A Good Year

Nine

This was Mr. Chen’s third visit to Bordeaux, a city he found increasingly agreeable. As on his previous visits, he was particularly taken by the elegance and human scale of the eighteenth-century buildings, which made a refreshing change from the glass and steel towers of his native Hong Kong. He admired the architectural set pieces-the Place de la Bourse, the Esplanade des Quinconces, the Grand Théâtre, the fountains and statues-and he delighted in the tranquil surface of the broad, slow-flowing Garonne. And, telling himself that there should always be a place in a man’s life for recreation, Chen had begun to appreciate some of Bordeaux ’s less publicized attractions, the exotically dressed young ladies who patrolled the back streets of the old town. In fact, he was thinking of increasing his visits to two a year.

It was in his nature to make himself well informed, and in the course of doing his homework he had discovered, among many other things, that Bordeaux was the first place in France where tennis had been played; that the novelist François Mauriac had invented “the aristocracy of the cork” to describe the multinational mix of French, English, Irish, German, and Swiss wine grandees; and that their original cellars had been built next to the river, on the quai des Chartrons.

And it was here, where the rue Ramonet joined the quai des Chartrons, that Mr. Chen told the driver of his taxi to drop him off. A stroll, and a breath of cool river air, would clear his head before he tackled the business of the day. He had made his arrangements with the bank. He had dropped a few discreet hints to his clients. All that remained was to hope that this year’s price wouldn’t be too exorbitant.

He turned off the quai and into the cours Xavier Arnozan, a broad street of trees and graceful houses, and saw that the others were arriving. He quickened his pace to join them as they made their way through an unmarked front door.

In the sober gloom of the entrance hall, a small party of businessmen, all of them Asian, conservatively dressed in the dark suits and quiet ties of their trade, were exchanging bows and business cards and handshakes with their host, a tall Frenchman in well-cut tweeds that could only have come from a London tailor. Their common language was English, spoken in a variety of accents. Their common interest was wine.

“This is not an ordinary tasting,” the Frenchman was saying. “In fact, you will already have noticed something unusual.” He paused to brush back a wing of graying hair that had fallen over his forehead after one bow too many. “Normally, with the great wines of Bordeaux, tastings are held sur place, where the grapes are grown. In this case-this unique case, if I may say so-the vineyard is too small to offer comfortable facilities, or indeed any facilities at all. Except for the grapes, of course.” He looked at the attentive faces around him, and shook his head. “We cannot offer even a miniature chateau, and there are no plans to build one. The land is far too precious to waste on bricks and mortar. That is why the tasting is being held here in Bordeaux.”

The businessmen nodded, their dark heads bobbing as one.

“Now, gentlemen, if you’d like to follow me.” He led the way down a narrow corridor lined with portraits of stern-faced men, their features partly obscured by the luxuriant facial hair popular in the nineteenth century. The Frenchman waved a manicured hand at the paintings. “Honorable ancestors,” he said, with a smile that was echoed by the group.

They reached the tasting room, small and dim, dominated by a long mahogany table. Arranged along its polished length were shining rows of glasses, silver candlesticks with lighted candles, and a trio of open, unlabeled bottles, each identified by a hieroglyphic scrawled in white chalk. Ornate copper crachoirs had been placed at either end of the table in readiness for the ceremonial spitting that would take place later on, in the course of the tasting.

The Frenchman adjusted his already perfectly displayed shirt cuffs and clasped his hands in front of his chest, a slight frown on his face to indicate the importance of what he was about to say. “As you all know, this is a tasting by invitation only, restricted to the highest level of international buyers, the crème de la crème.” Around the room, heads were inclined in recognition of the compliment. “In other words, those who can appreciate the extraordinary qualities of this remarkable wine.”

As if programmed, the eyes of the buyers turned to look at the three bottles on the table while the Frenchman continued. “Our vineyard is tiny, and we can produce only six hundred cases of wine a year. Six hundred cases, my friends.” He took from his pocket a newspaper clipping. “Less wine than the Gallo brothers can produce in California in a morning. And now that they have acquired the Martini winery”-he held up the clipping-“it’s probably less wine than they can produce before breakfast. What we are offering here is a mere drop in the wine ocean. You can understand why we can’t afford to waste it on amateurs and thirsty journalists.”

The buyers smiled and nodded again, flattered to be included in such elite company. One of them raised a hand. “What is current Gallo production? Do you have a figure?”

The Frenchman consulted his clipping. “About six million cases a year.”

“Ah so.”

The Frenchman continued. “We have two problems. The first is that, as I have explained, we don’t possess a chateau, and so our wine cannot claim an illustrious name. We call it Le Coin Perdu, the godforsaken spot, because that is the old local name for the vineyard my family took over and rescued from neglect more than a generation ago. Their faith in the land, those years of work nursing the vines, have now been justified. The wine is exceptional. But that brings us to the second problem.”

He spread his hands wide and raised his tweed-clad shoulders in a slow-motion shrug. “There is not enough of it. In a good year, six hundred cases. And when you have quality combined with scarcity, it is a sad fact that prices rise. Fortunately, we have not yet reached the six figures-in dollars, mind you-that were paid some years ago for a single bottle of 1787 Chateau Margaux, but the price of this year’s wine will be-how can I put it?-impressionnant: around forty thousand dollars a case.” He shrugged again, the picture of a man overtaken by sad but uncontrollable events. “However, as we say in France, only the first bottle is expensive.”

There was an audible intake of breath. His attempt at humor was lost on the buyers, who, to a man, produced pocket calculators.

“While you do your sums, my friends, think of Petrus. Think of Latour, of Lafite Rothschild. These wines can outperform the stock market, particularly today. They are not mere bottles of liquid, however glorious. They are investments.”

At the mention of that thrilling word, the mood of the room lightened, and the buyers watched as the Frenchman went to the table, adjusted the set of his cuffs once again, and picked up one of the bottles. He poured no more than a mouthful into a glass and inspected its color against the flame of a candle. He gave a slow nod of satisfaction, then lowered his head, swirled the glass, and brought it to his nose, closing his eyes as he inhaled. “Quel bouquet,” he murmured, just loud enough to be heard. The buyers maintained an appropriately reverent silence; they might have been observing a man lost in prayer.

“Bon.” The spell was broken as the Frenchman began to pour the wine, mouthful by mouthful, into the other glasses as he resumed his sermon.

“This is our first series of tastings for this vintage, and you, our friends from Asia, are the first to taste. Next week, our friends from America will be here, and then our friends from Germany.” He gave a sigh. “Let us hope there will be enough for everyone. I hate to disappoint true connoisseurs.”

Unnoticed by the group, another figure had slipped quietly into the tasting room: a svelte, young blond woman dressed in a tailored gray suit that was saved from severity by a breathtakingly short skirt.

“Ah,” said the Frenchman, looking up from his pouring, “allow me to present my assistant, Mademoiselle de Salis.” Heads turned briefly, then returned for a second look at the legs. “Perhaps, my dear, you would help me distribute the glasses.”

Each of the buyers clustered around the table took his glass, careful to adopt the taster’s grip, with the thumb and the first two fingers holding the base. Like a synchronized team, well rehearsed in the movements of the ritual, they swirled their wine, raised their glasses to the candlelight, and peered respectfully at the color.

“A darker robe than usual Bordeaux,” pronounced one of the buyers.

The Frenchman smiled. “What an eye you have, Monsieur Chen. It is altogether richer, an oxblood ruby. Velvet rather than wool.”

Monsieur Chen filed the comparison away in his memory, to be used later. His less sophisticated clients were always impressed by this kind of language, the more gnomic the better.

“Time to put your noses to work, gentlemen.” The Frenchman led by example, bowing his head over his glass, and the room was silent except for the sound of wine-scented fumes being funneled up into twenty receptive nostrils. And then, tentatively at first but with increasing confidence, came the verdicts, delivered in accents that had their origins in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai. Violets were mentioned, and vanilla. One outspoken soul, more imaginative than the rest, was heard to murmur “wet dog,” causing a momentary elevation of the Frenchman’s eyebrows.

But this was little more than a prelude to the verbal acrobatics that followed once the wine had been taken into the mouth, chewed, rolled around the tongue, allowed to irrigate the back teeth and infiltrate the palate before being consigned to the crachoirs, with Mademoiselle de Salis waiting behind the table armed with a supply of linen napkins for the less accomplished spitters.

How does one describe the indescribable? The buyers, now that they had tasted, did their best with evocations of leather and chocolate, pencil shavings and raspberries, of complexity and depth, of backbone and muscularity and hawthorn blossom-of almost anything, in fact, except grapes. Notepads were produced, and scribbled on. The buyer from Shanghai, evidently a gentleman with dynastic interests, offered the opinion that the wine was undoubtedly more Tang than Ming. And through it all, the Frenchman nodded and smiled, complimenting his guests on the perspicacity of their palates and the felicity of their comments.

Some time later, when he judged the moment to be ripe, when the gargling and spitting seemed to have run its course, he directed a discreet flutter of his fingers at Mademoiselle de Salis.

Putting aside her napkins, she picked up an oversized Hermès notebook, bound in black crocodile, and a Montblanc pen of the kind normally used to sign international treaties, and began to make her rounds. Like a perfectly trained sheepdog, she separated the buyers from the flock, one by one, taking them in turn away from the table so that their orders could be noted down in as much privacy as the size of the room allowed.

The capping of the pen and the closing of the notebook acted as a signal to the Frenchman. With many a pat on the shoulder and squeeze of the arm, he shepherded the group out of the room and down the corridor before giving his farewell address in the hall.

“I must congratulate you on the wisdom of your decisions,” he said, “decisions I know you won’t regret. Your orders will be dispatched very shortly.” He raised a hand and tapped his nose. “Perhaps I could offer you a little advice. First, that you restrict this wine to your most trusted clients, those who prefer to keep their drinking habits to themselves. Publicity would inevitably spoil the intimacy of the relationship that we have built up. And second, I would suggest that you keep a few of your cases in reserve.” He smiled at his partners in future prosperity. “Prices have a habit of going up.” On that reassuring note, with the bowing and shaking of hands completed, the group filed through the front door and into the bright sunlight of the street.

Hurrying back to the tasting room, the Frenchman found Mademoiselle de Salis seated at the table, her blond head lowered over her notebook and a calculator. He came up and stood behind her, and began to massage her shoulders. “Alors, chouchou? What’s the score?”

“Chen took six cases, Shimizu took a dozen, Deng took four, Ikumi eight, Watanabe and Yun Fat…”

“The total?”

Mademoiselle de Salis gave the calculator a final stab with a crimson-tipped finger. “Altogether, forty-one cases. Just over one and a half million dollars.”

The Frenchman smiled and looked at his watch. “Not too bad for a morning’s work. I think we’ve earned our lunch.”