Page 11 of Sipping Seduction
“You’re sure?”
“One-hundred percent.” Her left eye twitched again. “Why do you ask?”
“No particular reason. I’d better get to the warehouse. Cole’s hoping to hear something back from that lab in Scotland where we sent one of those barrels we found this summer.” Frannie had been with me when my brother Miller surprised all of us by discovering a stash of old, dried-up barrels of Devil’s Distinct in a secret cellar in one of the warehouses. Since we’ve been trying to recreate the mash bill for the original whiskey our ancestors bottled, we’d sent one of the barrels away to see if the lab could find out if there were any insights to gather.
“You’d better get going then. I hope you get the info you need.” Frannie knew how important it was to us to discover that old recipe. It’s all my brother Cole had been talking about since he’d taken over as master distiller a few years ago.
“Looks like you’ve got your hands full here, too.” I nodded toward her office, where the dark-haired kid still sat. He had to be a Stewart. Even though he couldn’t be more than ten, it was satisfying as hell to know the Stewart family wasn’t above getting sent to the principal’s office. Made me wonder what he was in for.
“Are we still on for Friday night?” Frannie asked.
“Why wouldn’t we be?” We always met up on Friday nights at Pappy’s Last Call for a burger and sometimes a beer. I looked forward to it all week long, and I hoped she wasn’t planning on cancelling on me again.
“Just making sure. Thanks again for the latte. You really know how to turn a day around.” She reached out and gave me a quick hug.
I wrapped my arms around her, careful not to hold her too long or too tight since we were standing in the middle of the office. The scent of vanilla hovered around us. I craved moments like this. There were just never enough of them, and they never lasted.
“I’d better get back to work,” Frannie said as she pulled away. “See you Friday night, though I’m pretty sure we’ll talk at least a dozen times before then.”
“I’ll let you know what we find out from the lab.” I glanced toward the kid in her office. “Don’t be too hard on him, Principal Masterson.”
“I’m never too hard on them.” Her lips split into a wide grin.
I waved to the rest of the women in the office who’d been doing their best to pretend like they were working and not eavesdropping on Frannie and me. Then I walked out of the school, still not sure exactly what was going on with my best friend. Obviously, she was keeping something from me, but I wasn’t going to press her. She’d tell me when she wanted to, though that didn’t mean I couldn’t keep looking into things on my own.
When I arrived at the distillery, I went into the office first. Usually, I headed straight to the warehouse area to double check our production schedule for the day, but I wanted to find out if Cole had heard from the lab.
I found my brothers in the conference room. Vaughn sat at the head of the table with Cole to his right. Danica, Cole’s fiancée, sat next to him, and a handful of Stewarts took up the rest of the seats. I leaned against the wall by the door and swept my gaze around the room, trying to get a read on what was going on.
Vaughn glanced over at me. “We got the report. Cole was just going over it.”
“Is there anything we can use?” I asked.
Cole shook his head. “Looks like the mash bill we’ve been using is almost exactly what they found when they analyzed the interior of the barrel. That means we’re missing something. It’s got to be a strain of yeast or something else that doesn’t have to do with the mash bill.”
“Were they able to check the char level of the barrel?” I asked.
There were only so many variables that went into making Tennessee whiskey. A distiller could mess with the ratio of grains, meaning the mash bill, or change the flavor of the whiskey depending on what kind of yeast they used. The only other variables were the char level of the barrel and how long a whiskey aged. We’d also theorized about whether the location where a barrel aged made any difference.
Since our barrels of whiskey had to sit around and mature for at least a couple of years for us to consider it whiskey, the exact location where it aged could make a big difference in the final product. Depending on how high up in the rickhouse a barrel sat, it could be exposed to a greater swing in seasonal temperatures.
Cole had spent the past several years trying to figure out what tiny tweaks he could make to recreate the exact chemistry of Devil’s Distinct. So far, he’d been unsuccessful.
“The char level’s on point,” Cole said. “That leaves the yeast. I found another lab that can try to analyze the strain of yeast, but there’s no guarantee of accuracy since those barrels sat there for so damn long.”
Davis Stewart, who held the title of co-manager of the distillery with my brother Vaughn, cleared his throat. “You’re taking us on a wild goose chase. An expensive wild goose chase. We’ve had good success with our new releases. The anniversary blend you and Harper came up with last summer was a huge hit. I don’t understand why you’re chasing ghosts of the past when we should be worried about the future.”
Harper nodded. She’d agree with her brother if he said we needed to start bottling swamp water. All the Stewart siblings would. I silently cursed our ancestors for leaving us in an impossible situation. Even with the success of Devil’s Dance, running the largest whiskey distillery in Tennessee with a family we’d been feuding with for over a hundred years meant always having to watch our backs.
Cole had tried to extricate our family’s interest in the distillery from the Stewarts but had been unsuccessful. If Danica hadn’t come in when she did and masterminded a plan we could all agree on about how to move forward, we might not have made it to the anniversary celebration this past summer.
“I understand your concern,” Danica said. She’d always been able to see both sides. “We all agreed on the five-year plan and we’re only into year one. Part of that plan was finding ways to honor the past while still looking toward the future. I think it’s fair to have Cole pursue investigating the yeast while we continue to put out the anniversary blend and get ready for the annual holiday release. Any objections?”
“I agree.” Charity Devine spoke up. As the sole representative from the Devine family—the third family in our fucked-up business arrangement—she kept the peace between Vaughn and Davis and rarely took sides.
Davis grumbled to himself, but held his tongue.
“Great. I’ll send it out today and see what we get back.” Cole pushed back from the table, his gaze trained on his fiancée. The two of them fit together better than biscuits and gravy. Kind of like Frannie and I would if I could grow a set of balls big enough to take a chance.
