Instead, I’m in the back of Giovanni’s car again, a tote with books and other things at my feet and my knives across my lap, pretending I’m not aware of him three feet away. The drivertakes a right and not a left, which means we’re not heading for the city. We’re not even leaving the property.
“Not far,” Giovanni says, because he reads minds apparently.
“I gathered.” My voice is dull around the edges. I hate that he’s seeing me like this, gray and flat, but my insides feel wrung-out, but I don’t have the energy for a performance.
The road curves between rows of vines that still look asleep, the posts dark with the night’s damp. A squat complex of stone and steel rises at the far edge of the vineyard—modern lines grafted onto an old backbone. Tall windows. A broad plank door. To the left, a low building with a long overhang and two enormous sliding doors painted red.
Next to the doors, in elegant script, it saysAlbori.
For a second I think I’m reading it wrong. Then my brain catches up. Albori? Not just a pretty word stamped on a cork.TheAlbori. The label I’ve ordered a hundred times at Luce di Bologna, the bottle I’ve poured for tables when I wanted a sure thing. We served it with ragù on Tuesdays and with grilled pork on Fridays because it paired well with almost anything.
I couldn’t see much when we got in last night, and I was too anxious on the way out this morning to really look around.
This winery is where one of my favorite wines comes from. His place. His vines. Giovanni Conti’s family makes one of mygo-to wines. The realization leaves me a little stunned, a little impressed, a little annoyed at myself for not seeing it sooner.
I realize that the cute little vineyard I saw from my balcony this morning is just a fraction of it. I press my palm to the knife roll in my lap and stare at the name on the wall.
The car stops in a gravel oval. He doesn’t wait for the driver to get his door; he rarely does. “Come on.”
“I don’t have to change?” I look down at my black sweater, jeans, and boots, which I love, as evidenced by the wear.
“You’re fine.”
Inside, the air is cool and faintly sweet: ferment ghosts, old oak, clean steel. The space opens wide, cathedral high, with catwalks and piping that look too architectural to be only practical.
On one side, stainless steel tanks are lined up. On the other, rows of French oak barriques rest on their sides in tidy ranks. Between them, a long table is set up under a pendant lamp: glasses, bottles wearing neutral labels with tiny handwriting, little plates of food arranged artfully.
A woman in a navy jumpsuit and ponytail looks up from a stack of notes. Early thirties, warm eyes. “Buongiorno,” she calls, then clocks me and smiles for real. “You must be Bianca. I’m Alessia.” She wipes her hands and comes forward. Firm shake. “I’m one of the enologi here at Albori.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say, automatic politeness barreling through my inner giddiness at meeting one of the winemakers.
“Alessia, thank you for arranging this,” he says mildly, then gestures at the table. “These are a few of our unreleased labels. I thought you would enjoy a tasting.”
A tasting. Unreleased Albori wines. Are you kidding me? My skin practically twitches with excitement.
Alessia gestures to the table. “He told me you like clarity and hate gimmicks.”
I look at him again. I didn’t realize he’d been paying such close attention. That’s stupid. Of course he is. That’s what he does. “He’s right,” I say.
“Good.” She points, practical. “We’ll start with three tastings. One white, one sparkling, one red. All unreleased. All final blends, but the labels aren’t printed and the glass isn’t decided, so if you hate the cork, lie to me.” Her smile makes it a joke. “I brought small bites with each—not too much, just enough to guide you.”
She goes through each option, and my heart aches a little more at each one. The table is a cook’s seduction: slivers of Parmigiano with proper tyrosine crystals; a little cup of warm crescentine and a saucer of mortadella mousse dotted with toasted pistachio; fennel salad with orange and a little green olive chopped into it to really wake it up; paper-thin slices of rare roast beef with truffle salt; grilled radicchio with balsamic.A little bowl of cherries sits at the end like a period at the end of a sentence.
I take a breath I didn’t know I needed. Food is a language I can definitely speak.”
We start with the sparkling. “Grechetto gentile. What you probably know as Pignoletto,” she says, lifting the bottle. “Metodo classico. Twenty-four months on the lees. Brut nature.” She pours. The wine is pale gold with tiny bubbles that cling delicately to the glass. I stick my nose in and get citrus pith, bread dough, the faint scent of wet stone.
“Taste without the bite first,” Alessia says.
I do. It lands on my tongue taut and straight-backed, like a dancer warming up at the barre. Lemon peel, green apple, a whisper of almond. The finish is long enough to make a point but not linger unpleasantly. I swallow and take the smallest bite of mortadella mousse on a warm crescentina. The fat and the bubbles move together like well-trained dancers. The wine is sharp and cutting; the mousse softens yet elevates it.
“Breakfast wine,” I say, deadpan.
Alessia laughs. “Don’t tell my mother, or she’ll insist I pour it at church.”
“It’s clean,” I say. “No perfume cloud. The mousse got better. You did right not to dose it.” I catch myself and shut up beforeI start asking sugar grams like a nerd at a conference. “What do you want to call it?”
Alessia lifts a shoulder. “We argue about names every week. Marketing wants something cute. I want something elegant and sexy.” She glances at Giovanni. He’s already watching me, unreadable. “Gio says we should call it what it tastes like, not something— What’s the word? Gimm…?”
