Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine by Maximillian Potter

Author:Maximillian Potter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Social Science / Agriculture & Food, Travel / Europe / France, True Crime / General, Antiques & Collectibles / Wine
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

When Louis and Katharine greeted Aubert at the San Francisco airport, they insisted he please call them Louie and Katey. Although Aubert’s English was then still sketchy, he understood. He thanked them for coming to get him and for their willingness to host him. He told “Mrs. and Mrs. Benoist” that it was all so very kind of them. Aubert being Aubert, he decided he would stick with the formal address. Anything less, he felt, would be disrespectful. They tossed his bags in the trunk and were off.

From the moment he laid eyes on California, Aubert was enthralled, always comparing this world to the one he’d left in France. During the two-hour drive south to Almaden, Aubert began taking mental notes for an article he would write for the French wine magazine La Revue du Vin de France. He noted they drove on a “classic American highway” that crossed “endless fields of sugar beets and potatoes in exquisite company.” As they pulled farther away from the city and deeper into the rugged, mountainous wine country, he felt he was entering “the middle of the open American West.”

It was early fall, just before the harvest. Driving onto the grounds of the Almaden estate, Aubert marveled at the green vines juxtaposed against the sunburnt hillside. Once inside the Benoists’ home, the wooden screen door having gently slapped closed behind him, Aubert found himself unexpectedly standing on the slanted floors, under the scrutiny of the so many sets of Napoleon eyes; everywhere he looked the General was watching him.

There were several reasons he had come to America. First, convinced that he’d cheated death, Aubert was determined to not squander the second chance he had been given. Visiting the States was on his bucket list. From the time he was a small child and saw the Americans rumble into France and liberate his country, he had always been curious of the place that grew such gritty spirit. America was where the cowboys roamed. It was the home of Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. Americans had a heart and a passion he greatly admired.

Second, and this was the more official explanation, and the one he gave to folks when he didn’t feel like explaining the rest, his doctors had told him that the more outdoor physical activity he did, the better it would be for his recovery. Nothing was more therapeutic than good old-fashioned labor in the outdoors. In California, where the weather was mild, without the harsh winters of France, he could work en plein air year-round.

The truth was Aubert had what the philosopher in him would call a new existential purpose. On the other side of his coma, he had begun to sense his life bending back to Burgundy, and Aubert wanted to be sure. He wanted to be absolutely certain it was, in fact, his calling. He figured that time away—his time in the United States—would either alter what he was now coming to accept was his life’s course, or would amount to taking the long way home.

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