can accommodate that, and she’s right—the sooner we get the new wine into our own barrels, the more control we have over the outcome. As long …” he gave Lori a meaningful look, “as they don’t expect payment in advance.”

“I held it on my credit card,” she assured him blithely. “They’re mailing the contract. Here’s what I negotiated.” She took several typed papers from her bag and handed them over to Dominic.

Cici took a long, slow breath. “Lori,” she said carefully, “you do realize that you’re not actually an officer in this corporation, don’t you?”

Lori had spotted the box of Valentine candy, and she headed toward it happily. “Not a problem, Mom. My pleasure.”

Dominic examined the papers with an appreciative lift of his brow. “Pity we can’t hire that girl,” he murmured to Cici. And to Lori he said, “You could have gotten a better price on shipping.”

“Not for that small amount,” she assured him, biting into a caramel, and Dominic winked at Cici and handed her the papers.

“We’ll take this up at the next board of directors meeting,” he said, “which should be, what? In a couple of hours? Meanwhile, you all have wedding dresses to look at, and I want to check that pump again. We may need to order a new valve.” He gave Lindsay a look that was obviously meant to be casual and which no one in the room could be persuaded to believe, and added, “Walk out with me?”

“I’ll get my coat.”

Cici went to take Lori’s papers to the office, gathering up the mail on her way. “Oh, wait,” she said, pulling out an envelope. “It’s from the bank. What do you know about that? These must be the final papers on our loan. Perfect timing, huh?” She opened the envelope and pulled out a paper.

“Well, you know what they say,” Lori replied cheerfully. “When you’re doing what you’re meant to do, the universe smiles on you.”

“Now there, you see?” Derrick agreed. “There’s always a reward in it when you get up at six in the morning to slog through the mud and take pictures of the groundbreaking ceremony for a friend’s new house.” Lindsay came back from the foyer, pulling on her rain jacket. “If we sign everything now, Dominic and I can run into town before the bank closes.”

Cici looked up from reading the paper. There was an odd expression on her face. “What does the universe do when you screw up?” Her tone was dull; her eyes looked stunned.

“They turned us down,” she said. “We didn’t get the loan.”

~*~

CHAPTER
EIGHT

In Search of an Angel

“R
emember the lilies of the field,” Noah advised somberly.

The seven pairs of eyes that turned on him were neither appreciative nor encouraging. Nonetheless, he explained, “They toil not, neither do they reap.”

Noah, who had a half-day on Wednesdays, had come home for lunch to find everyone glumly picking over turkey sandwiches and searching for options. An hour later, Ida Mae cleared the table, but still they sat, the embers of the fire dying behind them, the bottle of Montrachet half-empty before them, the box of Valentine candy open in the center of the table.

“Thank you, Noah,” Lindsay said before he could go on.

Lori gave him an impatient look. “Don’t you know any verses about vineyards? There’s lots of stuff in the Bible about vineyards. Quote something helpful.”

Noah shrugged and reached for a chocolate.

Ida Mae rattled plates and saucers in the background, muttering to herself. Bridget twisted in her chair to look at her. “What’s that, Ida Mae?”

“I said, the only thing you folks know about wine is how to drink it,” Ida Mae replied. She scooped coffee into the coffee maker. “Shame on you, sitting here at the kitchen table, guzzling and moaning this time of day. Ain’t you got anyplace better to be?”

“Actually,” said Bridget with a sigh, “no.”

“Although, I did sketch out a cute design for the winery office,” Lindsay said wistfully, “where we could have had our meetings, instead of at the kitchen table. If we had a winery, that is. Right there in the west corner of the barn, next to the restaurant. There was room for a gift shop, too. We could have sold your wine jams and gift baskets, and on the front wall, right over the cash register, I was going to do a six-foot-tall canvas with a single cluster of grapes. With the tall ceilings in there it would’ve looked fabulous.”

“Could’ve done a tin ceiling,” added Noah, “and left the beams exposed so that it still looked like a barn. People would’ve liked that.”

“We could have decorated the restaurant with your art,” Bridget said, “and sold it there, too, just like they’re doing at the B&B.”

Derrick smothered a groan. “Restaurants and B&Bs sell food, not art. Lindsay, darling, we really must talk about what you’re doing with your life. Not to mention Noah’s.”

She returned a steady gaze. “What I
was
going to do with my life was operate a winery and sell my paintings in the restaurant. Now I don’t
know
what I’m going to do with it.”

Cici took a breath. “I think it’s important to remember that we weren’t rejected because of our credit, or because of the idea. The bank just doesn’t have the money.”

“It’s the economy,” agreed Bridget.

“Which will never get better if banks don’t start loaning money,” said Lindsay angrily.

“The point being,” interrupted Cici firmly, sensing a tirade, “that this is just one bank. We can try others.”

The coffee pot gurgled in the silence that followed, filling the room with its rich aroma. Cici looked around the table for encouragement and found none. Dominic put it into words. “Your local bank is always your best chance for a small business loan,” he said. “If they turn you down … Well, it’s like a black mark for everybody else.”

Bridget took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s funny,” she said. “Until now, I don’t think I realized how much I wanted this. I mean, I didn’t even think it was a good idea at first. But The Tasting Table.” She smiled wanly. “That
was
a good name for a restaurant, wasn’t it?”

Lindsay reached over and patted her hand. Noah took another chocolate. Derrick refilled his glass.

“You know,” he said, “Noah may be on the right track. What you need is an Angel.”

Noah frowned, apparently trying to remember a verse that referenced angels, and everyone else looked at Derrick curiously.

“He’s right,” Dominic said. “We talked about this before. Failing cash or credit, we need inv
estors.
Or an investor.
An Angel.”

Lindsay slouched down in her chair until she could rest her head against the back rail, her demeanor a metaphor for the defeat they all felt. “We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don’t know anyone with that kind of money. And even if I did, how could I ask them to risk it on a winery we haven’t even established yet?”

Lori said without hesitation, “Dad is sending me a check for the wedding. You can use that.”

“Absolutely not,” said Cici.

Derrick and Paul exchanged a look. Paul said, “If we took out the pool …”

“And the radiant heat in the bathrooms …”

“And the terraced landscaping …”

“Stop it.” Bridget reached across the table and grasped both their hands. “Thank you,” she said sincerely. “But we don’t want you to sacrifice your dream for ours.” She smiled at Lori. “Either of you.

“Besides,” said Lindsay with a sigh, “it wouldn’t be enough.”

Cici kicked her under the table.

“If only we could sell the house on Huntington Lane,” Paul said, frowning. “Cici, are you sure you couldn’t get your real estate license reinstated in Maryland for just a few months? No one ever moved property like you.”