Chapter 4
The crush pad was quiet for a long time after Loretta left.
Amos did not move from his place at the end of the table. He stood with the probate order lying flat on the barrel head — his name in block letters, the parcel number matching everything in the room — and he felt the weight of the silence pressing on him from every side.
Grove Ellery had come in from the yard at some point, drawn by the silence. He stood in the doorway with his olive apron dark at the hem, his arms crossed, not saying anything, his eyes on the stain of wine at the bottom of an empty glass.
Dan Hobbs closed his folder and slid the probate order into it with care, handling it like the document it was.
"Mr. Pryor," he said, "the transfer of title is complete. The county recorder's office stamped the deed at my direction in March. You're the owner. If you need anything else — documentation, verification, a notary for any agreements you'll want to draw up going forward, I'm at your service."
Amos nodded. He did not trust his voice yet.
The wine club members had not left. They sat in their chairs, looking from Amos to the license on the wall and back, and it took Amos a moment to understand what they were asking for.
Priscilla Vance stood up first.
"Amos," she said, and her voice was softer than it had been with Loretta. "You've poured for us at crush. You've poured at the December tasting, and the spring release, and every release I've been to for eleven years."
She reached across the barrel head and picked up his glass — the one that sat by his place, the one he had not touched all morning.
"The first glass is the owner's," she said, and held it out to him.
He looked at it for a long moment. Then he took it, and Priscilla released the stem, and the glass was his.
"I'm not sure," he said slowly, "what the owner pours first."
"Tradition says the oldest open bottle," Priscilla said. "But you're the owner. You make the rules now."
Grove moved first. He went to the rack by the office door, where the bottles sat in their slots — the ones that were for tasting, the ones that were for the club, the ones that were for the family that no one had ever been born into except George and Martha and now Amos. He pulled out a bottle of the 1999 Zinfandel, the one with the torn label and the dust on the shoulder. He brought it to the barrel head and set it down without a word.
Amos read the label. He did not need to taste it. He knew that bottle. He had helped pick those grapes when he was nineteen, had stood in the rows with his great-aunt while they pulled the clusters in the afternoon heat.
"Open it," he said.
The cork came out with a gentle sigh, and Priscilla held the glasses while Amos poured — the first pour going to her, the second to the man in the polo shirt, the third to the woman from Davis, and then to the rest, around the table, until only his own glass was empty.
He poured it last. The wine went in, dark and clear at the edges.
"To the crush," he said, and raised his glass.
The members raised theirs. The sun had climbed past the window now, and the light lay across the whole of the crush pad, touching the barrels and the tables and the glasses.
"To the crush," Priscilla said.
They drank.
Somewhere in the fields, the vine rows ran on, forty-seven acres of them, heavy with fruit, the fruit of a season that belonged to him now.
Amos Pryor set his glass on the barrel head and looked out the window at the rows.
He had a lot of work to do.
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