Page 3 of Grape Juice
I turn on my heels and march outside, clutching the cloth, oddly reluctant to break away. There is something distinctly non–New York about him. He’s tall and sturdy, tan in a way that suggests he’s never been anything but, has never been indoors too long. No visible tattoos, no status sneakers, no designer T-shirt. Bare feet, freckles. He is, it seems, without angles. Not sanded down, exactly, but polished—as if by water.
Outside, the table has nearly reached its final form. Silverware lies at the ready, mismatched juice glasses scattered like mancala pieces. Candles and lanterns are lit. “Coucou!” I hear Bea cry from the kitchen. “Le dîner est prêt, dinner time,on doit manger!”
I watch apprehensively as the crowd assembles, unsure where to place myself. Are there designated seats? A stout, dark-haired boy in an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt emerges from behind me, cradling several dusty bottles of wine.
“I see the American is here,” he says in a German accent as he places one in front of me. “I’m Julian. Nice to meet you.”
“She’s a New Yorker, not an American.” Henri’s voice pipes into my left ear as he slides onto the bench beside where I’m standing. “Have a seat, Alice.” He taps the space next to him. It’s an oddly intimate gesture, and I’m suddenly self-conscious, fighting the urge to glance around to see if perhaps there’s another Alice in the vicinity.
As I settle in, Julian arranges himself across from me and proceeds to explain, without solicitation, that he is enrolled in viticulture school in Germany. This is his final internship before he can start making wine of his own. He speaks in brusque, geometric English.
“Has a bit of an ego, that one,” Ruby whispers, sidling up to the place setting on my other side. “Thinks he knows best in a man-who’s-never-had-a-real-job way.” I bite back a smile.
Once the table is fully set and occupied, the whole tableau is impossibly striking. It has the dreamy, slippery quality of a memory, some re-creation of a bygone scene: seven seats, a mess of plates, all of it flanked by vines, multilingual chatter, the warm breath of late summer air.
In French,vuis the past tense for “to see,” likedéjà vu. When I first started learning the language in college, the past tense had stuck with me more firmly than the present. For months, I phrased everything like a long-gone missive. Like something remembered rather than something transpiring. That’s what eating dinner in Alsace tonight looks like to me—something remembered.
“Julian, tell us what we’re drinking,” a voice booms out of the near darkness, first in English, then again in French. The pronouncement comes from a man who is now looming over the farthest end of the table. He is tall and wide with a scar shaped like a comma above his left eyebrow and a dark, woolly beard. He has on overalls with plastic buckles at the shoulders, the legs tucked into knee-high rubber boots.
“Have you met Antoine yet?” Henri whispers.
I shake my head.
In blocky, German-washed French, Julian answers: “All Loire Valley stuff tonight. Whites.”
“Ahh, interesting,” Antoine muses. “I suppose we’ll have to ask the new girl to blind taste.”
He strides over, growing larger as he nears, and kisses me on both cheeks with a warm, thunderous laugh. He looks like Santa Claus in his early forties, if Santa Claus went to the gym. “We’re so glad to have you. Our first American!” He places a glass in front of me. “Alec says you’re his favorite. And your boss is the reason we can afford this house.” He laughs, pouring from a bottle Julian passes his way, carefully covering the label with his opposite hand. “By the time you leave, you’ll be able to blind taste vintages. But for now, let’s just start with the grape.”
I can feel the chill of a dozen eyes trained carefully on me, and my heart rate quickens. This is not an unfamiliar practice for me, but I’m unaccustomed to the audience. I close my eyes and inhale from the glass through my nose, take a sip, aerate, swallow.
Henri’s voice, hot in my ear: “You know, you don’t have to close your eyes to blind taste.”
My eyelids shoot open, glare at the ready, and Ruby punches him in the shoulder from behind my back.
I turn my attention to Antoine, eager to make a good impression. “It’s Chenin. Loire? I guess they’re all Loire, Julian already said that.” I shift my eyes back to my glass. “Itmightbe blended with something else, but I’m not sure.Can’t be more than two years old?” I look up at Antoine nervously, wondering if he, too, can hear my heartbeat.
“And what do you think? Do you like it?” Antoine asks.
“It tastes like... the sound a bell makes.”
He shakes his head back and forth slowly, and a grin spreads wide across his face. He picks up the bottle and holds the label for me to see. Chenin—nearly four years old, single-variety.
“Close enough, you pass!” He fills my glass and hands the bottle back to Julian to distribute at the table. “Well done! Alec told me to write down everything you say—I suppose now I know what he meant.”
I beam, my cheeks growing warm. Oh, to be praised at this table, of all the tables in the world.
“Pas mal, New York, not bad,” Henri whispers, elbowing me gently in the ribs.
Antoine claps me on the back, then straightens to return to his seat. “I think you’re going to like it here,” he says over his shoulder.
II
The following morning, when my alarm sounds, it’s still dark. Ruby switches on a lamp, and in the half-light, we shrug into tall socks, shorts, tank tops, boots.
“You’ll want another layer, it’s cold in the morning,” she advises just as we stumble out the door.
The group convenes in front of the house at 5:45a.m. Last night’s table is vacant now and damp with dew, like some relic of another era. It’s chilly outside, and all of us huddle together cloaked in sweatshirts and windbreakers, except Julian, who is filling massive plastic water bottles from a tap by the front door and placing them in a milk crate.
