Red-handed in Romanée-Conti (Winemaker Detective Book 12) Read online

  Just to the north, Chambolle-Musigny had already been hit, and the storm was advancing at full speed. In the courtyard leading to the wine warehouses and the sorting table, the Lemoines were rushing around, their shoulders hunched and their faces grim.

  “Boss, I don’t see how they can keep picking!” Virgile shouted.

  Like the harvesters, Philippine was silent. Seeming almost resigned, she simply pulled up the collar of her oversized jacket.

  Benjamin and Virgile had scarcely reached the tiled room, where the stainless steel vats shared space with the sorting table, when the hail burst from the skies.

  In rapid fire, the stones struck everything. The sorters stopped the conveyor belt and listened to the bombardment. All of Nuits-Saint-Georges seemed to be buckling under. It lasted five minutes, maybe less, but to Benjamin it felt much longer.

  Finally, the hail turned to rain—a hard rain that shook the hail-clogged gutters and seeped into the cellar.

  Like the sorters, Benjamin and the Lemoines kept their ears perked to the sounds of damage outside. Everyone seemed lost, helpless, exhausted, even the usually businesslike Philippine.

  Then the wind died down and the storm took off to wreak havoc elsewhere—sparing a nearby village, they heard later, but destroying the plots across the way.

  Ultimately, the thunder rolled beyond the hills, and the local vineyards were shrouded in silence. Everyone rushed outside to assess the damage.

  Benjamin took the lead but was quickly outpaced by Virgile. The closest vineyard had suffered greatly. At the foot of every vine, the grapes—some of them imprisoned in ice—were clumped, bruised, and chopped on a carpet of shredded leaves. Benjamin picked up a fistful of hailstones the size of pigeon eggs. He couldn’t recall ever seeing a hailstorm of this magnitude, but he did remember reading about one in August, 1445, when Dijon was attacked by “large stones both square and round, some of them weighing as much as three pounds.”

  Marcel Lemoine didn’t venture into this mass grave. Instead, he ran along the muddy footpaths to survey the full extent of the hail’s terrible crime. Experience and ancestral knowledge told him that the deadly clouds followed low-pressure corridors and dropped their ice on relatively limited areas. Fifty years of working in the biggest Burgundy vineyards had familiarized him with the vagaries of weather.

  Philippine and Rafael, meanwhile, inspected the fields. Half of the harvest was down. But some of the other half could be salvaged if they took great care in removing the grapes that had come under fire. It would be a painstaking task that would cost dearly in manpower and inevitably render paltry returns.

  Benjamin spotted Marcel coming toward him in his yellow raincoat. The man said nothing and took out his cellphone. As Benjamin listened, he called his teams on speakerphone to determine the extent of the disaster in each of his vineyards.

  The heavy rain in Fixin had battered the grapes but hadn’t caused major damage. At Gevrey-Chambertin, the hail-filled clouds had threatened but then retreated. Clos-Vougeot had not been spared. The hail had fallen in some places and not in others, and the extent of damage to Lemoine’s hectares wasn’t clear. The storm had hit Nuits-Saint-Georges particularly hard, dropping its ice on one vineyard, leaving its neighbor untouched, and then hammering a plot to the north. The Barrades were shattered, and the Peyrières were devastated. The valley of Morillon was a field of ruins. At the foot of each vine there was nothing but a large puddle of blood. But miraculously, Vosne-Romanée was unscathed.

  “There, sir, everything was harvested in three minutes,” the vineyard manager said, his voice trembling.

  Thank heaven, the Côte Chalonnaise had been totally spared, and Montrachet ignored by the lightning and avalanches of ice. With his hundred and fifty hectares, Marcel Lemoine was not the most unfortunate of vintners. The shortfall was considerable, but he would recover.

  § § §

  A grim Rafael Lemoine joined Marcel, Benjamin, and Virgile. Unlike his father, who had years of experience under his belt, Rafael was reeling.

  “I’m heading over to see some neighbors, Father. I want to talk to Simon Brauchard and see what kind of damage they’ve sustained.”

  “Mind if I tag along?” asked Virgile.

  “No, not at all.”

  They climbed into Rafael’s 4x4, and made their way along the muddy track.

  “Simon and I go back,” Rafael said as he carefully navigated the ruts and potholes. “When we were in school we chased the same girls. And I guess you’d consider us competitors in the wine trade. But that doesn’t matter on a day like this.”

  Rafael turned on the radio. The head of the farming federation had already declared a “state of catastrophe.” News commentators were throwing out words like “Apocalypse Now” and “machine gun hail storm.” Winemakers were talking about post-storm disease pressure and the possibility of goût de grêle, the taste of hail, from damaged grapes making it into the fermentation tanks. Experts were pontificating on increased frequency of storms in hail-prone regions.

  Seeing Rafael turning red and gripping the wheel, Virgile turned off the news. “I’ve heard about prevention techniques. Cloud seeding uses silver iodide to reduce hailstones to rain, and hail cannons send out shock waves, disrupting the hailstone formation. These could certainly help in the future.”

  “Yeah, right. Those methods have already been tried here, but a fine lot of good they’ve done.”

  Indeed, as they drove along, they passed weary-looking landowners and workers. Virgile could have mistaken them for bereaved family members on their way to the morgue to identify the body of a loved one.

  Arriving at the Brauchard estate, they found Simon, a broad-shouldered man with a receding hairline. Virgile couldn’t tell if the stubble on his cheeks was the result of the grape harvest keeping him from grooming, or if it was a carefully designed look. It did give him a certain sexy ruggedness.

  The two old classmates greeted each other, and Rafael introduced Virgile, who listened as the two men shared the news of their damaged plots. Ambition and youth made it all the harder for them to accept this twist of fate.

  “Sixty percent of our harvest is lost,” Simon told Rafael and Virgile. “Fortunately, the pickers worked hard yesterday and stuck it out until dark.”

  “You’re lucky to have such a motivated team,” Rafael said. “It’s getting more and more difficult to find good field hands. The students balk at the work, and the old ones want to retire.”

  “So you’re forced to hire guys from Eastern Europe. The problem is where to house them. But apart from that, they’re dedicated, and they don’t keep their eye on the clock. True, there’s a language barrier, but I have a Romanian worker who understands French and interprets for the others.”

  “You still have to make sure they’re documented,” Rafael said.

  “I don’t worry about that. I use an employment agency in Beaune. It guarantees that all the guys have papers. If there’s an audit, I’m not held responsible. And anyway, we’re all part of Europe now, right?”

  “My father insists on hiring people from the area. According to him, they’re more dedicated. You know Father. He’s ultra-conservative.”

  “Meanwhile, that’s some nasty business—what happened to the Romanée-Conti picker. Did you hear about it?”

  “Yes, this morning.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Philippine did. She’s from Meursault.”

  “She applied for a job at our place, but my wife wouldn’t let us hire her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she was too good-looking. You know how jealous women can get. Anyway, she was trouble. And what about you? She applied at your place too, didn’t she? That’s what she said. Why didn’t you take her on?”

  Virgile, who had been surveying the nearby field, turned his attention back to the two men. Th
is was new information.

  Rafael took a few seconds to answer. “Philippine told her we had everyone we needed.”

  “You aren’t saying that woman calls the shots at your estate, are you?”

  “No way! Benjamin Cooker’s been at our place since this morning,” Rafael said, shooting a glance at Virgile.

  “Rafael, I know times are changing, but we’d never give an outsider as much authority as you give your precious Benjamin Cooker. I don’t care how many of those guides he’s written. He’s from Bordeaux! You’ve sold your souls to the devil!”

  Virgile politely cleared his throat. “Actually, Mr. Cooker advises estate owners all over France. He also has many international clients. As for winemakers like Philippine, women have made great strides in the industry. At the University of Bordeaux, forty percent of the students today are women. Granted, most of them haven’t wound up working in the vineyards, but some of the top one hundred wines in the world are made by women—Philippine de Rothschild, Sandrine Garbay, May de Lencquesaing, and Corrine Mentzelopoulos, to name a few.”

  Simon shot him a nasty look, and Virgile realized this was no time to get into an argument.

  Not unlike his father, who was known for his wit, Rafael replied, “My grandfather always said, ‘It’s hard to decide between heaven and hell. I prefer heaven for its weather, but at the end of the day, I’d choose hell because the women are more fun.’”

  Virgile turned and stared at him. Rafael had either missed or dismissed his point. Either way, it was best to bite his tongue.

  Annoyed, Simon Brauchard kicked a pile of hailstones on the spongy red earth, and with a wave of his hand, he started walking away. Then he turned around, a sneer on his lips.

  “A piece of advice: you should watch out for that Philippine. People say she and that girl they found strangled were into some kind of shady dealings together. It’s none of my business. I’m just repeating what they’re saying around here.”

  Rafael didn’t respond. “Let’s go, Virgile,” he finally said, heading back toward the car.

  § § §

  When Rafael and Virgile arrived at the Lemoine estate, Benjamin and Marcel were marching through the rows of vines like two army generals assessing battlefield casualties. Benjamin was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Not that hail was less of an evil in the Médoc or on the right bank of the Gironde, but Burgundy was more susceptible to this type of devastating weather.

  Marcel gave his son and the winemaker’s assistant a nod and started telling a story. “In the sixteenth century, the mayor of Dijon, responding to the grievances of the area’s winemakers, asked the church wardens to sound the alarm as soon as the lightning watchman gave the order.”

  “The lightning watchmen?” Virgile asked.

  “Yes,” Marcel answered. “It was a real profession in those days, set out in the City of Dijon’s charter. Whenever the watchman spotted ominous thunderclouds, he had to ring the great bell of the city’s Notre Dame Church and inform the parish wardens to ring the bells in their own parishes to urge people to pray.”

  The winemaker was intrigued. There was always much to learn. And Marcel was taking his mind off the painful wounds inflicted by nature.

  “Here, my dear Benjamin, a thunderstorm can develop at any time, even in the dead of winter. On a bitterly cold morning in February 1626, a lightning bolt set the spire of Dijon’s Saint Benignus Cathedral on fire. Even the bells melted, if you can imagine! Only a person from Burgundy can truly say that he knows what a lightning bolt is and what kind of misery hail can inflict.”

  Benjamin nodded. Most likely, this was true. He picked up one of the hailstones and watched it melt in his hand. It was just a trickle of water now, but an hour earlier it had been a deadly pellet shot from a thundercloud.

  Soon they saw Philippine Perraudin heading their way. Her face was still bleak. “My God, how is this possible?” she said, reaching them.

  Benjamin couldn’t help noticing that Rafael was giving Philippine the once-over. Why? He looked to Virgile, wondering if his assistant might know something.

  Virgile shook his head, telegraphing “not now.”

  “Let’s leave God out of this sad spectacle,” Benjamin said gently. “The grapes the hail has spared must be gathered very carefully. We have to get the pickers out here as quickly as possible, and the sorters, too, and give them very specific instructions.”

  “I know what to do, Mr. Cooker,” Philippine responded. “If you don’t stop patronizing me, I’ll—”

  Before she could finish or Benjamin could say anything, Rafael locked eyes with Philippine.

  “Ms. Perraudin! You’re out of line!” His harshness shocked Benjamin. “Mr. Cooker has come here at our behest, and given what’s just happened, we will follow his advice!”

  Philippine glared at Rafael. “Just who do you think I am?” she spat out. “Your indentured servant?”

  Marcel intervened. “Let’s all calm down.”

  But Rafael wasn’t finished. “Did that Dupont girl come here looking for a job? I heard she did, and you turned her away—when you knew we were short-handed.”

  Philippine looked surprised. She took a few seconds to respond. “She… She was a bright girl, but she was frail. I didn’t think she was capable of keeping up with the harvest.”

  “They didn’t seem to worry about that at Romanée-Conti,” Rafael answered coolly. “They took her on.”

  “So, are you questioning my authority to hire and fire?”

  As a strip of blue sky widened above Nuits-Saint-Georges, Benjamin and Virgile silently watched as Rafael’s tone grew hostile again.

  “Remember, Ms. Perraudin, the owners of an estate have the final authority regarding all employees!”

  Virgile stepped in. “Rafael, let’s get back to salvaging the grapes.”

  Clearly shocked by Virgile’s temerity, Rafael turned red-faced. Benjamin, however, was proud of his assistant’s assertiveness. Before Rafael could respond, Philippine looked to Marcel.

  “Mr. Lemoine, tell me. Are you satisfied with my work here?”

  The patriarch ran his hand over the top of his head and stared at both his son and his winemaker. “This isn’t the time or place to be discussing these things. We have more urgent matters at hand. We need to get back to work.”

  He turned to Benjamin. “I’d like you to organize the next phase of the harvest, along with Philippine—unless, Philippine, you prefer to excuse yourself.”

  Philippine gave Rafael and his father a scornful look. “My qualifications have been called into question. If I’m to continue working here, I need to know that I have your respect and trust as this estate’s winemaker.”

  Only the patriarch nodded. Rafael merely said, “Let’s get to work.”

  This seemed to be enough for Philippine. She followed Marcel and Rafael as they turned around and walked away. Benjamin and Virgile were left to their own devices. Virgile reached into his pocket and pulled out a frozen mass of hailstones he had picked up earlier.

  Benjamin smiled. “You can throw them away, Virgile—unless you prefer stomping around in a wet jacket.”

  “Will do, boss. The hailstones are melting, but if you want my opinion, the storm isn’t over.”

  “I think you’re right, son.” Benjamin pulled up a thick tuft of grass to scrape the red clay from his Lobbs. “This weather has made a bloody mess of both the vines and my shoes.”

  7

  Benjamin left Virgile at the estate to help regroup the harvesters. In the car, he tried to call Elisabeth, but coverage was spotty. He gave up and tossed the phone on the passenger seat.

  Annoyed and frustrated, he drove past the devastated vineyards. To say it had been a bad day was an understatement.

  After five minutes of mulling over the events, he turned off the main road.

  The ground was s
till waterlogged, and the muddy road leading up the hill was barely passable. The Alfa Romeo was skidding. Benjamin was experienced in maneuvering a stick-shift in bad conditions, but this was too much. He decided to park and continue on foot. The air was warm, and the remaining sun was crowning the pines on the surrounding hills. Here and there he spotted rusty signs warning of rock falls and scree. One or two said “no trespassing.” At a bend in the trail, Benjamin came upon an ivy-covered wall, and he knew he was near the abbey.

  As he got closer he spotted the security tape flapping in the wind. Most likely, the gendarmes had finished their inspection of the site.

  Benjamin sized up the impressive height of what was evidently a protective wall. He took a cigar from his case and carefully lit it to heighten the pleasure of exploring a site chosen ten centuries earlier by a handful of monks looking to quench their thirst for God. A deep silence, interrupted now and then by the croaking of frogs, permeated the stones overgrown with lush vegetation. Night would soon fall and cloak the ruins.

  A few meters farther on, the ghostly outline of the Saint-Vivant Abbey rose in the pale light. The place was as he imagined it would be: secret and infinitely peaceful. Being familiar with priories, sanctuaries, cemeteries, and other sacred places, Benjamin relished this moment of solitude. He studied the ossuary of rubble haunted by prayers murmured in Latin. He wanted to get closer, but metal barriers denied him access.

  The abbey had long ago been abandoned to the ravages of time. Nature had imposed its sovereignty, wrapping the remains in an inextricable briar patch. The ivy had attached its tendrils to the fissures in the walls, while the roots of oak and beech trees had penetrated the chapel, refectory, and cloister. Only the vast and deep cellars, with their massive archways, had been spared.

  There was an association for the protection of the site. Enthusiastic volunteers, including architecture students, arrived every summer to strip the priory of its rags. The volunteers had built a protective framework over the cellars, which once held the famed wines of Romanée-Saint-Vivant. Several stone archways had been shored up. Walls had been braced, and window openings had been boarded to protect the monastery from the ravages of lightning and rain.