I inhale slowly as I imagine him lying in a bed at the Palazzo Alighieri. His olive skin in contrast against the white sheets, which have the Alighieri half-sun logo discreetly embroidered.
“Nico.” That’s all that comes out because my throat is closed up. I am behaving like an ingenue being seduced by a lothario, not a grown woman having an intimate conversation with her husband.
“I’msohard, Alessia.”
I gasp at the image he conjures.
“Next time I see you, we’re going to do more than kiss,” he promises, his voice hoarse.
“Yes,” I agree.
We both fall silent for a long moment, and then he chuckles. “So, do you have fermentation strategies?”
“What?” This man is making my head spin!
“Dolcezza, as much as I’d love to hear your gorgeous voice while I pleasure myself, that’s not how our first time is going to be.”
I’m not used to a man talking so easily about sex. In fact, I know no man who talks like this.
“I have fermentation strategies…parcel by parcel,” I tell him.
“Do you know that Renzo is madly impressed with you?”
I smile at that. “Well, I liked him a lot, too.”
“Are you trying to make me jealous, wife?”
I laugh at the ease of talking to him when I never thought it would be possible to be like this with Nico, not after how he behaved earlier.
“Maybe! Are you jealous?”
“Yes. Of every man who gets to spend time with you while I’m sitting in Florence, arguing with the board about how to manage pricing.”
As I walk back to the house, he tells me how premium wine prices climbed too fast post pandemic and that, combined with younger consumers drinking less wine and more fruity cocktail spirits, is hurting the wine business worldwide.
“Restaurants are marking wine up nearly two-three hundred percent at times. It’s killing volume,” he says, agitated. “So, we’re arguing on the board if we should hold prestige pricing or cut to protect market share.”
I undress with him in my ear, getting ready for bed.
“I think the prices are too high. Unaffordable,” I remark. “We’re making wine a luxury item, and that’s going to hurt us in the long run. How come I sell a bottle of wine for three hundred euros in my tasting room, and then the restaurant charges thirteen hundred euros for it? How much sense does that make? Who can afford that?”
“A select few,” he admits.
“And they can’t drink enough wine for us to stay in business. Then we have to shrink our vineyards, produce less and less…which I think is a shame. We should have prestige wines, but not everything can be on the high end.”
I put him on mute as I brush my teeth, and listen to him as he agrees with me on increasing market share with our less prestigious wines—the Chianti and the Rosso Montalcino.
“We should sell ourvini da tavolawith smaller markups. I know this is Alba’s domain, and I know Cesare hates this, but what do you think about an Alighieri wine club? A global one?” he muses.
I get under the sheets naked, the same sheets that still smell like him.
“Will this mean American tourists are going to traipse through my vines?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if I like that!Butit’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to bring our wine to more people. A wine club means regular sales, a subscription service, and a way for us to get rid of some of our wines that are not moving. American vineyards have been doing this for years.”
We end up talking for two hours.
