Excerpt of Tainted Tokay by Noel Balen, Sally Pane, Jean-Pierre Alaux

“Florence, I’d envy your life in this immense château if
it weren’t for the ghosts. I’m sure you have one or two
lurking in there,” Benjamin Cooker said as he dropped a
packet of artificial sweetener in his coffee.?“Benjamin,
you always surprise me. I would have never guessed that
France’s most celebrated authority in matters of
winemaking would be superstitious.”

Benjamin sipped his coffee and tried not to grimace at
the bitter taste of the sweetener. Elisabeth was nagging
him to lose weight again, and he had reluctantly given up
sugar in his coffee to please his wife.

“Do you, of all people, really believe in ghosts?”
Florence Blanchard continued.

“That would depend on what kind of ghost you’re talking
about. If you mean a disembodied soul, well, I do believe
in the soul. It’s the seat of life and intelligence
itself.”

Florence nodded. “That’s one way of looking at it, I
suppose. If I recall correctly, the Marquise de Deffand,
the famous seventeenth-century hostess, was asked once of
she believed in ghosts. She answered, ‘No, but I’m afraid
of them.’”

“I have to say that I’m more afraid of the living and our
small-mindedness, which leads to so much deception and
duplicity. To respond to your quote, I’ll cite Pierre
Corneille, who said, ‘Deceit is a game of petty spirits’—
those are the ghosts I fear.”

Sitting in the garden with his host, Benjamin looked up
and studied the small cupola atop the château’s slate
roof. The morning sun was blazing down on the mansion,
bleaching its Charente-stone exterior.

Dating to the 1870s, Château Blanchard reminded Benjamin
of the expression “castle in the sky.” It was the kind of
estate that landowners with aspirations once dreamed of
building. Only a few, however, could afford such
opulence. The exterior was ornate and fascinating, with
its intricate pinnacles above the top-floor windows. But
as far as Benjamin was concerned, the place was entirely
too impractical to live in.

“I’m thinking we should restore the pond. You saw how
overrun it is with algae and weeds,” Florence said,
setting her cup down and casting her eyes over the
landscape.

At times Florence seemed overwhelmed by the family
legacy. Château Blanchard was too large and its amenities
were too few, especially in the winter, when it was
impossible to heat. But she loved it in the summer, when
children overtook the grounds and dinners under an old
magnolia tree at the edge of the pond extended well into
the evening.

“One day I’ll have the grounds looking like Versailles,”
Florence said, turning back to Benjamin. “I remember how
well my grandfather maintained it.”

As the estate’s winemaking consultant, Benjamin knew all
about the family’s history. Florence Blanchard had been
born into a family of farmers who had left Algeria during
the war of independence in the early 1960s and had ended
up in this corner of the Gironde, not far from Château
Margaux. This pied-noir family had poured all of their
resources into their land in the Médoc, and the wines
they produced were their pride and joy.

Florence and her brother, Jules, had lost their parents
when they were young and had inherited the Blanchard
estate from their grandfather. Of the two of them,
Florence was the more attached to the fairy-tale château.
In her youth, she had spent hours with her grandfather,
whose passion for the vine was tireless and
unconditional. His cru bourgeois, generated on thirty
hectares in the heart of the Listrac appellation, was an
elegant and velvety wine approaching the nobility of a
Margaux or a Pauillac.

Under her grandfather’s tutelage, Florence had developed
a love for wine and the land.And as an adult, she had
nurtured the vineyards, lush with merlot and cabernet
sauvignon rootstock.

“Enough about my plans for the future,” Florence said,
leaning toward the winemaker. “I have something more
pressing on my mind at the moment. Didier seems on edge
these days. Should I be worried?”

Didier Morel was the cellar master for Château Blanchard.
After finishing his oenological studies, Didier had
interned at Château Pichon Longueville Baron and then at
Lynch-Bages. Benjamin had met Didier at Lynch-Bages and
was so impressed, he advised the Blanchard family to take
him on. They hired him on the spot.

The young man had much in common with Benjamin’s
assistant, Virgile Lanssien. They both had a deeply
ingrained passion for rugby, as well as the crafty
intelligence of people of the earth. Each had the same
diploma signed by the same director of the Institut
d’oenologie, the winemaking institute of Bordeaux. These
commonalities, however, did not make them allies.
Benjamin knew that Virgile was a tad jealous and even
reluctant to give his opinion when Florence, Didier, and
he presided over the Blanchard blendings. He had
concluded that the two were cut from the same cloth,
consumed by the same ambitions, and blessed with the same
instincts and charm that young women just couldn’t
resist.

Benjamin smiled. “I wouldn’t be concerned. A winemaker’s
nerves are always on edge during malolactic fermentation.
Didier’s as vigilant as a lighthouse keeper in a
hurricane. His watchfulness is a sign of his commitment.”

Florence picked up the silver coffeepot, which was
gleaming in the bright sunlight. “Another cup, Benjamin?”
“Gladly,” he answered, his gaze once again drawn to the
cupola on the slate roof. It seemed pretentious.

Florence followed his gaze. “What do you think of the
cupola? I find it rather elegant. It was actually an
observation post at one time.”

“Is that so?”

“Landowners used cupolas to watch over the vines during
harvest. From up there, my grand- father could see as far
away as the Garonne and spot any evildoers intent on
stealing his grapes. It seems that grape theft was once
fairly common.”

“Unlike the vines, trust has never thrived in the Médoc,”
said Benjamin. “The people here are capable of fighting
over a single vine stalk for generations. They’d even
kill over one.”

Florence sipped her coffee. “Something seems to be on
your mind, Benjamin.”

The winemaker did not respond, mostly because he didn’t
think he was being overly pensive. Actually, he had
arrived early so that he and Florence could have a
conversation before her brother and Didier joined them
for their tasting. He liked her quick wit, her candor,
and her graciousness.?Finally, Benjamin decided to weigh
in on the cupolas. “Florence, I don’t believe this story
about lookouts for the vineyards. In Bordeaux, above the
Palais de la Bourse, you see the same cupolas, and as far
as I know, there aren’t any vineyards around there in
danger of being pillaged.”