AllFreeNovel
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Running a quick calculation on the notepad in my kitchen, I add another month to the tally for how long it will take me to put away enough for my own apartment. One more month. Because surely, I can’t live in staff housing at the winery forever. It’s a temporary gift, and I don’t want to outstay my welcome.
“We have a lot to do today. Thanks for coming early,” Beatrix Corbett calls to me from the open front door of the restaurant, where I’ve been enjoying the respite from pouring glasses of wine for tourists. Not that I don’t love that part of my job—talking to people and hearing where they’re visiting from is part of what I love about the wine business. It’s built into the culture of stopping, tasting, discussing, relaxing. And my log of tasting notes has grown to several dozen pages.
But the beauty of Buttercup is all the areas of wine and hospitality that the company handles on a daily basis. So I jumped at the chance to learn about how the restaurant makes a wine and cheese party interesting for three hundred people in the wine industry with refined palates.
“Same as yesterday?” I ask. Yesterday was spent putting together tasting notes for the wines that will be served at the event with Victor, the restaurant’s sommelier. I tried to act casual when Beatrix told me what I’d be doing, but my brain was exploding.
I’ve been wanting to work with Victor since I arrived, but I knew I needed to pay my dues and wait for the right time.
Beatrix picks up her phone and swipes across a couple screens. Light jazz begins piping in through the speakers, and suddenly, the room feels like a speakeasy. All that’s missing is the crowd.
“Yes,” Beatrix says. I haven’t spent much time with her, but I already like her a lot. She has a certain sophistication, always well-dressed in pantsuits with red lipstick and her blond hair wound into a chic chignon at the nape of her neck. Shaking her head, she consults a clipboard. “I can’t believe Dashiell hired you and didn’t think to let me know you’re a trained sommelier. What the actual heck?”
“I don’t have experience, just training.”
She leans in and puts her arm around my shoulders, speaking quietly. “Promise me I’m the last person you ever say that to. From now on, you’re a trained sommelier. Period.”
“O-okay.”
“Exactly. You studied, you earned it. And if someone has a job opening, you put your foot right through that door and fake it til you make it.”
I nod. “Okay. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad at least one of my brothers knows what’s what. Jax told me you’re making wine. That’s amazing.”
I tell her about my viniculture, which is still back in Berkeley because it needs to ferment, and Ella’s dark closet is the perfect environment for it. “I haven’t tasted them, but everything seems like it’s on track, so come fall, I should have a pretty robust science experiment.”
As I’m explaining my methods, I wonder what else Jackson told her. It seems clear now that he must have had a hand in getting me moved to the team that’s planning this weekend’s event, and he did it to give me more experience with the restaurant’s sommelier.
I make a mental note to do something nice to thank him.
Beatrix hands me a Butter and Rosemary apron, and I tie it around my waist, noticing Victor walking toward us, wringing his hands. He’s over six feet tall and often holds his hands behind his back, making him appear like he might topple forward. “We need to change the wine pairings. Is it too late?” His worry pulls his mouth down in a frown until he overcorrects, looking like a slightly menacing cartoon sloth.
Beatrix sucks through her teeth. “It’s going to be tight, but I’ll do you this one solid, Victor. Tell me what needs to be changed by end of day today, and I’ll make it happen.”
He nods and scurries off while she confides, “I never print the menus until the day of an event, but it’s better to have people think I need everything sooner.” She winks. “Tricks of the trade.”
“Smart.”
Her smile matches Jackson’s and feels just as hard-earned. She works hard, running two restaurants, but unlike Jackson, she manages a large staff and farms out the day-to-day work to them. She has managers, bookkeepers, and executive chefs who manage their own teams and keep the restaurants running while she attends to bigger picture issues.
I get the feeling I could learn a lot from her about the restaurant side of the business. “Come. Victor will be a minute, and I could use another set of eyes on these.” She signals me over to a velvet sofa in the foyer of the restaurant and takes out a stack of photos from a leather folder on a side table.
“Has he told you about her?” Beatrix separates the photos into one color stack and one of black and whites. She shuffles through the first stack, all photos of the property. She’s so intensely focused that I almost think she’s asking me something about the photos.
“I’m sorry?”
“Jax. Has he told you about his wife?” Folding her hands on top of the stack, she looks at me. “He doesn’t like to talk about her—at least not with me—but since you work for him, I figured I should fill you in since he never will…”
“I-no, not really.” I feel like I want to protect him, even though she’s his sister. “He just said that she left two years ago.”
“Well, that part is true, but he’s definitely leaving out the juicy bits.”
“Oh, yeah?” I feign nonchalance, but I’m dying to know more. “Want me to look at those?” I point to the photos.
Beatrix shuffles through them once more and smooths a hand over her hair, even though not a strand is out of place. “Right. Yes. I’m using one of these for the cover of the event menu, but I haven’t decided. Does one of them scream ‘world’s best winery with understated elegance?’”
I look through the photos, mostly images of the farmhouse. Lower in the stack are some more casual ones of the vineyards. I have no idea if she’s put them in order of preference.
