‘Okay, well, I can give you a quick refresher, or I can do the pretentious knobby version if you’d like?’
Kenzie grinned, having witnessed a number of those kinds of people during her time in the wedding industry. ‘Just the basics will be fine,’ she assured her.
‘If you insist,’ Floss sighed in mock resignation. ‘My talents are wasted in this place, I tell you.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Ewan teased. ‘Everything you’ve learned, you learned from Joe.’
‘Nobody else knows that, do they?’ she shot back. ‘Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?’ she added brushing aside her brother’s remark.
‘So it’s all about the senses: sight, smell, taste. First, we look at the wine and judge its colour intensity. The darker the colour, usually the fuller-bodied the wine. Then we move on to smell,’ she said, ‘where we’re looking for the intensity of the aroma and then what we can smell or identify. In our wines, you can usually taste hints of plum and mulberry, and in our sauvignon, there’s delicate floral accents of violet and minty hints as well as forest berries. Then there’s the oak hints; savoury and cherry oaks, French oak baroque’s—’
‘I thought this was supposed to be thenon-knobby version,’ Ewan cut in drolly.
‘Oh, stop it. You used to hobnob with the best of the knobheads not so long ago,’ she pointed out haughtily. ‘Then we move on to taste,’ she continued. ‘This is where you can choose to either swirl and swish the wine and then spit it out, or swallow.’ She sent a sidelong glance to her younger brother, ‘And don’t even bother with the innuendo. I’ve heard it a million times,’ she said in a bored tone. ‘Then you can do an analysis, where you check to see if the taste matched with the smells that you identified or if you discovered evenmore. There’s the complexity of the flavours, and if it’s balanced and yadda, yadda, yadda,’ she said waving a hand in the air. ‘That’s the basics.’
‘Great,’ Ewan said, rubbing his hands together, ‘let’s get into the drinking.’
‘Such a heathen,’ Floss said with a sniff. ‘Okay, the first wine is a 2012 Swagman Creek Wines shiraz. You’ll note the bright rich red with purple hues and hopefully detect the flavours and smells of dark spices, cherry oak and hints of liquorice.’
They went on to sample a cabernet sauvignon with its floral undertones and fruity flavours. Followed by a late-harvest shiraz. ‘It reminds me of something,’ Kenzie said after tasting it, but couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.
‘Could it be pudding?’ Floss asked.
‘Christmas pudding,’ Kenzie said, looking shocked. ‘That’s exactly what it is.’
‘Wow, you could be quite the hobnob yourself. You’re good at this.’
Kenzie wasn’t so sure about that. For the most part, she could only identify some of the flavours and most of them she’d got wrong.
They went on to sample another shiraz and another cabernet sauvignon. Kenzie was feeling quite warm and a little bit tipsy, but in an entirely pleasant way. They took photos, admired the views and ordered afternoon tea, which went a long way to helping sober her up by the time they decided to head back to the main house.
‘This seems like the perfect business for your sister. She’s great at what she does,’ Kenzie commented as they left, and Floss wandered over to another couple to welcome them to the vineyard.
‘She’s definitely found her niche,’ Ewan agreed.
Kenzie noticed they weren’t taking the same road back to the house, but she wasn’t complaining. The scenery was beautiful, and she still had enough of a gentle buzz to feel relaxed and happily tired. They passed more fat cattle grazing in paddocks and, now and then, caught glimpses of the little creek that meandered its way through the property.
‘Why’s it called Swagman Creek?’ she asked, rolling her head sideways to look at him as he drove.
‘Back in the gold rush days, this whole property along the creek was filled with prospectors trying their luck. Some people reckon that’s how the creek got its name, but then there’re others who say it was named after they found the body of a swaggy beside the creek one day, and no one knew who he was, so he was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere out here.’
‘That’s sad,’ Kenzie said.
‘Probably happened a lot back then. Thousands of people came to this area during the height of the gold rush, people from all walks of life. Lots of people looking to make their fortune and disappear.’
She spotted the main house off in the distance. ‘Where are we going?’ she finally asked as he continued down the road.
‘Do you mind if we make a stop somewhere before we go home? I’ve been meaning to come out here since we got here. I’ve just been putting it off.’
‘Sure,’ she said, about to askwhereexactly andwhatexactly he was putting off, when the answer appeared before them.
Thirty-one
They parked beside a white picket fence with a metal gate. On the other side were a number of headstones.
For a moment, they sat inside the quiet car, the tick of the hot engine as it cooled down louder for the stillness. Kenzie reached across to hold his hand. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, seeming to shake himself out of whatever mood it was that had descended upon him momentarily. ‘Sorry. It’s a bit morbid, I guess, bringing you up here.’
