Dying on the Vine

ONE

IT had long been the unvarying custom of Pietro Cubbiddu, following that of his father back in Sardinia, to take a mese sabatico, a solitary, monthlong sabbatical each fall, at the conclusion of the arduous September grape crush. In recent years, on the advice of his physician, he had begun taking it at the beginning of the month instead, to escape the stress that went along with the harvesting and crushing. During this time he rested, he thought deep thoughts, and he pondered plans and decisions for the ensuing year. That no other major winemaker in Tuscany did likewise was of no concern to him. Pietro Vittorio Teodoro Guglielmo Cubbiddu was every inch (all sixty-four of them) a patriarch: of his family, of the Villa Antica winery, and—although many would argue the point—of the winemaking fraternity of the Val d’Arno, the Arno River valley between Florence and Arezzo.

As large as Villa Antica was today—the fourth largest of the valley’s seventy-plus wineries—it was still very much a family affair, but with Pietro himself firmly at the helm. And Pietro’s every act was guided by the wise old adages of his forebears, very much including Quando il gatto non c’è, i topi ballano. When the cat’s away, the mice will dance. Thus, it was also his custom to gather his three sons before he left on his sabbatical, to issue detailed instructions for running the business in his absence, to resolve differences with Solomon-like decrees, and to deal with issues that might arise while he was gone. For the last several years he had found it helpful to have Severo Quadrelli, his lawyer, confidante, and oldest friend, as part of this group as well.

It was for this reason that Quadrelli, along with Pietro’s offspring, Franco, Luca, and Niccolò, had been gathered with him for the last hour around one of the tables on the porticoed, vine-shaded back terrace of the ancient villa, originally a fifteenth-century convent, where they munched almond biscotti and sipped from tiny, thick-walled cups of tooth-dissolving espresso, both of them made by the housekeeper according to Pietro’s exacting specifications.

The padrone set his cup down in its mini-saucer with a clack that would have broken a lesser vessel. “Okay. So. What else we got to talk about?” His gaze went around the table and settled on his old friend Quadrelli. “I can see you got something on your mind, Seve. Spit it out.”

“Well, yes, I do, as a matter of fact,” said the lawyer after one of his lengthy, harrumphing throat-clearings. “About this Humboldt matter. Don’t you think we ought to tell them something before you run off and disappear into casus incommunicado?” The use of Latin—frequently rather suspect Latin—was also typical of signor Quadrelli.

Pietro glared at him. “No! What for we got to tell them something?”

He had grown up in the mountains of Barbagia, the remote and primitive interior of Sardinia, where the dominant language was still Sardu, rather than Italian. Indeed, he had spoken virtually no Italian until he came to mainland Italy (“Europe,” as he called it) as a married man in his thirties. And in the two decades since, he had never lost the thick Sardu accent or the brusque speech constructions that sounded so coarse to mainland Italian ears. Whether he still spoke this way out of shrewd business calculation (“Ey, signore, I’m just a dumb paisano right off the boat, what do I know?”) or because he couldn’t help it or simply because he liked talking that way, was a question that even his family had never resolved to its satisfaction.

“Well, you see, Pietro,” Quadrelli said, lifting a placating hand, “the thing is, I don’t know how much longer we can put them off. There are a great many other wineries they could go to, you know.”

Pietro’s round, balding head came up. His response, delivered with flashing eye and a whack of his hand on the table, was like the snap of a whip. “But only one Villa Antica!” This was followed by a bark of laughter: Ha-ha, I’ve got you there, my friend!

The matter at hand was an offer from the giant Humboldt-Schlager Brewing Company to acquire Villa Antica. The Dutch-American beer conglomerate was eager to get its foot into the premium-wine market, and it thought that Villa Antica would be the perfect entry. Last week they had upped their offer from an already stunning €3 million to a staggering €5.5 million, more than enough for Pietro to move back at last to his beloved Sardinia, where he would be able to retire in great luxury, far from his old enemies in the mountains, to the swank Costa Smeralda, where he’d live on the beautiful coast, right in there with the opera singers and rock stars. Maybe with his wife, Nola, at his side. Maybe not. What to do about Nola would be one of the many things that would occupy his mind over this next month.

“Of course, Pietro, that goes without saying,” Severo was saying. “I’m merely—”

“They don’t want to wait, they’re in such a big hurry, let them go somewheres else.” Then, as a muttered afterthought: “They don’t like it, they can go to hell.”

“Yes, but what do we tell them if they want a definite answer?”

“You tell them what I just say. I have not yet made up my mind. What is so hard about this?”

Franco, the eldest, who thought of himself as a natural peacemaker and arbiter (he was neither) intervened. “Babbo, all Severo is asking is that you make your decision before you leave for your vacation. Surely—”

“Is no vacation.” Pietro told him sternly, not for the first time, “Is un mese sabatico. I think about this thing on my mese sabatico. Then I make up my mind.”

But his voice had lost some of its authority. He was being evasive, even untruthful. The Humboldt-Schlager offer had a catch. Naturally. (Non c’è rosa senza spine. There is no rose without thorns.) The catch was known only to Pietro and Quadrelli. When the company had increased their offer they’d also changed the original provision that called for Franco to become the winery’s chief operating officer and for Luca and Nico to continue in their present positions. Now they’d decided they had no use for any of them; they wanted all of them out and gone the day the deal closed; out of the winemaking operation and gone from the living quarters. Otherwise: no deal. To Pietro, it would once have been unthinkable: family came first, above everything. But times had changed, and Pietro had changed with them—at least a little—so more recently, it had become, well, thinkable. Besides, with the money he would get from the sale, he would make ample—very ample—provision for their futures. So, there was nothing for him to be embarrassed about, anybody could see that. But then why had he not told them?

“Why do I make my mese sabatico now, this minute?” he went on with a ferocity that stemmed from shame. “Because this is when I take. Just as the vines must have their set time to rest and replenish, so must the mind.” He glanced at the inexpensive Casio watch on his stubby wrist. “Now, if nobody got nothing else—”

“I have something,” said Niccolò, at twenty-six the youngest of the brothers by a dozen years.

Pietro, who had begun to rise, sank down again and looked suspiciously at him. “Well? Nico?”

“It’s something I really think you need to think about before you leave, babbo.”

“Wha-a-a-t?” It was as much a warning growl as a question. Pietro Cubbiddu didn’t care for being told what he “needed” to do, even when it came from his handsome, charming rascal of a baby boy, who was granted indulgences that his older brothers didn’t get. Besides, he thought he knew what Nico had on his mind, and he didn’t want to hear it.

“Well, it’s not about the winery, it’s about your will. I know you’re upset with Cesare, and I agree with you, he has it coming, but don’t you think he deserves at least—”

Just as he’d thought. “Don’t tell me what Cesare deserve or don’t deserve,” he snapped. “My will is my business, not yours. I got every damn right to change it any damn time I feel like.”

Every right and every reason. Cesare was his wife Nola’s child by her murdered first husband, Eliodoro. He had been an infant when she and Pietro had married; a few months younger than Nico. It was Cesare, even more than Nola herself, who was the source of the tightness, the hollowness, that now never left his chest. Pietro had joyfully welcomed the child into his family, treating him as his own and lovingly introducing him even as a boy to the rudiments of wine and winemaking. Cesare had taken to it like fleas to a dog. Like his stepbrothers, he had been sent off to the United States when the time came, to the famous “enology” program at the University of California. And, like the others, he’d lapped it up and been given an important role to play in the winery.

And how had Cesare repaid him? By betraying him. With his years of priceless training and experience at Pietro’s expense, and with no warning to Pietro, two months ago he’d announced that he’d accepted the position of assistant cellar master at Tenuta Vezzi, a rival winery only a little smaller than Villa Antica, and just fifteen kilometers to the north, near Rignano sull’Arno, halfway to Florence. There was no doubt in Pietro’s mind, and no surprise either, that Agostino Vezzi—spiteful, envious, old geezer that he was—had offered the boy the job for no other reason than to get Pietro’s goat. But that Cesare had accepted—and accepted without even having had the decency to consult with him—that had been a blow that had laid him low.

Pietro had responded in the way honor demanded. He had thrown Cesare out on his ear (incredibly, the boy had expected to continue to live at Villa Antica) and had made it clear that he was no longer to consider himself the son of Pietro Cubbiddu. At Pietro’s instructions, Quadrelli was now drawing up the formal papers for disowning and disinheriting him. Signing them would be Pietro’s first order of business on the day he returned from his mese sabatico. It was not what he would have wished, but it had to be done.

As might be expected, all this had done nothing to improve his deteriorating relations with Nola, who had shrieked at him like a fishwife for an hour, been silenced only by the mute threat of his raised and quivering fist, and had sulked ever since. The road trip to his cabin in the Casentino mountains wasn’t going to be a pleasant one, and for the first time he wished that he’d learned to drive, rather than having to depend on others to get him anyplace. For years one of the boys had taken him, but since Nola had learned to drive a few years ago, the task had fallen to her. On the first day of September, Nola, who was uncomfortable at Villa Antica in his absence, would take him to the isolated cabin, then continue north to spend a quiet month with her spinster aunt near Bologna, and then return exactly one month later to pick him up on the way home.

He’d thought about asking one of the boys to drive him up instead, but Nola was no fool. If he suddenly declined to ride with her, she would conclude—correctly—that something was up. And that he did not want; it was necessary that she behave as she normally would.

Nico clamped a hand over his heart, pretending fright. “Okay, babbo, okay! I didn’t mean to wake the sleeping giant.”

Pietro laughed. Even when he didn’t understand what Nico was saying, the boy could always make him laugh.

Franco raised a bony finger. “There’s one more thing, babbo. I need to know whether to keep the rotary fermenter or not. We only have another week to commit. I think we should do it.”

A rough shake of the head from Pietro. “The what?”

“The rotary fermenter? From Cosenza? Three years old? Twenty thousand euros? It’s an excellent buy. We’ve had it on approval for almost a month now. Galvanized frame, access catwalk—”

“And what is it that such a thing does again?” This was asked partly because he’d forgotten the details, but mostly for the simple pleasure of irritating his increasingly officious, impatient, eldest son.

“It macerates the—”

“It what?”

Franco pursed his lips. Clearly, he knew he was being had, but he also knew that Pietro would trust his judgment in the end, as he always did when it came to things that didn’t engage his father’s interest—such as modern production methods and sophisticated equipment. “A rotary fermenter,” he said through only slightly clenched teeth, “will assure consistent contact between the must-cap and the juice, not only shortening the total fermentation time, but eliminating the labor-intensive—”

He was interrupted by Luca, the middle son. “Rotary fermenters,” he said disgustedly, “those cement-mixers you love so much—damn it, Franco, can’t you see they rob the grapes of their individual character, of everything that separates the soil of our vineyards from every other vineyard in the Val d’Arno? No, better to take a little longer and let the wine macerate naturally into what it was meant to be, not something some machine made it into.”

Pietro unconsciously nodded his head in agreement. When it came to wine—when it came to just about everything—the old ways were best. If they weren’t, would they still be around after all these centuries?

But Franco shook his head sadly. “Ah, Luca, you’re living in the past. Today, the manufacture of wine—”

“Manufacture of wine?” Luca’s eyebrows jumped up. “Did I hear that right? Since when do we manufacture wine? Are we the Villa Antica wine factory now? Do we produce our wines on an assembly line, producing a thousand bottles a day of perfectly uniform, identical wine . . .”

It was an old, ongoing argument between the two, and Pietro’s mind drifted. How different they were from each other, these sons of his. It wasn’t that Franco was without merit. He was smart, he was a hard worker, and he was single-mindedly dedicated to Villa Antica. Much of the winery’s growth had been due to his ingenuity and foresight. He knew everything there was to know—far more than Pietro did—about the science of winemaking.

But, and it was a big but . . . for Franco it was all science—all polymerization, micro-oxygenization, anthocyanin extraction. In evaluating a wine, Franco would trust his Brix hydrometers and his protein precipitation meters before he’d trust his own palate. He had the head of a winemaker, yes, but not the heart; there was no feeling in him for wine, no passion. For Pietro, wine was a wonderful gift from God, and to be privileged to devote one’s life to making it, nurturing it from vine to bottle, was an even greater gift.

Uncork a fine bottle of wine—a 2003 Villa Antica Sangiovese Riserva, for example—on a gray winter’s night with snow swirling outside, and your nose was immediately filled with the aromas of the rich loam from which the grapes had sprung and with the warm, dry air of early autumn. You could practically feel the sun on the back of your neck. And then the first taste, taken with the eyes closed . . .

But Franco? Did he even like wine? Once when they were tasting to decide if a bottling was ready for release, Franco was going on and on about acetate esters and phenols. Pietro, finally losing patience, had asked him whether he liked it or not.

Franco had looked at him with honest incomprehension. “What’s liking got to do with it?”

Pietro had just shaken his head and mouthed a silent mamma mia.

Luca was as different as different could be. Luca had for wine the same deep affection that Pietro did. More important, like Pietro he respected it for what is was. He understood the soil and the seasons and the life cycle of the grape itself. But, somewhere along the way, he had lost interest. Possibly, this was a result of frustration. Luca being the middle son, he’d had to take a back seat to Franco in winery matters. In Villa Antica’s unofficial hierarchy, Franco was the chief operating officer, Luca the head winemaker. (As for an “official hierarchy,” Pietro was the boss; that was about as official as it got.) It would have been better had Luca’s and Franco’s positions been reversed, Pietro knew, but what was a father to do, ignore the rightful claims to primacy of the first-born son? Not likely for most fathers, highly unlikely for Italian fathers, impossible for a Sardinian father. As a result, although he trusted Luca’s opinions more, he deferred to Franco’s whenever it was feasible.

Surely, that must have soured Luca’s attitude toward the winery, and the knowledge that it would be Franco, the eldest, who would eventually inherit it could not have helped either—but whatever the cause, Luca’s enthusiasms had swung away from wine and toward food. Already he and his unconventional, unpredictable American wife were talking about the restaurant in Arezzo that they would one day own.

Well, that was all right too, Pietro supposed. A chef, a real chef, was nothing to sneer at. A man could be proud of having a great chef for a son, especially a chef who truly knew something about wine. And he had no doubt that Luca would make a fine chef. Still, it wasn’t what he’d hoped for.

And Nico? Nico liked wine, all right—a little too much, in fact—but he had never been serious enough to learn and retain something about it. Nico had never been serious enough about anything. Even now, he took no interest in the argument between his brothers, but only sat there drumming his fingers and staring smilingly into his own thoughts. Of the three, only Nico’s role in the winery had nothing to do with the production of it. Nico was their connection to the industry and to the dealers. He spent half his time on the road, like a traveling salesman. And he was extremely good at it. This very afternoon he was off to a winemakers’ conference in Hong Kong. Whoever heard of a winemakers’ conference in Hong Kong? And yet, there was no doubt in Pietro’s mind that he would come back with a suitcase full of orders. A good kid: smart, handsome as a movie star, fast with the ladies, quick with words, a born salesman. But a businessman? No.

All these considerations had played into his decision to accept the offer from Humboldt-Schlager. He was left, as he saw it, with little choice. Tradition, of course, required that in his will, he leave the winery to Franco. But Franco was no different than anybody else; he would never change. (Chi nasce tondo non muore quadro. He who is born round does not die square.) With Franco at the helm, the Villa Antica that Pietro had poured so much of himself into would die with him. Once Pietro himself was gone, and without Luca’s tempering influence, Franco would turn it into something cold and passionless: a scientific laboratory, its wines perfectly uniform from bottle to bottle, made—“manufactured”—by the cold dictates of chemists and food scientists.

And so Pietro had concluded that if his own tradition of winemaking wasn’t going to survive him anyway, what was wrong with hurrying its demise along a little—and pocketing €5.5 million from it? About his sons he felt little guilt. Franco, Luca, and even Nico were grown men now, and it was time—past time—for them to strike out on their own. They were all mature, capable men now. Hadn’t he provided them with fine educations and years of highly marketable experience? Besides, as he’d told them, with the money from the beer maker he planned on giving each of them a generous stipend of €5,000 a month for the next five years, a total of €300,000 apiece. Yes, they would find it a shock when they learned that they would be out of jobs and their home, but if €300,000 wasn’t enough to make a place for themselves in the world, what was? He had started Villa Antica with less than a hundredth of that. With the advantages they had, the advantages he’d given them . . .

When he surfaced again, Luca and Franco were still going on about rotary fermenters. Nico had stopped drumming his fingers long enough to pour himself another glass of wine.

Pietro silenced the two older brothers with a weary wave. “Enough. Don’t order the damn thing; let it wait. It’s not the last whatever-you-call-it in the world.” Let Luca win one for a change. What difference did it make now? “Okay, I got to get going. Any minute, Nola, she gonna be here to drive me. So, if nobody got anything else—”

The mere mention of Nola, Pietro’s second wife, was enough to cause a stiffening around the table. The prickly, uncomfortable relations between stepmother and stepsons were, if anything, worse than they’d been twenty-five years earlier when she’d made her first appearance in their lives. For a while Pietro had tried to smooth things between them, but patience was not his strong suit, and eventually he’d given up. And the truth was that by now he had plenty of smoldering grievances of his own against her. Grievances, doubts, suspicions . . . he hardly knew what she was thinking anymore. He hardly knew her.

The shy, plump, young widow he had married back in Sardinia had been full of gratitude to him. She’d been a simple, dutiful wife, and for the first five hard years in Tuscany she had worked shoulder to shoulder with him, planting vines, building trellises, culling and harvesting grapes until their fingers bled. But things changed when a noted wine critic more or less accidentally visited Villa Antica in 2009 and tasted the 2001 Pio Pico, then raved about it in his blog: “elegant yet rustic, assertive yet balanced, subtle yet bold, this big-hearted wine . . .”

What made it truly astounding was that what the famous critic was blathering about wasn’t one of Franco’s fancy, meticulously engineered varietals, but the simple, down-to-earth wine Pietro made primarily for their own everyday drinking, the same blend of Carignane and Nebbiolo that his father and grandfather had made back on the farm in Sardinia.

Nevertheless, the review put them on the enological map; their fortunes took a sudden, huge jump; and things were never again the same with Villa Antica. Unfortunately they had never been the same with Nola either. Now that she was part of Tuscan royalty, she changed overnight from a Sardinian to an Italian: first the relinquishing of her kitchen duties to a newly hired housekeeper, then the driving lessons, the “diction” lessons, the fashion magazines, the hairdresser in Milan, the endless diet regimens, the flaunting of her middle-age body in shamefully revealing new clothes. At home and with the winery staff, she had become domineering; in public, vulgar and whorish—

“I don’t have anything else, babbo,” Luca said.

“I don’t have anything, babbo,” Nico said.

Franco, sulking over the rotary fermenter, was silent.

“All right, then,” Pietro said, getting up. “Don’t blow up the winery while I’m gone. Franco, you’re in charge.”

Franco stood up to shake hands with his father. “We’ll take care of everything. I’ll see you at the end of the month.”

“If God wills it,” Pietro grunted. “Che sara sara.”