“Yeah. Well.” Farzan gestured around his office. “I better get back to work. You want to hang around? Grab some tea?”
“I’ve got to get home. Just wanted to see you.” She gestured to the office walls. “It looks good in here, Farzan. It looks like you.”
“Thanks.”
Farzan let Maheen pull him into another hug.
At the end of the day, he loved his sister, backhanded compliments and all.
“Love you.”
twenty-one
David
You’ve got twenty-five minutes,” Jeri said, peering at David through a gap in the row of six wineglasses. “The clock starts when you touch your first wine.”
She winked at him.
“Good luck.”
David nodded. He shouldn’t need luck, not with the way he’d been studying. Not with all the practice tastings.
The row of wines sat between him and Jeri: three whites, three reds, all in Bordeaux-style glasses. He took a deep breath: his sinuses felt clear. He’d spent a few minutes inhaling the steam off the espresso machine at the bar, and then sniffing coffee beans, to prep his palate. He reached for the first wine, and Jeri tapped her phone to start the timer.
Six wines in twenty-five minutes meant four minutes and ten seconds per wine. Ideally he’d be below four for most of them, that way if he went over on one, he’d still be good. He visualized the tasting grid in his head: clarity, brightness, intensity, color. Fruit, flowers/herbs, earths, oaks. Body, acidity, alcohol, tannin. Quality and climate. Grape, blend, country, region. Producer. Vintage.
He blocked out the sounds of pre-service prep, the tinkling of silverware, the rhythm of knives on chopping blocks, the clattering of plates being stacked. There was only him, the wines, and the clock.
He made his way down the line, confident in three, certain in two, but the last one was a challenge. The clock had to be winding down.
“Syrah, Grenache. Hm.” There was something else there, something he couldn’t put his tongue on. “France? No. Hm.” He sipped again, spat. “This has Carignan, too. Spain. Oh.” David grinned. He knew what it was. “Montsant. Can Blau. 2020.”
Jeri tapped her phone; David leaned in to see he had two seconds left.
“Damn, I thought I’d stumped you with that one,” she said. “Six out of six.”
David beamed. “You almost did. After all the others, I wasn’t expecting table wine.”
“Hey, you never know. They could be tasting critter wines. Or Malbecs from the grocery store. Hell, even Boone’s Farm. Be prepared for anything.”
David chuckled. He hadn’t tasted Boone’s Farm since his college days.
“All right. Thanks, Jeri.”
“Sure thing.”
David took one last taste of the Can Blau, closed his eyes and tried to commit it to memory. There were so many wines in the world; he’d got all six right this time, but it was the test that mattered.
“So,” Jeri said, emptying the other glasses into the spit bucket. Taking a page from David’s book, she too had stuck a photo of Ronald Reagan at the bottom. “How was the museum? You and Kyra went, right?”
“No, Kyra bailed on me.”
“Oh, because of her mom?”
David nodded.
“Boo. So what’d you do? Head straight back home and bury yourself in a pile of note cards?”
