He spread his hands wide and raised his tweed-clad shoulders in a slow-motion shrug. “There is not enough of it. In a good year, six hundred cases. And when you have quality combined with scarcity, it is a sad fact that prices rise. Fortunately, we have not yet reached the six figures-in dollars, mind you-that were paid some years ago for a single bottle of 1787 Chateau Margaux, but the price of this year’s wine will be-how can I put it?-impressionnant: around forty thousand dollars a case.” He shrugged again, the picture of a man overtaken by sad but uncontrollable events. “However, as we say in France, only the first bottle is expensive.”
There was an audible intake of breath. His attempt at humor was lost on the buyers, who, to a man, produced pocket calculators.
“While you do your sums, my friends, think of Petrus. Think of Latour, of Lafite Rothschild. These wines can outperform the stock market, particularly today. They are not mere bottles of liquid, however glorious. They are investments.”
At the mention of that thrilling word, the mood of the room lightened, and the buyers watched as the Frenchman went to the table, adjusted the set of his cuffs once again, and picked up one of the bottles. He poured no more than a mouthful into a glass and inspected its color against the flame of a candle. He gave a slow nod of satisfaction, then lowered his head, swirled the glass, and brought it to his nose, closing his eyes as he inhaled. “Quel bouquet,” he murmured, just loud enough to be heard. The buyers maintained an appropriately reverent silence; they might have been observing a man lost in prayer.
“Bon.” The spell was broken as the Frenchman began to pour the wine, mouthful by mouthful, into the other glasses as he resumed his sermon.
“This is our first series of tastings for this vintage, and you, our friends from Asia, are the first to taste. Next week, our friends from America will be here, and then our friends from Germany.” He gave a sigh. “Let us hope there will be enough for everyone. I hate to disappoint true connoisseurs.”
Unnoticed by the group, another figure had slipped quietly into the tasting room: a svelte, young blond woman dressed in a tailored gray suit that was saved from severity by a breathtakingly short skirt.
“Ah,” said the Frenchman, looking up from his pouring, “allow me to present my assistant, Mademoiselle de Salis.” Heads turned briefly, then returned for a second look at the legs. “Perhaps, my dear, you would help me distribute the glasses.”
Each of the buyers clustered around the table took his glass, careful to adopt the taster’s grip, with the thumb and the first two fingers holding the base. Like a synchronized team, well rehearsed in the movements of the ritual, they swirled their wine, raised their glasses to the candlelight, and peered respectfully at the color.
“A darker robe than usual Bordeaux,” pronounced one of the buyers.
The Frenchman smiled. “What an eye you have, Monsieur Chen. It is altogether richer, an oxblood ruby. Velvet rather than wool.”
Monsieur Chen filed the comparison away in his memory, to be used later. His less sophisticated clients were always impressed by this kind of language, the more gnomic the better.
“Time to put your noses to work, gentlemen.” The Frenchman led by example, bowing his head over his glass, and the room was silent except for the sound of wine-scented fumes being funneled up into twenty receptive nostrils. And then, tentatively at first but with increasing confidence, came the verdicts, delivered in accents that had their origins in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai. Violets were mentioned, and vanilla. One outspoken soul, more imaginative than the rest, was heard to murmur “wet dog,” causing a momentary elevation of the Frenchman’s eyebrows.
But this was little more than a prelude to the verbal acrobatics that followed once the wine had been taken into the mouth, chewed, rolled around the tongue, allowed to irrigate the back teeth and infiltrate the palate before being consigned to the crachoirs, with Mademoiselle de Salis waiting behind the table armed with a supply of linen napkins for the less accomplished spitters.
How does one describe the indescribable? The buyers, now that they had tasted, did their best with evocations of leather and chocolate, pencil shavings and raspberries, of complexity and depth, of backbone and muscularity and hawthorn blossom-of almost anything, in fact, except grapes. Notepads were produced, and scribbled on. The buyer from Shanghai, evidently a gentleman with dynastic interests, offered the opinion that the wine was undoubtedly more Tang than Ming. And through it all, the Frenchman nodded and smiled, complimenting his guests on the perspicacity of their palates and the felicity of their comments.
Some time later, when he judged the moment to be ripe, when the gargling and spitting seemed to have run its course, he directed a discreet flutter of his fingers at Mademoiselle de Salis.
Putting aside her napkins, she picked up an oversized Hermès notebook, bound in black crocodile, and a Montblanc pen of the kind normally used to sign international treaties, and began to make her rounds. Like a perfectly trained sheepdog, she separated the buyers from the flock, one by one, taking them in turn away from the table so that their orders could be noted down in as much privacy as the size of the room allowed.
The capping of the pen and the closing of the notebook acted as a signal to the Frenchman. With many a pat on the shoulder and squeeze of the arm, he shepherded the group out of the room and down the corridor before giving his farewell address in the hall.
“I must congratulate you on the wisdom of your decisions,” he said, “decisions I know you won’t regret. Your orders will be dispatched very shortly.” He raised a hand and tapped his nose. “Perhaps I could offer you a little advice. First, that you restrict this wine to your most trusted clients, those who prefer to keep their drinking habits to themselves. Publicity would inevitably spoil the intimacy of the relationship that we have built up. And second, I would suggest that you keep a few of your cases in reserve.” He smiled at his partners in future prosperity. “Prices have a habit of going up.” On that reassuring note, with the bowing and shaking of hands completed, the group filed through the front door and into the bright sunlight of the street.
Hurrying back to the tasting room, the Frenchman found Mademoiselle de Salis seated at the table, her blond head lowered over her notebook and a calculator. He came up and stood behind her, and began to massage her shoulders. “Alors, chouchou? What’s the score?”
“Chen took six cases, Shimizu took a dozen, Deng took four, Ikumi eight, Watanabe and Yun Fat…”
“The total?”
Mademoiselle de Salis gave the calculator a final stab with a crimson-tipped finger. “Altogether, forty-one cases. Just over one and a half million dollars.”
The Frenchman smiled and looked at his watch. “Not too bad for a morning’s work. I think we’ve earned our lunch.”