The Villa

them in sunlight, covered the vines. The earth was turned, opened to hold the promise of new plantings. Trees held their spring leaves in tight fists of stingy green, but here and there sprouts, brave and young, speared out of the ground. In the woods, nests were heavy with eggs, and mother ducks guarded their newly hatched babies while they swam in the stream.
    April, Tereza thought, meant rebirth. And work. And hope that winter was over at last.
    "The Canada geese are about to hatch," Eli told her as they took their morning walk in the cool and quiet mist.
    She nodded. Her father had used that same natural barometer to judge the timing of the year's harvest. She had learned to watch the sky, the birds, the ground, as much as she watched the vines. "It'll be a good year. We had plenty of winter rain."
    "Still a couple weeks yet to worry about frosts. But I think we've timed the new plantings well."
    She looked over the rise of land to where the ground was well plowed. She'd given fifty acres for the new plantings, vines of European origin grafted to rootstock native to America. They'd chosen prime varieties—Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chenin Blanc. And, consulting with Tyler, had done much the same on MacMillan ground.
    "In five years, perhaps four, we'll see them bear fruit." She had learned, too, to look from the moment to the future in one sweeping glance. Cycle would always spin into cycle.
    "We'll have been together a quarter of a century, Eli, when what we plant now comes home to us."
    "Tereza." He took her shoulders, turned her to face him, and she felt a shiver of alarm. "This is my last harvest."
    "Eli—"
    "I'm not going to die." To reassure, he ran his hands down her arms. "I want to retire. I've been thinking of it, seriously thinking of it since you and I traveled to Italy. We've let ourselves become too rooted here and there," he said, gesturing toward MacMillan land, "and at the castello. Let's do this last planting, you and I, and let our children harvest. It's time."
    "We talked of this. Five years or so we said before we stepped aside. A gradual process."
    "I know. But these last months have reminded me how quickly a life, even a way of life, can end. There are places I want to see before my time's up. I want to see them with you. I'm tired, Tereza, of living my life to the demands of each season."
    "My life, the whole of it, has been Giambelli." Tereza stepped away from him, touched a delicate white blossom. "How can I turn from it now, when it's wounded. Eli, how can we pass something to our children that's blighted?"
    "Because we trust them. Because we believe in them. Because, Tereza, they've earned the chance."
    "I don't know what to say to this."
    "Think about it. There's plenty of time before the harvest. I've thought. I don't want to give Ty what he's earned, what he deserves, in my will. I want to give it to him while I'm alive. There's been enough death this year." He looked over the buds toward the new plantings. "It's time to let things grow."
    So she turned from the vines toward him. A tall man weathered by time, by sun, by wind, with an old and faithful dog at his side. "I don't know if I can give you what you're asking me. But I'll promise to think about it."
     
    "Effervescence is the essential ingredient in a sparkling wine." Pilar led a winery tour through a favorite phase. The creation of champagne. "But the first stage is to make the still wine. These"—she pointed at the racked bottles in the cellars—"are aged for several months, then blended. We call the blend cuvee, from the French, where it's believed the process has its origin. We're grateful to that very fortunate monk Dom Perignon for making the discovery and being the first to, as he called it, drink stars."
    "If it's just wine, what makes it bubble?"
    "The second fermentation, which Dom Perignon discovered in the seventeenth century."
    Her answer was smooth and practiced. Questions tossed out by groups no longer spooked her or made her scramble for answers.
    Dressed in a trim suit and low heels, she stepped to the side as she spoke so her group could take a closer look at the racked wine.
    "It was initially thought to be a problem," she continued. "Wine bottled in fall popping their corks, or what was in those days cotton wadding, in the spring. Very troublesome, and in particular in the Champagne district of France. The Benedictine, the cellar master at the Abbey in Hautvillers, applied himself to this problem. He