He thought for a moment. “Yeah. We’ve got Gamay in Block 9—about two acres that we planned to let hang longer for a late-harvest project. And the Syrah in Block 12 is still on the vine. We could spare three-quarters of a ton of Gamay and the same amount of Syrah without impacting our production targets.”
“What’s the timeline on ripeness?”
“The Syrah needs another week, maybe ten days. The Gamay, closer to two weeks. If she’s got Zinfandel that’s ready sooner, we could do this in three waves.”
“Equipment?”
“We have a couple of tanks that aren’t being used that would work for carbonic maceration. The CO2 injection systems are all functional.” He paused. “Space won’t be an issue either. The east wing of the cellar has room.”
“So we can do it.”
“Technically, yes.”
Technically.The word said plenty. “But we need to get the go-ahead from the rest of the siblings.”
“It’s only fair. That Saffron’s willing to split the profits should be enough. Still, I wouldn’t feel comfortable unless we took it to them,” he agreed.
I pushed off the porch rail. “There’s another issue we need to talk about.”
“What’s that?”
“According to Bit?—”
“They’re about to go under,” Cru finished for me.
“I guess you heard too.”
“I did and my guess is that Saffron wants to do this without Lucas knowing.”
“She hasn’t admitted the financial trouble to me, but yeah, that would be my guess too.”
“If that’s the case, then we need to think about the crew we use.”
He was right, and that wasn’t something I’d considered. We could hardly ensure the day workers we brought in for the harvest would keep what we were doing confidential. They moved from vineyard to vineyard during the harvest, and it would be too much to ask.
“Got any ideas?”
Cru looked up at me and grinned. “Of course I do.”
“You gonna tell me?”
“Los Caballeros,” he said quietly. “If we’re going to pull this off without Lucas finding out, at least until Saffron is ready to tell him, we’ll need absolute discretion, and that means calling in both current members and theViejos.”
“Understood. What’s the next step after we talk to our sibs?”
“Don’t wait. They’ll agree. It’s just courtesy that you’re asking. Call an emergency meeting now. Preferably for this afternoon, since everyone’s still in town from last night’s ball.” Cru put his hand on my shoulder. “This is what we do, Salazar. We help those in need even when they don’t know they need it. Especially one of our own.”
He took out his phone, sent a group alert, then waited as responses came in. “Everyone who’s in town will be at the cavesin ninety minutes. Which means you need to get our brothers and sister here before that.”
“On it. You said everyone who’s in town. Who isn’t?”
“Van Orr is in Europe, and Cullen is in Australia.”
“Right. What about Lucas?”
“I took him off the distro list for now.” He’d looked away, but turned to face me. “Glad to see you wised up.”
My eyes scrunched. “What’re you talking about?”
