The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2) Page 9

  Leon nodded.

  “Is Feininger champagne actually very popular?” Isabelle asked. “I mean, there are so many different kinds, and the competition is very great. When we went to dinner in Reims, it wasn’t on the menu.”

  “Reims!” Gustave waved his hand dismissively. “You can sell champagne anywhere in the world, not just in Reims. When people hear the word champagne, their eyes get that gleam in them, and it doesn’t matter what brand you’re talking about. Of course there are bigger names than Feininger, but if it’s a grand name you’re after, I can take care of that. I know an old man who used to be a butcher by the name of Yves Pommery. If you take him on, you can relabel your drop as Champagne Pommery! It’ll bring in a pretty penny then, believe me.” The man laughed heartily.

  Isabelle could not believe she’d heard right. “That would be fraud!”

  “I wouldn’t say that, madame. It’s all a matter of how you look at it. In America, the customers go mad for a special name.”

  “But—”

  “That’s something we can think about later,” Leon interrupted, trying to head off a confrontation. “Perhaps we should get started with the inspection?”

  With a sweep of his arm, the chef de cave presented the large apparatus that Isabelle had discovered the first time she looked around the house. “Not too many of the vignerons have a wine press like this. Most of them have to have them done in a municipal press or one run by a cooperative. I used to work in an operation where the cellar was a good three miles from the village press; first, we had to haul all the grapes down there, then haul the juice back again. We’ve got things much better here on the Feininger estate.”

  “Excellent!” said Leon. “Then I can put all my energy into sales.” He turned to Isabelle. “When I went riding earlier, I noted several beautiful guesthouses that looked rather expensive. In the next few days, I’ll pay them a visit with bottles of Feininger champagne. I really don’t know why Jacques went to all the trouble of shipping his champagne off to America when we’ve got more than enough restaurants and bistros around here.”

  Gustave nodded his agreement vigorously.

  “I’m telling you, our money worries will soon be behind us,” Leon whispered in Isabelle’s ear.

  “I very much hope so, or we can start looking for a new overseer,” she whispered back. When she saw Leon’s confused look, she added, with significance, “There’s quite a bit I have to tell you. Later.” Then she pointed to the large double gate and said, “And the grapes are delivered by horse and cart through the big gate?”

  “Right you are, madame. This pipe here? The juice and skins and seeds from the pressed grapes—what we call must—flows through this into a large round tank one floor down. Come with me. I’ll show you!” Gustave wedged the open champagne bottle beneath his left arm, opened a narrow door in the wall behind the press, and made his way downstairs. Isabelle and Leon followed him down to an intermediate floor, where the ceiling was so low that they could barely stand upright. It was dim and chilly, and Isabelle shivered. She needed to remember to throw on a warm shawl the next time she came down here.

  “This tank is where we filter out the last of the contaminants. All the big stuff—binding wire, grape seeds, and leaves—stays behind in the press. You can only make good champagne when the juice is perfectly clean.”

  So far, all quite comprehensible, thought Isabelle, while they followed the low gleam of the cellar master’s lantern down another set of stairs. It was even chillier and very poorly lit. Isabelle found herself in a cave-like vault. She looked around. Enormous barrels stood on heavy wooden racks on the left and right, along brick-lined walls.

  “The clean juice is pumped into these barrels. Hungarian oak. Monsieur Jacques always put great store in that.”

  Isabelle felt as if she were in a very special world. The idea that she could be part of that world in the future filled her with joy and pride.

  “And who are those men there?” In the back of the cellar, several young men were busy with something that Isabelle could not make out.

  “Day laborers, but very experienced, all of them. Today, we’re cleaning out all the barrels that are not in use just now. It’s a job I couldn’t do alone,” said the cellar master. He placed his hand on one of the barrels behind him. “The juice goes through the first fermentation in the barrels. The yeast feeds on the natural sugar in the juice and turns it into alcohol. At the same time, you get a huge buildup of pressure, and to stop them from the exploding, the barrels are only two-thirds full. You get a similar pressure later in the bottles, and I know very well what can happen when one of those explodes.” He tapped at the patch where his other eye should have been.

  Isabelle blinked sympathetically. “And what are these?” she asked, pointing to words written in chalk on small wooden blackboards, one of which was attached to the wall beside each barrel. Her eyes had still not fully adjusted to the darkness, and she had to strain to be able to read the inscriptions. Apart from the cellar master’s dim lamp, the only illumination came from the little bit of daylight that filtered in past a large wooden gate in one wall.

  “This is where we note which vineyard the grapes came from, what kind of grapes are in the barrel right now, and when it was filled. Only one kind of grape juice goes in each barrel, of course. In this one, for instance, we’re fermenting Pinot Meunier from a southern exposure, and the grapes were pressed on September ninth.”

  “So early?” Leon said in amazement. “In the Palatinate, we started the harvest in the middle of October.”

  Gustave said, “We had a hot summer and picked earlier than usual. But we’ve had years when we’ve harvested as early as the end of August.” As he spoke, he pushed open the top half of the gate. “From now to November, when the fermenting takes place, the temperature in here has to be kept between sixty and seventy degrees constantly. And once the fermentation’s complete, we have to open up the doors and windows to let the cellars get cold. But before that, we’ve got to avoid drafts at all costs; a chill can kill off the yeast.”

  Isabelle, impressed, nodded.

  “This way!” With a sweep of his arm worthy of a castle lord, Gustave Grosse beckoned them to follow him.

  Arriving at the bottom of a ramshackle spiral staircase, the chef de cave said: “Voilà—les cellier!”

  Isabelle looked around in amazement. They were many feet below ground. Several passages led off to the left and right of the bottom of the staircase. It was very cold, and the air was filled with a peculiar mix of odors: limestone and wine, cork and vinegar. Along the seemingly endless passages, the champagne bottles were stacked as high as a man could reach.

  “The caves were left behind when the monks of Hautvillers were excavating stone for the construction of their monastery. They took the materials they needed and created these empty passages. You find them all over the region. No wonder, with all the churches and monasteries around here,” said Gustave. His voice sounded hushed.

  “There have to be . . . thousands and thousands of bottles down here! It’s a treasure trove!” Leon exclaimed, rushing from one side of the corridor to the other.

  “There’s another cellar one level down,” said Gustave, waving the champagne bottle toward the spiral staircase. “But the only champagne down there is from before my time. It’s probably undrinkable by now.” He waved dismissively. “But who cares, with all the riches up here?”

  Leon nodded vigorously in agreement. The next moment, he went to Isabelle and took her hand. Grinning broadly, he swung her around in a jaunty dance.

  “We’re rich, darling! Didn’t I tell you?” he whispered in her ear.

  Isabelle willingly let herself be infected by Leon’s joy. For the first time that day, she laughed aloud. Oh, if only she’d seen these cellars the day before! All her fears had been unfounded.

  Two hours later, exhausted, Isabelle sank onto one of the kitchen chairs while Leon rekindled the fire in the stove, which had gone out in
their absence. After the tour of the cellars, they had gone to visit a number of the vineyards. They had crossed hill and dale, uphill and down, as the sun slowly set. Gustave Grosse had referred to the white boundary stones repeatedly to make sure they were actually on Feininger property. At one point, he claimed to be on their land, but then Isabelle had discovered the name “Moët” on a soiled stone.

  “Grosse doesn’t seem to know which vines belong to the Feininger estate. But I guess it’s no surprise, considering how spread out they are,” said Isabelle as the room gradually began to warm. For the first time in hours, her shivering subsided, and she stretched her arms to ease the tension the chill had caused in her neck. She took off her shoes and massaged her aching feet. She could not remember ever having walked so far in a single day! At the end of their tour of inspection, it had begun to rain, and they had returned not only tired, but also wet. With no maid that she could hand her wet clothes to, Isabelle had hung their clothes in the laundry. She had to get out dry clothes for herself, so she went ahead and unpacked her suitcase completely. This time, however, she had felt much better about it than she had in Grimmzeit!

  “It’s a little impractical, don’t you think, that you have to go so far just to get from one vineyard to the next?” Isabelle yawned.

  “They have the same kind of land divisions in the Palatinate. Inheritance, disputes, debts—you’d be amazed how fast a parcel can get broken up. Two neighbors start to quarrel, and one of them sells off a small strip of land along the border to his neighbor’s property—boom, suddenly you’ve got three fields instead of two. Then the new owner leaves his narrow strip of land to his two sons equally, and it just gets messier and messier,” Leon replied. He’d brought back a fresh loaf of bread from his ride, and he cut it into finger-thick slices. He put the breadbasket on the table, along with a bottle of champagne. “But this fragmentation of the properties has its good side, too. If one vineyard gets hit by a hailstorm, you can always hope that the others have been spared.” He poured the champagne generously into two cut-glass goblets.

  Isabelle smiled. In the future, they could drink champagne like other people drank water—what a life!

  “There’s something about Grosse that I don’t like,” she said between bites of the airy white bread. The crust was baked crisp and tasted simply delicious. “He’s an unpleasant type, and he’s got an answer for everything. And at the same time, I still feel like I’m a long way from understanding all that I need to. It can’t be that we’ve got vineyards lying fallow! From all I’ve heard today, there’s hardly any land more valuable than the land here in Champagne.” Isabelle took a swig of the champagne, which she still found far too sweet for her taste. “And then there were all the weeds from last year.” She shook her head. “If you ask me, Grosse is a shiftless old fox who’d much rather guzzle champagne than see to the care of the vineyards.”

  Leon looked at his wife half in astonishment, half in annoyance. “You’re acting like you’re already an expert in this field! Don’t be so quick to judge. Give the man a chance to prove himself. If he’s his own best customer, he’d have to know something about champagne, wouldn’t he?” He laughed.

  “You’re right. When it comes down to it, I can’t judge him,” Isabelle admitted. “Perhaps it’s really for the best to let things run along as they have been for a while.” Still, the uneasy feeling in her gut, precipitated by their encounter with the cellar master, remained.

  Chapter Nine

  Isabelle was woken the next morning by the crowing of the rooster. As she pulled on her heavy woolen socks and cardigan, Leon’s reclining figure caught her eye. She wasn’t surprised to see that he was still deep in sleep. Once again, it had been very late before they fell asleep.

  Downstairs, the first thing Isabelle did was light the fire in the kitchen stove. A short time later, in the pale gleam of dawn, she sat by the window in Jacques’s library and browsed through a book entitled Three Steps for Soil Preparation in Vineyards. The writer talked about topsoil, midsoil, and subsoil. About homogenization and interchange. About vegetation layers and buffering capabilities. This is something for Leon, she decided after a few pages, and pulled another book off the bookshelf. It was in French and bore the title Études sur la Bière. The writer, a man named Louis Pasteur, described yeast as consisting of what he called microorganisms, which were crucially important for any fermentation process. While he wrote about beer, it would be the same for champagne. Without yeast, no fermentation would take place, Pasteur claimed, and he had apparently proved it in tests in his laboratory. When Isabelle came to the part where he described the different kinds of wild yeasts, she clapped the book closed. All she wanted was to find out a little bit more about the process of making champagne! But she had no intention of getting a degree in chemistry to do it.

  Suddenly, she thought of Clara. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have her friend there now! Clara would have tips for Isabelle about running the house. And she’d certainly have a better grasp of what Pasteur was writing about than Isabelle herself did. Even as a young girl, Clara had longed to study pharmacology so that she could later take over her father’s pharmacy. She always had her nose in this or that medical textbook. After her wedding, there was no more talk of studying, but Isabelle assumed that Clara was continuing her studies in private.

  Lost in thought, she took a sip of the herbal tea she’d made herself. She took it as a personal triumph that she had actually managed to light the fire in the stove. If she was honest with herself, she’d always laughed at Clara a little. In secret, she called Clara, whose parents had sent her off to a home economics school for prospective wives, “the little wifey.” Isabelle shook her head. How arrogant she’d been toward Clara, who was certainly far less helpless than Isabelle felt herself to be, at least when it came to cooking, cleaning, and everything else it took to keep a house running.

  “I’m sure I could learn from Clara,” she murmured to herself. She missed her friends in Berlin so much! The closeness they’d shared, the trust that allowed them to reveal their weaknesses to one another, and the way they had always encouraged each other, too. In her mind, she heard Clara’s voice: You can do it!

  Isabelle nodded silently. Then she went to Jacques’s desk and began opening the drawers. In the second one, she found what she was looking for: writing paper and an envelope. She took them to the small table by the window.

  Dear Clara, she wrote.

  I hope you and your family are well. A lot has happened since my postcard from Reims. Leon and I are now living in the Champagne region of France, on a vineyard estate. Everything is so new and exciting, but I’ll tell you all the details another time. Right now, I urgently need your help . . .

  Half an hour later, satisfied with her letter, Isabelle put the pen and paper aside. At the same time, she heard Leon stirring upstairs. He’d soon come thundering down the stairs calling for a decent breakfast, just as he’d been used to at his mother’s house.

  “Cooking an egg can’t be that hard,” Isabelle muttered, going into the kitchen. Until the cookbooks and household advice she’d asked Clara for arrived, she would have to make do somehow. Anyway, she did not have time to prepare elaborate meals or to give the house a thorough cleaning; far more pressing was the need to go through Jacques’s office files to try to get an overview of the state of the place. Apart from that, she wanted to spend some more time studying in Jacques’s library; though she’d stay away from the complicated science, she couldn’t remain as ignorant as she was about winegrowing forever. And how were they supposed to handle chickens and peacocks and horses? Well, there had to be a book about that in the library, too.

  When her husband appeared in the kitchen in full cycling gear and carrying a few bottles of Feininger champagne, she impulsively threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Leon, I can’t tell you how happy I am,” she whispered in his ear. “You taking care of the champagne sales, me looking after everything else . . . the two of us, pitching in tog
ether. I’ve been dreaming of this!”

  Leon pedaled off energetically. From Hautvillers toward the Marne, it was downhill between vineyards almost all the way. Then came the good, flat roads that followed the river; he estimated that he was averaging almost twenty miles an hour. There was little traffic, and to his regret, he saw no other cyclists at all. Occasionally, he had to overtake a wagon stacked high with wine crates. In summer and fall, when there was so much to do in the vineyards and wine presses, he guessed the traffic would be much heavier. He felt incredibly fortunate that selling champagne combined so well with cycling! As dearly as he would have loved to register for the races in Munich and Paris—with the excellent training conditions there in Champagne, he knew he’d be among the leaders in the spring races—his new life would leave him no time for that.

  Content with himself and the world, Leon slowed his tempo, then turned into the courtyard of an idyllic restaurant beside the Marne. The owner of the restaurant, whom he had met the previous day, greeted him warmly. Then Leon produced one of the bottles from his backpack and set it grandly on the counter. “Voilà—Feininger champagne!”

  The host opened the bottle skillfully, then he poured two glasses half full. After a couple of mouthfuls, he nodded in a way that made Leon rejoice. It was easy to do business with the people here. He grinned at the man. “Very drinkable, our champagne, wouldn’t you say?”

  Instead of answering, the restaurant owner took out a pack of cigarettes, lit a cigarette, and inhaled with satisfaction.

  “Something that I was really interested in when we met yesterday: your bicycle out there looks so sleek! Do you really race with it? Tell me about it. Until the first guests arrive, I’ve got time.” As he spoke, he generously poured champagne for both of them.

  Feeling on top of the world, Leon left the restaurant two hours later. He was off to a good start—the man had promised to buy half a dozen bottles.