Clyde's Story
Clyde made himself useful and poured the wine all around.
"Hmmm β good stuff," Erik licked his lips. "Did you make this?"
Clyde nodded. "Cab franc, I love it. My favorite varietal. And not bitchy like Pinot."
"So Pinot's bitchy, huh?" Beatrice looked at her glass and then at Clyde. "I suppose all the grapes have personalities..."
"Absolutely," said Clyde, holding the glass in front of him so it caught the light from the fireplace. It glowed a deep, inviting garnet. "Cab franc is like a woman with a big, plushy ass who lies around and eats chocolate bonbons all day."
Beatrice laughed and shifted subtly on the sofa; Mae noticed her ass was now peeping out from under the blanket - just slightly but enough so Mae knew: She thinks she's got booty. And she did. Beatrice certainly filled out her skinny jeans in the just right way.
Maybe it was true what they said about black girl butt...
"Alright baby! I can totally be cab franc." Beatrice looked at Hella. "What about her? What wine is she?"
Clyde surveyed Hella. The flames burnished her hair. She was sitting so close to the fireplace, Clyde could see the thin sheen of sweat on her freckled face and the flush in the V of her t-shirt. He paused for a minute.
What wine was she?
Creamy like Chardonnay? Involuntarily, he sucked in his breath. Best not to think about that. But then again... he pictured her green somehow - grassy, with a slight tang. Albarino? Tawny Port? For a split second he envisioned the tight bud between her legs like a young acorn - nutty.
"Well...?" Beatrice's insistence broke his reverie.
"Ahh.. yeah... Hella..." Clyde cocked his head. "Viognier, maybe?"
"Viognier?" Hella didn't seem to know it.
"Yeah, Viognier..." Clyde caught himself and his voice regained authority. "Floral white, but also herbacious. It tastes like a lawn covered in clover."
Hella lay back. He could see she was picturing it.
"Bees like it," he added, as if that somehow made it a more acceptable.
Hella smiled. "And I like bees." He knew it was true the minute she said it. She was the kind of woman who'd approach all that sweetness unafraid, calming as smoke. Clyde could practically hear the humming.
"You know, " he began. "When I just got out of college. Cal State Fresno - the fucking armpit of California but my grades sucked. I had no fucking clue. All I had was a frigging FFA diploma. We'd been to Fresno for some state conference so I picked the only place I knew that was far away from my parents and easy to get into."
He continued, settling back into the cushions on the carpet. "But they had a good wine program. I can't even tell you how I ended up in enology but - once I started - I fucking loved it. I'd always had what my dad called 'a smart mouth.' He didn't mean it as compliment but now it really was. My mouth was smart. Smart about wine. I had a good palette and I loved tinkering in the lab - blending. That was my thing. I made all sorts of shit. Some really amazingly bad beer." Clyde chuckled. So did Erik. Maybe it was guy college thing, Mae thought.
"Also some shitty wine. But then - finally - some drinkable stuff as well.
After I graduated, I thought I was hot shit. I was going to go out there and
conquer Wine World. Robert Parker was going to kiss my ass!"
The women laughed as Clyde shifted and patted his own behind. Beatrice made a kissing sound.
"Well," Clyde sighed. "That was before it hit me that I had no connections. No family with a shit ton of acres in Sonoma. No name anyone recognized. I was just some dickhead kid from Fresno. Not even Davis. "
Looking at him not, the blond bearded, easy going epitome of NorCal wine country living, Mae tried to imagine him then - awkward, hungry, unsure.
What a decade can do....
"I tried to get a winemaking job but I'd started too late. I guess I could have gone into production, a lab somewhere, but instead I applied for a job in a tasting room. This was back in 90s."
Mae scrutinized the handsome face, half lit by the fire - he must be older than she thought.
Clyde was warming to his topic. "Yeah, so it was a pretty small tasting room β"
Viviane, who had been quietly nursing her glass of wine tucked in the corner of one of the large couches, interrupted, "Named?"
As was rewarded with a smirk. "that shall remain nameless." He ducked just in time to avoid the pillow Hella launched at him. "Hey - discretion is the better part of valor."
"Ohhh," Viviane purred. "It's going to be
that
kind of story!"
"Yes, m'am. It certainly is." Clyde poured himself some more wine. Erik held his glass up and Clyde filled that, too. Mae got up and headed to the kitchen.
"Hey, where are you going? You want to hear this!" he announced.
"Just getting some more cheese..." they heard. "Go ahead. I'm listening..."
And so began Clyde's tale.
You have to remember - back then Healdsburg was nowhere-ville.
Just a sleepy little town.
Westside Rd is still just two lanes.
Nothing but vines and a barn or two.
Maybe some guys growing a little weed.
I had this beat up old jeep I was always fixing something on.
Literally NO money.
The smirk was back as Clyde looked into his glass.
And what money I did have I spent on this.
He swished the wine around gently and Mae caught herself thinking -
I wish he'd look at me like that.
Or weed.
He laughed again. There was a general nod.
Didn't we all?
"Don't look at me!" Viviane grunted. "I spent all my money on purses."
"Of course you did," Erik murmured as she elbowed him to make more room for her legs on the sofa.
So the tasting room was no great shakes. Just a small house, really.
Sheila, that was the tasting room manager, had put a bar in where the living room would have been.
There was a little kitchen right behind it where we ran the crappy dishwasher.
There was a little bedroom, too, we used for storage.
Usually it only two of us - Sheila and me but sometimes Josh helped out.
He was the vineyard manager - most of the time he was out back in the vines but if it got busy, Sheila would go get him and make get behind the bar.
God knows why she hired me.
I thought I knew a lot about wine - making it at least - but I didn't know shit about selling it.
Clyde ran his hand through his thick blond hair like he was trying to rub the realization back into his head.
Fuck. I thought it was obvious.
He held up his glass in front of the little group of listeners.
It's good stuff. Just drink it!
"Works for me," Erik said, reaching for Viviane's glass when he noticed his was already empty.
And that worked.
Kinda.
Couples would come in and they didn't give a shit about the wine.
They just wanted to be with each other.
That's ok. They'd just buy the cheapest bottle and go outside to the picnic table and drink.
Mae could tell he said it with fondness now, the memory of that easy summer warming him, bleeding into this strange spring.
Then there were the cougars.
Beatrice and Hella caught each other's eyes from across the room and - in perfect synch - growled.
Oh the cougars. Man, there wasn't even a word for that back then.
He chuckled in disbelief.
Yeah, these women in their fifties.
Sheila knew just how to sell to them.
It was uncanny.
He said it with real respect, thought Mae, as if he were still figuring it out.
Most of the time, when she was pouring, I'd be busy - taking racks of glasses to back, filling shipping orders, loading the truck to take the weekly order to Big John's Market in town, the only place we sold wine outside the winery.
But this one day...
The room was warm now, the fire just right. The wine had taken effect and the group looked lazy to Mae, like a pride, the women more alert but still relaxed, the two men luxuriating, diagonally across from one another, bookending the group.
So it's August.
And hotter than all get-out.
I mean, we were dying.
We didn't have air-conditioning, just this rinky-dink little fan.