OCTOBER
PrologueSatoshi
Tasting today: 2022 Sancerre, Loire Valley, France.
You might think you know sauvignon blanc backwards and forwards, but a good Sancerre will make it feel like a revelation.
I fell in love with Fiona Fisher-Sinclair at about 7 pm on a Tuesday. It was inconvenient for several reasons, like it happening while I was short-staffed during a busy service, and her being married with three children.
It wasn’t the first time I’d met her, or the second, or the hundredth. Fiona had been one of my regulars for two years now, ever since I’d first opened my wine bar Tsundoku. I’d thought nothing of it when she and her husband had walked in that particular Tuesday, except that I was happy to see her, because I was always happy to see her.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been in love either. I’d loved my ex-boyfriend Kieran very deeply, until I hadn’t. In both directions – falling in love, and out of it again – it had been a slow thing, sparkling wine made méthode traditionnelle, a love maturing slowly through first and second fermentations into something beautiful and effervescent, until it was left in the glass too long and went flat.
This time, though, it was a simple pop of the cork from the bottle: a sudden explosion – a release of pressure – and a deep, profound sense of relief.
Of course,I thought dazedly, as I looked at the woman who had suddenly become the centre of my universe.Of course it’s her.
The first time I didn’t fall in love with Fiona
Two years ago, I stood leaning against the beautiful Huon pine of the bar, taking in the space I’d spent so much time and effort and money creating: the warm wood of the tables, the rich jewel tones of the velvet chairs, the shelves overstuffed with second-hand books.
I’d put my whole heart and soul into Tsundoku, overriding all my older brother Isamu’s objections that surely this wasn’t what I wanted to do with my share of the money we’d inherited from our father; that yes, I technicallywasa part-owner of his winery Bibliophile, and was well within my rights to set up an urban cellar door for it, but didn’t I – who had been working as a sommelier in some of the finest restaurants in the world since I was barely of legal drinking age – have anything better to do than that; that fine, he’d partner with me if I was so set on it, but what did Imeanit was also going to be a bookstore? I’d lovingly chosen every wine on the list, painstakingly collaborated with the chef on the menu, meticulously selected all the fixtures and glassware and books to create the venue of my dreams.
Everything was perfect for today, the opening day of my beautiful bar – except no one was here.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I normally didn’t look at it during service – the head somms I’d worked under in Geneva and Paris and Tokyo would have fired me on the spot – but I was in charge now, and there was no one around to see.
It was Isamu.How are things going?
I exhaled. At least figuring out how to answer without technically lying would give me a distraction from—
The door opened, and a woman poked her head in. ‘Hi,’ she said brightly. ‘Are you open?’
‘Yes!’ I said, dropping my phone in my enthusiasm. ‘We are!’
She laughed. It was the first thing I noticed about her, that laugh, bubbling out of her like shaken-up champagne. ‘Sorry,’ she said, coming inside and perching on a barstool. She was a petite woman, somewhere in her thirties, with dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail that wisps were starting to escape from. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. Only I’ve been stickybeaking forweekswatching this place take shape, and I’m so excited you’re finally open.’
‘You don’t need to apologise. I’m so excited you’re here. You’re my first customer.’
‘I won’t be the last. This place is beautiful.’
‘You think so?’
It was the kind of needy, anxious thing I almost never let slip out of my mouth – as a young Japanese man, I’d already had to work harder than most to prove myself in the largely old, white world of wine – but she didn’t pounce on the vulnerability. ‘It’s stunning,’ she told me, lines crinkling at the corners of her eyes. ‘The perfect combination of refined and relaxed.’
‘Do you want to do my marketing?’ Something in me started to unknot, my shoulders coming down from around my ears. ‘That was exactly what I was going for, only the words I was using weren’t half as good.’
She grinned. ‘Hazards of the profession. I’m a copywriter. What words were you using?’
‘I wasn’t, really. I just knew that I wanted it to feel like… home.’
I gestured at the bookshelves. ‘I never really had one growing up. My father was a contract winemaker, and he did one- or two-yearstints in various wineries all around the world. We moved here when I was thirteen, and it was the sixth country I’d lived in.’
‘Sixth?!’
‘New Zealand, France, South Africa, the US, France again, Japan, then here.’ I ticked them off on my fingers, accidentally counting France on two fingers instead of one and having to readjust. ‘Anyway, for obvious reasons, we travelled light. But he died when I was fifteen and the rest of my family settled in Tasmania permanently – and my brother Isamu and his wife Noriko started accumulating books. I’ve been working overseas for several years, but when I moved back to open up this place, I crashed in their spare room for a while. When I saw their library, it all just sort of clicked, the vibe I wanted.’
‘Well, you’ve achieved it.’ She had a lovely smile, a truly warm one. ‘My family’s bookish too, and thisdoesfeel like home.’
