‘Tsukamoto-sensei can run through some basics for you, if you like,’ I said, unable to stop even though this was anextremelydangerous conversation. ‘The human reproductive system—’
‘Don’t you dare, Satoshi.’ She looked at me from between her fingers, and there it was, that mischievous sparkle in her eye, the one that had gone so dim since Matt left. ‘Don’t you fucking dare.’
I wrinkled my nose at her. She wrinkled hers back.
Then she dropped her hands. ‘Anyway, I believe I’m supposed to be the one assessing your knowledge right now, young man, not the other way around,’ she said, putting on a mock-businesslike tone. ‘Tell me what to do.’
I gestured for her to sit down in my desk chair, then took a seat across from her. ‘The way the MS tasting exam works is that you have twenty-five minutes to taste six wines blind and figure out what they are: the grape, where they’re from, the vintage, any quality markers,’ I explained. ‘It’s like maths – you get points for showing your working, in the categories you can see there on the grid. So if you come to the wrong conclusion but you get things right along the way—’
‘—then you still get some points.’ Fiona was studying the deductive tasting grid, squinting slightly, and my fingers itched with the desire to reach over and smooth the furrow between her brows. ‘I get it. So I just mark down what you say, and then at the end we work out how many points you get?’
‘Exactly. Think you can do it?’
‘I can give it a try.’ She reached into her handbag and took out her phone. ‘I’ll put a timer on. Are you ready?’
I wasn’t, really. My brain was stuck on her sayingtell me what to do, busy producing images so graphic they could probably get me sent to some kind of horny jail.
‘I’m ready.’ I scooted my chair as close to the desk as possible. ‘Are you? Got enough wine? Twenty-five minutes is a long time.’
‘I’m still working on the rascal.’ Fiona raised her glass of arneis to me, an innocuous gesture that was somehow the sexiest thing anyone had ever done. ‘And if I run out, there are six open bottles for me to try.’
She grinned at me, eyes crinkling in the corners. ‘Now show me what you’ve got, Satoshi. Your time starts… now.’
I picked up the first glass, taking a deep breath as I tilted it so I could look at the wine’s colour against the white of the tasting sheet. ‘Wine number one is a clear white wine,’ I began. ‘No sediment. It’s deep gold, with some brownish hues, which could indicate either age, oxidation, or the presence of botrytis.’
I smelled it, doing my best to sink into the familiar ritual of blind tasting. ‘On the nose there’s ripe pear, peach and baked apple, as well as—’ I swirled it a couple of times, then smelled it again ‘—honey and chamomile, with notes of saffron, toasted almond and burnt sugar. It’s spent some time in oak, almost certainly old oak.’
I tasted the wine, sucking in air at the same time to oxygenate it, and let it sit on my palate for a few seconds – there was jasmine there too, along with all the honeyed ripe fruits on the nose – before reaching for the spittoon and rattling off structural characteristics: sweetness, tannin, acid, alcohol, body, age, complexity. ‘My initial conclusion is that this is a cool climate old world wine, probably French. It could be sweeter-style riesling from Alsace; but my final conclusion is that this is chenin blanc from the Loire Valley, Vouvray appellation, vintage 2015.’
I dared a glance at Fiona. Her pen had been scratching busily against the grid, but she’d stopped, and she was looking back at me, cheeks flushed, mouth slightly open.
Well, I’d clearly got that one right.
I smiled at her, buoyed, filed her facial expression away to think more about later at extremely great length, then picked up the second glass.
‘That wasamazing,’ Fiona said once we were finished. ‘Should I get you some water?’
‘Please.’
She pulled a water bottle out of a half-open case I had in the corner and handed it to me. I drank most of it in two gulps. Exam condition blind tastings always made me feel like I’d run a marathon.
‘I could watch you do that for hours,’ she enthused. ‘And you got all of them right! You were perfect!’
‘Perfect is going a bit far,’ I said, although I was very pleased with myself. I’d never managed six from six accurate conclusions before. ‘This was much easier than a proper blind tasting would be. It’s not like I didn’t already know what was in the cases you picked the bottles from.’
‘Will you just let me compliment you?’
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling dramatically. ‘Ugh, if youinsist.’
She laughed that champagne laugh of hers, and I wanted to bottle it and keep it with me, always.
‘Seriously, though,’ Fiona said. ‘I feel… privileged to have seen you do that, Satoshi. To see an expert at the top of their game. To see youthinklike that. I’ve never been good at anything the way you’re good at that.’
‘Don’t sell yourself short.’ I lobbed my empty water bottle into the bin. ‘You’re good at thinking about wine too. Do you think I’m always using the things you say in my tasting notes just because I like you?’
She didn’t shrug exactly, but there was the smallest rise and fall of her shoulders. ‘I’m decent at snappy wording. That’s not hard.’
‘You know how to paint a picture.’ I gestured at the glasses in front of me. ‘Talking about wine like this is scientific. Technical. But the way you talk about it – that’s different. That’s art.’
