Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

townanyway. Try a bit of the new cheese while I clean up. You know where it is, and you’ll find some bread on the counter.”
    Alphonse ducked into the dome, and Bruno headed into the dark barn, which smelled of goats and urine and warm ripening milk. Most of the cheeses were stored in the cooler room at the rear, but here in the workroom Alphonse had left row after row of fresh
crottins
, the small disc-shaped cheeses that could be sold fresh or in varying states of dryness. On a wooden board stood one of the big round loaves of brown bread that was the commune’s specialty. Bruno took his Laguiole knife from his belt, cut himself a slice of bread and half a
crottin
and leaned back against the counter to enjoy it. To one side he noticed a brown cardboard box with a small tap and he turned it to the window. South African pinotage. There was an empty glass beside the box, so he poured himself a taste. No nose to speak of but not bad in the mouth. He looked at the price tag. Four euros for five liters. No wonder the French couldn’t compete.
    “You found the South African wine,” said Alphonse. “Not bad, is it? Max bought it; he also bought some from Australia and the stuff from Chile, trying all the different wines. Research, he called it. But here, try a glass of this.”
    “The cheese is really good,” said Bruno, holding out his empty glass to the anonymous bottle of red wine that Alphonse was pouring. He took an appreciative sniff and a good sip to taste, smacking his lips and then nodding a cautious approval.
    “It’s our own, and a lot better than the crap we used to make up here, thanks to Max. The techniques aren’t much different—it’s just better when he does it.”
    “You’re right,” said Bruno. “It’s a lot better than your old plonk, and now I can tell you that I only used to swallow it to be polite. This is very drinkable.”
    “All organic, too. I got him onto that. Now he says it’s the future of the wine business, as if it was all his own idea,”Alphonse said, then smiled. “If you’re finished, let’s go and break the bad news.”
    Bruno stopped the van where the road emerged from the trees and reached the top of the ridge. He loved this view above all others, he explained when Alphonse turned to him, raising his eyebrows in a silent question. The familiar view down the valley of the Vézère to the hilltop villages on the far ridge was splendid in its lavish sweep. Immediately below him stood the small château that was the heart of Julien’s Domaine de la Vézère. Bruno got out of the car to look down at the rows of new vines that Julien had planted. He brought his eyes back to the Philibert farm that Hubert had bought, and to Cresseil’s ramshackle place beside it. It boasted a farmhouse, not much more than a shepherd’s cottage, where the old man lived, with two barns, a kitchen garden and perhaps twenty rows of vines. Cresseil had not been mobile enough to farm the place for years, so the rest of the land down the slope to the river was left to grow hay for him to sell. A dozen of the giant cylinders of compacted hay, wrapped tightly in black plastic strips, lay in the shorn field where the baling machine had left them.
    Bruno tried to estimate the extent of Cresseil’s holding. Long and narrow, it was a bit more than half the size of the Philibert farm, maybe even two-thirds. Looking back to Saint-Denis a couple of miles up the river, and then down to the river bend where it began the long sweep to join the Dordogne, he could not begin to estimate the full extent of the south-facing slope that Hubert de Montignac had suggested might grow decent wine. There were places where the slope steepened sharply to become the sheer chalk-white and limestone cliffs pockmarked with caves where people had taken shelter in the Middle Ages, and where prehistoric men probably had lived.But the Domaine itself took up no more than a fraction of the length of the gentle hillside, so if Hubert was right to suggest that the Domaine was worth three million euros, the overall value could be enormous.
    “You don’t know your own valley yet?” called Alphonse from the van window. Bruno turned back.
    “How did Max come to know Cresseil?” Bruno asked, leaning against the side of the vehicle while Alphonse rolled himself a cigarette.
    “Through the
collège
. Rollo links each of the older kids to a resident of the retirement home, almost like a kind of adoption.” Alphonse broke