Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns all things Harry Potter.

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In Vino Veritas

VI. Clarification

Over the next few weeks, Draco slipped back into his usual routine. Business had returned to normal after he had secured the deal with Wandgate Construction. He had also continued his nightly dates and the sexual activities that inevitably followed. He found, however, that he was beginning to grow restless.

Much to his surprise, Draco was beginning to tire of seeing all those different women. He had trouble distinguishing one from another—the experience was like palate fatigue from tasting too many different wines in the same evening. They all wore the same clothing, the same perfume (that invariably interfered with the bouquet of his wine), and wanted to go to the same restaurants. They all kept up a constant stream of inane chatter which grated on his nerves. Draco found himself desperate for intelligent conversation. He had even tried to discuss the evening’s wine with some of them, but only received blank looks in return.

Even more disturbingly, Draco’s boredom and irritation followed him into the bedroom. Indeed, many of the women he dated were quite talented; one of them had perhaps been the most beautiful witch he had ever seen, with legs that went on forever (much like the Barolo she reminded him of). But even she couldn’t hold his attention for long. Draco had no idea what was causing the whole intolerable situation. He hoped it was merely a passing phase.

One night, hoping for a change of pace, Draco invited Pansy Parkinson to dine at Chez Henri. The evening was much more pleasant and relaxed than the last several. Because of their long history, Draco and Pansy were comfortable together, and they did not feel the need to fill every silence. And when Pansy did speak, she was intelligent and insightful, or at least funny. If Draco felt a pang of disappointment when the assistant sommelier was on duty that evening rather than Ginny Weasley, it was surely because he was looking forward to seeing how she and Pansy would interact, and not because he was looking forward to seeing Ginny. Draco felt as if things were getting back to normal. It was later, when he and Pansy went dancing, that everything fell apart.

They went to Hex, the trendiest wizarding nightclub of the moment. Exhausted after dancing for an hour, Draco and Pansy settled themselves at a corner table. They sipped Dragon’s Breath Martinis and watched the crowds, making occasional comments such as, “It looks as if that man in green took dancing lessons from the Whomping Willow,” or, “I despair that poor Millicent will never end her love affair with horizontal stripes.” Draco was just considering getting another round of drinks when Pansy said consideringly, “My, my, my. The little Weasley is all grown up.”

Draco turned around so fast he wrenched his neck. Sure enough, there was Ginny, dancing with a burly man who looked vaguely familiar. Draco clenched his fists. “Who is that she’s with?” he bit out.

Pansy looked at him interestedly. “Oliver Wood,” she said slowly. Draco turned back to her, confused. “You know, Oliver Wood,” she said patiently, as if spelling it out to a child. “He’s in the papers weekly. Plays Keeper for England. Single-handedly keeps Puddlemere at the top of the League. Former captain of the Gryffindor team.” That finally triggered Draco’s memory. He turned back to look at Ginny and Oliver. She doesn’t have to look so happy to be with the ponce, he thought.

“You didn’t seem too surprised to see Weasley again,” Pansy said conversationally, watching Draco carefully. “Have you run into her recently?”

“She’s the new sommelier at Chez Henri,” Draco answered mechanically, his eyes on Ginny. He stiffened as the music changed and Oliver pulled Ginny closer.

“I can’t believe it!” Pansy exclaimed, her eyes wide and focused on Draco.

“What are you on about now, Pansy?” Draco asked irritably, still not looking at her.

“I knew you couldn’t go on forever the way you have been,” Pansy said with amusement. “But I never would have guessed it would be a Weasley to put an end to it.”

At that moment, Oliver’s hand found its way to Ginny’s arse. Draco stood up, fists balled, and turned to Pansy. “Let’s go!” he barked out angrily.

Pansy stayed put. “Go where?” she asked warily.

“To your flat.” Draco was exasperated. Did he really have to state the obvious? Of course they would end the evening there—they always did.

“No,” Pansy said slowly, “I don’t think so.” Draco gaped at her incredulously. “Look, Draco,” she continued. “We’ve had a good run. But I don’t sleep with men who are attached to other women, and now that you appear to be…”

“I’m not attached!” Draco interrupted forcefully. “We’ve talked about wine. That’s it! Plus,” he added in his most condescending tone of voice, “she’s a Weasley.”

“Whatever you say, Draco,” Pansy said wearily, knocking back what was left of her drink.

“Even if you are in denial, I won’t sleep with you tonight. Go home and take a nice bath and think about what I’ve said.”

Draco glared at Pansy, then turned his back on her. Unfortunately, he now had a clear view of Ginny and Oliver, who were now pressed up against each other. He scowled at them and Apparated away.

***

Draco was groggy and irritable the next morning. He had not slept well. Nobody had turned Draco down before. And Pansy had insinuated… Well, that didn’t even bear contemplating. His world really was turning upside down. He settled down with a scowl to eat his breakfast and read the Prophet.

Narcissa came in soon after, chatting merrily as she ate her grapefruit. Draco tried to focus on the Quidditch results, pointedly ignoring those of Puddlemere United, but his mother seemed intent on holding a conversation. Reluctantly, Draco set his newspaper aside.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” Draco said politely. “What were you saying?”

“I saw Lucille Warrington yesterday. She has the most amazing pair of shoes!” Narcissa gushed.

“What is so special about them?” Draco asked, holding back his irritation. His mother rarely subjected him to such talk. It didn’t help that she had chosen to do so at a moment when he was already in a rotten mood.

“They are custom-made by a French warlock. They’re designed to fit her personality as well as her feet.”

“So order a pair.” Draco struggled to keep his voice level.

“But that’s the problem,” Narcissa said, her face falling. “I can’t just order them by owl. He needs to see each customer in person in order to design the perfect shoe. I would need to go to his village to be fit.”

“Why don’t you go?”

Narcissa looked up at Draco with deceptively innocent wide blue eyes. “Oh, Draco,” she said. “You know how I hate to travel by myself.”

Draco knew what she was doing—they were both Slytherins after all. But she was his mother, and he couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. Plus, there was no reason both of them needed to mope about. Draco resigned himself to the trip.

“Would you like me to accompany you, Mother?” he asked wearily.

***

It took the better part of the morning for Draco and Narcissa to make their way to the cobbler’s home. They first had to Apparate to the Ministry in London to get permission to Apparate to France. Once they made it to Paris, they had been forced to endure the questions of an overly zealous customs agent. Finally, they were allowed to Apparate to Lyon. There they hired a carriage to bring them to the shoemaker’s village. Having been invaded by Dark wizards in the Middle Ages, it had wards against Apparition. Draco was exhausted by the time they arrived.

Narcissa declared the village “quaint”. Draco thought it old and shabby, but kept his thoughts to himself for his mother’s sake. They left their belongings at the inn, which smelled vaguely of cabbage, and which Draco was certain was held up solely by magic. It was, however, the only place to stay, so they would occupy two of its three bedrooms that evening.

The innkeeper gave Draco directions for how to find the cobbler’s home in the village’s crooked streets. When they arrived, the old wizard gallantly praised Narcissa’s beauty before settling in to chat with her. Draco was bored and uncomfortable, and couldn’t keep his mind off of the insinuations Pansy had made the night before. When he stared pointedly at his watch after they had been there for an hour, however, the old man chastised him. “How do you expect me to design a proper pair of shoes for you mother if I know nothing about her?” he asked. Draco sighed and settled in for what he imagined would be a very long day.

The sun was just beginning to set when the cobbler declared himself satisfied. He buried his nose in his sketchbook and sent Draco and Narcissa away without even one last glance, saying that the shoes would be ready by noon the next day.

Draco’s mood did not improve when he learned that they would have to eat dinner at the inn, as it boasted the only restaurant in town. He was only mildly encouraged when he saw that they would be served by a buxom young woman with pink cheeks (a Beaujolais Nouveau, he thought). He smiled up at her and asked hopefully for a wine list. She looked at him with confusion.

“We have house wine,” the serving girl said, gesturing to two barrels behind the bar. Draco’s heart plummeted. Plonk. Just what he needed.

“Don’t you have anything that comes in a bottle?” he asked desperately, ignoring the disapproving look on his mother’s face. The girl shrugged, then disappeared into the kitchen. She returned with the innkeeper, who was carrying two bottles of wine. Draco cheered up immediately.

“Babette said that you asked for wine in a bottle?” The innkeeper was polite, but it was clear that he was as confused as Babette had been. Draco nodded. “I found these in the basement,” he continued. “You are welcome to buy them if you’d like.”

Draco inspected the two bottles. One was a vin de table, and would be no better than whatever was in the barrels. The other, a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, had promise. At Draco’s indication, the innkeeper opened the bottle and poured a little bit of the wine for Draco to taste. He grimaced at the smell of mildew; the cork had deteriorated, allowing oxygen into the bottle and ruining the wine.

“No,” Draco said, pushing the offending glass away from him. “This is corky. It won’t do. I guess we’ll just have to settle for the house wine.” The innkeeper nodded and left the room, as Babette moved behind the bar and poured a carafe of white wine from one of the barrels. It was only then that Draco realized that they hadn’t asked if he wanted red or white wine. He would have preferred red, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue anymore, so for once in his life, he kept his mouth shut.

The wine arrived, and Draco looked at it with distaste. Narcissa glared at him from across the table. “Oh, just try it already,” she said irritably. “It might be better than you think.” She then took a sip and then smiled widely. “Oh, yes, it is definitely better than you think.”

Draco sniffed the wine experimentally, and certainly was surprised. It smelled of peaches, honey, and violets. He looked up to see Narcissa looking at him expectantly. He took a sip and nearly fell from his chair. The wine was wonderful! It had all of the same flavors as he had smelled in the bouquet, but the wine was bone dry with a flinty character that balanced the sweet quality of the other flavors. He could hardly believe it.

Draco called for the innkeeper. When he came, Draco asked, “Where did you get this wine? It is fantastic!”

The innkeeper shrugged. My brother, who lives down in Condrieu, makes it. He sells me some, then bottles the rest and sells it to the Muggles for forty euros a bottle.”

“You sell Condrieu from the barrel?” Draco asked incredulously. He was stunned. Very little wine was made each year in Condrieu, and it was of uniformly high quality. This meant it was very expensive and hard to find. The innkeeper just shrugged again, and returned to his work.

Draco stared at the glass of wine. He never would have expected to find such a fine wine sold from a barrel in some out-of-the-way inn, when the wine in the bottles was bad. That’s not how the world worked. Fine wine should come in bottles, and be properly labeled.

At that thought, Ginny’s words came back to Draco. “It isn’t always a good idea to judge a wine by what’s on its label.” He could picture her beautiful face, animated by her enthusiasm about the wine she was discussing. He thought of how she was never intimidated by him, how she continued to get the best of him. He remembered how a chaste kiss on his cheek from her had affected him in a way that no other witch had ever done. Suddenly everything fell into place. Draco had fallen for Ginny, but he had nearly missed it because she was a Weasley.

“Draco?” Narcissa asked gently, bringing him out of his reverie.

Draco looked up at his mother with wide eyes. “She was right!” he said, stunned. “I shouldn’t judge a wine by its label.”

“Are you all right, dear?” Narcissa asked with concern.

“No, Mother,” Draco said, standing up. “I’m not all right.” Draco thought of Ginny in Oliver Wood’s arms and threw some Galleons down on the table. “I may have missed my chance, but I need to know. I’ll come back for you tomorrow, but I need to go now.”

As he rushed out of the inn in search of a carriage, Draco missed the smile that lit up Narcissa’s face.

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Tasting Notes:

* During fermentation and aging, most wines give off sediment—chemicals that precipitate out of the liquid. In order to remove this as well as any stray pieces of skin or stem that might have remained in the grape juice, many wines are subjected to the process of clarification before bottling. There are two main methods used. The first is filtration, where the wine is passed through a filter that removes any particles above a certain size. The second method is fining. In this case, a substance high in protein (traditionally egg whites) is allowed to drop from the top of the barrel to the bottom. Along the way, the sediment and other particles cling to the proteins, removing them from the wine. Some wines are left unfined and unfiltered, usually to enhance the flavors; they are often somewhat cloudy in appearance and a little more acidic than wine that has been clarified.

* Palate fatigue occurs when you taste too many wines in a row. It is similar to what happens if you smell too many perfumes in a row—after a while they all start to smell the same.

* If you swirl a wine in the glass, the tracks that the drops leave as they slide down the glass are called its legs. Traditionally, the rate at which they fell was considered to be an indication of quality. This has been a subject of recent debate. Now many oenologists believe that the differences in the legs are really due to how differences in alcohol content affect the surface tension of the wine. Of course some people still believe in the tradition. Barolo is a region in Italy that produces red wines with high alcohol content, and therefore longer legs.

* Beaujolais, although technically part of the Burgundy region in France, produces wines made from the Gamay grape rather than Pinot Noir. These wines tend to be light and fruity. Each year, a certain quantity of Beaujolais Nouveau is produced. It is bottled in November from the grapes picked just that fall. Bottling the wine so young tends to result in a wine that is very fruity and not at all complex. It should be drunk within a month or two of bottling, usually by the end of the year in which it is grown. (I once tasted some Beaujolais Nouveau that was a year old and nearly undrinkable.)

* Vin de table, also called vin ordinaire, is wine sold for everyday use in France. It is rarely exported.

* Châteauneuf-du-Pape is one of my favorite kinds of wine. It is produced in the southern end of Frace’s Rhône Valley.

* When wine is exposed to oxygen due to a faulty cork, it can take on a smell and flavor of mildew. In such cases, it is said to be corky. There is more detail about this in the tasting notes in Chapter III.

* Condrieu is a small region at the north end of the Rhône Valley. The wine made there is produced from the Viognier grape. What Draco smelled and tasted is typical. I have never tasted a Condrieu, though I would love to. However, I have had several California Viogniers that were quite wonderful. It really is unlikely that Condrieu, or any wine of the same quality, would ever be served from a barrel in an inn, but I claim artistic license.