“I promised to help set up tables, so I have to be there at 4 o’clock. Are you helping with the hor’dourves?”
“Remember, I volunteered to bring my famous meatballs. I also need to be there early.”
Joe realized that today there would be no time to return to the tunnel, especially if he was to keep it
secret at this point. The tasting room would be open at 11:00 and he was not sure if all the staff would
show; good help was hard to find these days. Most importantly, this morning he was meeting with an
irrigation engineer who would be installing soil moisture sensors in the vineyards. This was really
high tech; the whole thing would be viewable and controllable through the computer in the winery office.
As a bonus, he would get vineyard temperature sensors installed also. Zinfandel growers use as little
water as possible in order to create grapes with intense flavors. They all wait until the last possible
minute to begin watering, usually sometime in mid summer. The best old vine Zinfandels, including
Joe’s own, are seldom watered.
Walking past the wine refrigerator in his den, he noticed the glass that he had used to drink his great
grandfather’s wine last night. There were faint lavender colored crystals coating the entire
inside of the glass where the wine had been, quite unlike anything Joe had ever seen from a wine.
As he placed the glass onto a shelf so that it would not accidentally get cleaned, he thought about a wine
chemist he knew that might be able to analyze these crystals.
As Joe walked over to the winery, his thoughts returned to his morning’s waking dreams.
They made absolutely no sense. They were mostly a series of images, kind of like memories, but of
events he had never experienced. What did old military trucks parked in a vineyard mean? Why
was he dreaming of somebody with a right hand missing portions of two fingers grabbing luggage off of an
airport carousel? What did containers being loaded off of a cargo ship in Oakland mean? Now young,
newly planted grape vines he could understand, he had just planted several more rows this spring.
These thoughts quickly changed focus as he reached out to shake the hand of the irrigation engineer.
Sure enough, one of the tasting room employees didn’t show, on a weekend when several stretch
limousines were expected. So by the time 3 o’clock rolled around Joe and Elise were loading
wine and food into El Zin, their hot rod 1956 Chevy panel truck. Joe was not able to make it back
to the mine tunnel. All day, he kept recalling the random images of the morning.
Later, Joe drove El Zin past the grass parking lot for the fair and into the gate to take his wines right
up to the tasting area next to the main exhibit hall. He was pleased to be able to set up his truck
right at the tasting where he could display the Gambaro Hat wine label logo painted on the sides. In
the distance, the engine noises from the midway mixed with rock music and screaming from the rides.
He could smell the livestock pens. This year, for some reason, the fair directors had placed the
antique one-lung gas engines on the grassy area right next to the wine tasting area, which was not a good
idea due to the smell of gasoline interfering with the tasting of the wines. Joe then remembered that
a cable TV channel was going to be out filming these engines and guessed that the fair directors wanted a
photogenic area.
Joe and a few of the other winery owners/workers grabbed tables and set them up in a large circle.
Some tables were set up in a long row along the fence. Several were set up in the middle of the circle
to hold the hor’dourves to complement the wine tasting. Joe set up one table directly behind the
open back doors of El Zin, prominently displaying the wine barrel made into a wine bottle carrier within El
Zin, which was set up for tailgate wine tasting.
Joe saw one of the local winery managers setting up wine bottles on a table next to his. “Hi Ed,
so Chateaux Ponderosa is setting up two tables this year? I see your other table across the way.”
Ed smiled. “I went to work for the buyers of the old De Marco winery. When old man De Marco
died, none of his kids cared about the winery and sold it to the Fairchild Group out of Fresno. They have
renamed the winery Etoile Rouge. Check out the new label. We got a gold medal for the remaining
vintage of the De Marco Cab Franc. The winery property had over 100 acres of unplanted land that we now
have planted in Zinfandel.”
Continued ...
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