Baron was already there when we arrived at the winery. My parents walked in shortly after us, then Cru appeared from the fermentation room with Isabel at his side. She’d been aroundmore in the past two weeks, and each time, her presence became more comfortable.
“Before we taste,” Baron said, reaching into a bag at his feet, “I brought something.”
He set two bottles that made my heart stutter on the table. The labels were faded but unmistakable—Christmas Blessing Wine, 1955.
“I thought they were all gone,” my father said, barely above a whisper.
“I kept two bottles hidden even deeper than the others.” Baron’s hands trembled as he reached for them. “I was saving them for—I don’t know what. But it seems right to have them now. When the new wine is ready, we can taste them side by side and know if we’ve honored what our grandmothers created.”
The ritual felt ceremonial when Cru drew samples from the tanks—the measured pour, the glass catching light, the moment before tasting when anything was possible or impossible in equal measure.
I raised the glass to my lips and sipped. My eyes nearly rolled back in my head. The wine was transcendent. Every component had integrated completely. The bright fruit of the young wine, the complexity of the aged blend, the structure that came from both—it all worked together in a way that was greater than the sum of its parts. The flavors evolved on my tongue, revealing new layers with each second. Berry and earth and spice and time.
I looked up and saw tears in both my father’s eyes and Baron’s.
“It’s magnificent,” my dad whispered.
Baron’s hands shook as he raised his glass higher. “To Marilyn, Concepción, and Ellen. May their legacy live on year after year in the wine they were responsible for creating.”
My mother pulled me into a fierce hug. Snapper’s arm came around both of us. Around the table, everyone tasted again and again, confirming what we all knew. We’d done it. Against all odds, with time running out, we’d actually done it.
“We bottle tomorrow,” Cru said. “Christmas Eve.”
“I’ve confirmed the auction is set for New Year’s Eve,” Baron added. “Press releases went out yesterday. My PR firm is already fielding calls from collectors. The interest is”—he paused, searching for the right word—“extraordinary.”
Hope bloomed in my chest so fierce it hurt. We were going to make it. We were actually going to save the winery.
Isabel caught my eye across the table. I moved around to where she stood, and she met me halfway.
“I’ll never forget this,” I said. “What you did. Insisting we finish the wine instead of letting me give up. I’m so grateful.”
“I needed to make amends,” she whispered. “For so many things.”
“Bygones?”
“Bygones,” she agreed, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, her smile looked genuine.
There was froston the ground Christmas Eve morning when we arrived at Los Caballeros in the predawn darkness. Neither of us had spoken much last night or on our way this morning. It was as though we were both holding our breath, praying yesterday hadn’t been a dream.
The bottling facility was already buzzing with activity when we arrived. My parents were there, along with the men who’d agreed to help from the very beginning, when we were out in the vineyards, handpicking. But someone was missing. Kick.
I noticed his absence immediately. Snapper did too—I saw the way his jaw clenched, the way his shoulders went rigid ashe scanned the room, looking for his brother. As time went on, I think we both realized he wasn’t coming, but neither of us wanted to say it out loud.
Isabel was missing too, which surprised me even more.
The work continued for several hours. Bottles moved down the line, wine flowed from tanks through tubes and filters into glass, then corks were inserted with pneumatic precision. At the end of the line, my mother, Lucia, Daphne, Eberly, and I applied labels, then loaded the bottles into the cases.
The physical labor felt good. Repetitive motion that didn’t require thinking. Just doing. Moving through the steps that would result in two thousand bottles of wine I now knew represented so much more than saving our winery.
Hours passed. My back ached. My hands cramped. But we kept going.
Snapper joined us at the labeling station once the bottles were all corked. I told him to take a break, but he said he couldn’t. I understood. For me, part of it was that, if I stopped moving, exhaustion would overwhelm me. For him, I wondered if keeping busy helped stop him from thinking about his brother who should have been here and wasn’t.
“You okay?” I asked when he came to stand beside me.
“Fine.”
“You keep checking your phone. Any news?”
