Fire in the Canyon by Daniel Gumbiner

Author:Daniel Gumbiner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astra Publishing House

THAT NIGHT, he and Ada discussed the project, and she said she was in favor of it. She’d tried one of the wines Halle had left and absolutely loved it. Also, somewhat relatedly, she’d recently heard an interview with an oceanographer, who said that whenever you are faced with a serious life decision, you should always move in the direction of change.

“Why was the oceanographer giving life advice?” Ben asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “But he had lots of good advice.”

So a couple of days later, Ben and Halle made plans to visit Orion, to see the cellar and meet the Garcias. Halle picked him up in the morning, in her station wagon, and they headed up Rose Mountain. While she drove, she played a CD by a harpist folksinger. The singer’s voice was sweet but kind of shrill and childish. Apparently, she had grown up in Natoma, but now lived in New York and was married to a famous comedian. Halle said she had loved her stuff for years, and knowing that she had been born in Natoma was one of the first things that had attracted her to the area. This was all news to Ben, who hadn’t known that there were any famous musicians from Natoma, harpist or otherwise.

Halle was an aggressive driver, a little too aggressive for Ben’s liking, but she didn’t seem out of control. She whipped up the mountain, then slalomed down the other side of it, toward Sherwood Road. Her car was cluttered, the back seat strewn with books: botany texts, winemaking manuals, and a history of the Russian Revolution. It also smelled quite strongly of lavender. At first Ben thought it was some kind of air freshener, but then Halle explained that she had spilled a bottle of the lavender solvent she used for her oil paintings all over the back seat.

“It was a real bummer,” she said. “Because that shit is expensive.”

Which, by the way, she continued, she wanted to talk through some of her thinking on costs with him. Her vision, she said, was to keep all her wines under fifteen dollars. This was both a philosophical position and a business strategy. She wanted regular people to be able to drink the wines she made—the way anyone could drink good wine in Italy—and also, there just weren’t many good, affordable bottles on the market. Most bottles that were fifteen dollars or less were mass produced by big wineries, who could take advantage of economies of scale. But because of their unique positioning, with their free access to Orion’s facilities, she felt they could make it work. Ultimately, she wanted to mainstream their label, get it into a major supermarket or two. Few natural wine producers had done that, but it was where real money could be made.

As they drove, she again laid out the math for him. Packaging, she estimated, would cost around $1.30 per bottle. This included bottles, cork, and the labels, which she would design herself. She didn’t really think they’d need a foil.

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