"What changed?"
"My father died.” His voice was quiet. "Heart attack. Very sudden. And suddenly this place was mine, and I realized—" He paused, searching for words. His jaw tightened. "I realized that building something that lasts, something you can pass down, something that connects you to the people who came before and the people who will come after... that's not small. That's everything."
I thought about my own work. The clothes I designed, worn for a season and then discarded. The trends that came and went like waves, leaving nothing permanent behind.
"I envy that," I said quietly. "The permanence of it."
"Fashion isn't permanent?"
"Fashion is the opposite of permanent. That's the whole point—constant change, constant newness. Last season's collection is already irrelevant."
"But the skill is permanent, no? The craft. The eye you have for beauty." He turned to face me fully. "The clothes may change, but what you bring to them—your vision, your talent—that lasts."
I didn't know what to say to that. No one had ever framed my work that way before. No one had ever made it sound like it meant something beyond commerce and ego.
"Come," he said, breaking the moment. "I want to show you something special."
He led me to a smaller building near the edge of the property. Inside, stainless steel equipment gleamed alongside older wooden presses. The air smelled sharply of grape must.
"This is where we process the harvest," Matteo explained. "Normally, it's very busy, very chaotic. But we're between seasons now, so it's quiet." He grinned, something mischievous lighting his face. "Which means I can teach you."
"Teach me what?"
"To make wine." He was already moving toward a corner where several crates of grapes sat waiting. "These are from a small experimental plot. Not enough for a full batch, but perfect for learning."
"Matteo, I don't know anything about making wine."
"That's why it's called learning,Bella." He handed me an apron, his fingers brushing against mine as I took it. "Put this on. You're about to get very messy."
The next hour was a blur of grapes and juice and Matteo's patient instruction.
First, the sorting. He showed me how to examine each cluster, removing any grapes that were damaged or unripe. His fingers moved quickly, efficiently, while mine fumbled and hesitated.
"Don't think so much," he said, watching me. "Trust your instincts. You know what looks right. You do this with fabric, no? You see quality immediately."
"That's different."
"It's exactly the same. Trust yourself."
Then the crushing. In the old days, he explained, they used their feet. Now they had machines for efficiency, but for small batches like this, hands worked just as well.
He rolled up his sleeves further, and I caught a glimpse of something on his inner forearm. Dark lines, the edge of a tattoo disappearing under the fabric. I'd noticed it before, back in New York, but never clearly.
"Ready?" he asked.
We plunged our hands into the grapes together. The sensation was strange—cool and wet, the skins bursting under pressure, juice running between my fingers. Matteo laughed at my expression.
"Not what you expected?"
"I don't know what I expected." I squeezed another handful, watching the purple liquid pool beneath. "This is messier than I thought."
"All the best things are messy,Bella." He worked beside me, his forearms already stained dark. "Fashion isn't messy?"
"Fashion is extremely messy. Just not usually with actual fruit."
He laughed again, the sound warm and genuine, and I found myself laughing, too. There was something freeing about this—the physical work, the simple goal, the complete absence of emails and phone calls and crises to solve. Just grapes and juice and Matteo's easy company.
We transferred the crushed grapes to a smaller vat, and Matteo showed me how to punch down the cap—the layer of skins that floated to the surface.
