About vine.
About the business.
About howveraisonis progressing, whether the Cab Franc is coloring evenly, and how the sugars are tracking against acidity.
I walk him through my sampling schedule and the decisions I’m weighing.
He talks to me about board meetings, and even though he doesn’t say it, I detect that he and my father don’t get along. Their values and views of the wine world are not the same.
At some point, I realize my cheeks hurt—because I’ve been smiling the entire time we talked.
The days that follow fall into a rhythm that feels dangerously good.
Mornings in the vines—checking color change, tasting berries, feeling skins between my fingers.
Afternoons in the lab—monitoring yeast viability, running assays, updating projections. The work is relentless and exacting, but it has always been my comfort.
And threaded through it, there is Nico and me.
That first conversation is the start of a week-long one between us. We talk every night, and during the day we text each other a lot.
It’s like having an affair where you constantly reach out to your amore because it gives you a thrill.
Nico:What does “phenolic maturity” actually taste like? Asking for Renzo, who’s talking out of his ass.
Me:How is Renzo?
Nico:Why do you ask?
Me:Just asking because…he’s so handsome.
Nico:That’s not funny,dolcezza.He’s in Venice for a client meeting and on a conference call with me and fifteen others. So, what does phenolic maturity taste like?
Me:Promise and restraint.
Nico:Why is it that everything you say has sexual undertones?
Me:I think you’re just horny.
Nico:Tell me about it!
That night, while I’m having dinner with Lucia and Edam, he sends me a message with a photograph of a wine list from a restaurant in Florence.
Nico:They have a bottle of your Cab Franc. I didn’t order it. Felt like cheating on you.
Me:That might be the most nonsensical thing you’ve ever said.
Nico:Noted. Still true. I want to drink it with you and only you.
The romance doesn’t interrupt my work or his. It runs alongside it—like color blooming where yesterday there was only green.
I tell my sisters on a three-way FaceTime call two nights later.
Alba gets on the call first. Tokyo neon reflects faintly in the glass wall behind her. She angles her phone toward the window so I can see the city unfurling beneath her like circuitry.
“Isn’t it spectacular?”
Before I can answer, Toni pops on, wind-tousled, cheeks pink, holding her phone at arm’s length as she spins. The image blurs briefly before settling on a gondola gliding past a stone bridge.
