Happy Hour (6 page)

“Why? Why did you see him as a patient? What are you saying?” She tried
hard to keep the panic from her voice. Jamie choked back the suffocation
grasping her around the throat, making it difficult to breathe. She knew
exactly
what he was trying to tell her, but not until he said the words would she
believe him and even then… she shook her head. “No. No, no, no. No.”

“It’s not good. It’s back, J.”

“No. I… I…what? It’s not back! You beat it. We beat it. We
beat
it. The doctors told us. They said that the chances were good that it was gone.
You were in remission and we were told that your chances were really good! Five
years and it’s been gone.” She flung her hands, making the baseball safe sign.
Tears stung the back of her eyes.

“I know what they said, honey. They were wrong. I had a biopsy. It’s in
my liver.”

“You had a biopsy? When? No!” A vise gripped her heart as she watched her
husband’s face wrinkle up, the tears now streaming down. He rubbed his hands
through his hair and nodded. “I didn’t want to tell you and worry you. I really
thought it would all be okay.”

Jamie couldn’t speak. Nate set his glass down and pulled her into him,
smelling woodsy and warm. He stroked her hair and she wrapped her fingers
around the tiny curls at the nape of his neck. Comfort. He was her zone—the
soft place she came home to every night. He held her tightly, as if he was as
afraid as she was to ever let go.

Today…

WINE LOVER’S MAGAZINE

FRIENDSHIPS & WINE

By

Jamie Evans

Friendships
can begin in many ways, but the one link that is always the same (for women, at
least) is that they start out with a common denominator; maybe your kids play
together at preschool and although the children’s friendship doesn’t last, the
one you made with the other mom does. Or, you meet at Weight Watchers and in
desperation after losing only a pound after a month of weigh-ins and counting
points, you and your new friend head to the local Mexican restaurant and share
every diet woe you’ve ever had over chips, salsa, and margaritas. Or, you meet
a new friend in the bookstore while picking up the book you are supposed to
read for the next book club meeting and she tells you how wonderful it is. The
next thing you know, you’re inviting her to join the book club. And, what about
the friend you met at summer camp between eighth and ninth grade? You weren’t
exactly friends from the get-go because the common denominator happened to be a
guy named Rick. Rick manipulated the two of you by claiming he liked you and
not her, and then told the same thing to the girl not yet your friend. When the
truth came out, Rick—the dog—got dumped by you and your new best friend.

Friendships. They always begin with a common denominator.

I have the privilege of having all of those women as friends. Even
Lauren from summer camp remains a friend of mine.

There are childhood friends and new friends. There are also best
friends.

The friendship I have with Danielle, Kat, and Alyssa began with our
own common denominator: wine.

My friends and I have a happy hour, when we get together two Sunday
afternoons out of the month, (and at any other possible times), share good wine
and food, and solve all the problems of the world. Well, maybe not world
problems, but typically our own. Join us monthly for my Happy Hour column where
you’ll find excellent wine and food pairings and get a snippet of our lives.

Let me introduce my
friends:

Danielle
Bastillia: Danielle is an up-and-coming winemaker in the Napa Valley region.
She was part owner for twenty years at Bastillia Wines, but is now the proud
owner of Déesse Estate Wines. She takes pride in making small boutique wines
using all organic methods, including all natural fermentation. Her wines are
stylistically French and I predict that they will make a huge splash at the
Harvest Festival in October when Déesse and Danielle release their first
vintage. Danielle is a mother of two daughters (one at Yale and the other in
high school). She is very involved in the local community with several charities.

Danielle’s favorite wine: “I enjoy
the complexity of a good Meritage. I love blending Cab Franc with Merlot and
Syrah.”

Kat Reilly:
Kat is part owner of Christian’s with her husband Christian Reilly in our very
own Yountville, where Kat is the sommelier. They also own the five-star Sphinx
in the city. The husband-and-wife team make a great pair in the kitchen and on
the dining room floor, with Kat knowing exactly how to pair Christian’s
delicious gourmet cuisine with spectacular wines. Kat and Christian have three
children between them, ranging in ages from six to fifteen. When not at the
restaurant, Kat is busy as a mom and wife.

Kat’s favorite wine: “I love
Bordeaux style reds. Christian and I once had an amazing bottle of Chateau
Chasse-Spleen 1959. Best wine and night of our lives.”

Alyssa
Johnson: Alyssa owns The Vine Gallery in St. Helena. Not only does she own the
gallery, showcasing vineyard art, but she is also a wonderful artist in her own
right, as well as a community art instructor. She hosts a once-a-month wine
tasting and local artist showing.

Alyssa’s favorite wine: “I enjoy a
good chardonnay. I know that’s not very interesting or vogueish, but it’s true.
And I personally am one of those people who like my chardonnays big, bold,
buttery, and oaky. To me, that is a signature California Chardonnay.”

Then there is
me, Jamie Evans: I am the editor-in-chief here at
Wine Lover’s Magazine.
Besides
being an editor and writer, I too am a mom. My daughter is nine years old and
is the light of my life. I also take care of my mother-in-law, Dorothy, who
used to date big-time movie stars back in the day, leaving never a dull story
to be told in my home.

My favorite wine is Viognier. I
like the slight floral tones and the crispness of this soft white on a hot
summer’s day.

There you have it, the ladies of Happy
Hour. I hope you’ll enjoy this monthly column about wine, food and friendship
as much as I think I’m going to enjoy writing it. As always, we at
Wine
Lover’s
love to hear from our readers.

Cheers!

Jamie Evans

Editor-in-Chief

***

That was it
. Jamie wracked her brain, trying to come up with
something new and fresh at the magazine. Her boss—not a creative sort—took the tack
of breathing down her neck to bring up the numbers. She diligently studied the demographics
that were regularly buying the magazine and ran marketing surveys. As the
numbers and research came in, Jamie took note that nearly half of the
magazine’s readers were women. She understood the recipe part of the deal. The
magazine always printed fantastic recipes and food articles
.
But most of
the time even those were written with a slant toward men, like “Five Top Grilling
Meats,” or “Superbowl Sunday, Syrah and Snapper,” (the men in the office loved
that one, but it definitely hadn’t been one of Jamie’s ideas). The magazine
published plenty of articles on malolactic fermentation, organic growing,
cigars and wine, yachts and golf, and what wine to drink while yachting or
after golfing.

Yes, there were plenty of testosterone-filled articles to feed any man,
but what was there for women? Almost half of the readers were women! This
excited Jamie. Surveys showed that women and wine went hand-in-hand, with the
liquid grape being the favored alcoholic beverage amongst the female set. Not
to mention that more and more women were involved with making wine, marketing
wine, and everything that went with and concerned wine. That was why and how
Jamie came up with the idea to do an article on up and coming Women in the
World of Wine. She chose to address it from the local aspect and started making
calls. No better place to begin than in her own backyard of Napa Valley.

Her first call went out to Danielle, who she’d met at a charity event for
lung cancer. Since divorcing The Bastard (a name they all agreed on when it
came to Danielle’s ex, Al. Kat’s ex held the privileged title Sperm Donor), she
made the decision to finally pursue her dream of becoming a winemaker, a plan
she’d squashed deep down for the past twenty years. When she was married to The
Bastard, he wouldn’t even listen to her winemaker dream. He laughed at her and
told her it was nice, but not realistic. Her job was payroll and raising the
kids.

Danielle sulked for about three months, after discovering
the other
woman
. Then she found it far more satisfying to get royally pissed off and
went after The Bastard with guns loaded and blazing. Three years ago, Danielle
exemplified a woman scorned, and her anger fueled her desire to make fine
wines. Now she planned to enter the Harvest Wine Festival in October. A gold
medal would put a smile on her face and show her ex exactly who she was—
a
winemaker extraordinaire
. Jamie knew that Danielle was headed for greatness
and had no qualms about putting the as-yet unknown winemaker in her article.

Danielle turned Jamie on to Kat. Kat and her husband Christian ran an
incredible restaurant in wine country, Christian’s. They also owned the popular
Sphinx in San Francisco. Christian’s genius with turning ordinary food into
delicacies, combined with Kat’s extensive knowledge of wine, made them the
perfect pair and Christian’s was a major success.

Jamie hadn’t been into Christian’s herself; money woes kept her within a
tight budget these days and when a little extra did turn up, she spent it on
her daughter Maddie or her mother-in-law Dorothy. After Nate’s death, Dorothy
declined rapidly and now suffered from, at best guess, dementia. Jamie was
determined to provide Dorothy with the best care she could.

Nate’s brother, David, insisted on putting her in a home, but Nate and
Jamie promised to take care of her as she aged. She knew that the last thing in
the world Dorothy wanted was to live out her last years in a retirement home.

Jamie called up Kat and, after some convincing, she’d finally agreed to
do the photo shoot and article. Danielle had mentioned that Kat worked an
extremely busy schedule with the restaurant only being open for a year, and
that she could also be a bit standoffish. However, after talking with her on
the phone for almost thirty minutes, Jamie found that she warmed right up and a
kinship developed quickly between the two.

Then there was Alyssa. It turned out to be just one of those things where
you meet someone and there is an instantaneous connection, almost as if you’ve
known each other from another life. Jamie met her while window-shopping in St.
Helena on a lazy Sunday afternoon with Maddie. They’d wandered into Alyssa’s
gallery. She immediately started talking to Maddie, and Jamie always a sucker
for anyone who was nice to her kid knew she could become friends with Alyssa.
The two women wound up talking about art and it hit Jamie that she would be the
perfect addition to the article.

Alyssa’s artwork captivated the connoisseur and average tourist, but she
was humble about her work and, in Jamie’s opinion, didn’t charge enough for it.
Alyssa was Miss America pretty, with mocha skin and delicate features. Her warm
brown eyes invited you in, but there was also a tinge of sadness in them,
something Jamie could certainly relate to. Alyssa turned out to be the hard one
to convince, but Jamie promised her that what she did with her vineyard
paintings for the community and for women in general was important and needed
to be featured in the article. Alyssa finally agreed. Granted, Jamie had done
most of her convincing over dinner and wine with the group, but that night also
cemented a friendship among the women.

At first the four of them would all meet sporadically for dinner, an
occasional movie, a card game. But then they thought, why not get together
regularly? The response and success of Jamie’s original article about these
women bumped up the magazine’s numbers with the female population. Women were
reading
Wine Lover’s
along with their usual women’s magazines. At
least they were in their part of the world. An idea came to Jamie and she
suggested that their get-togethers should be over wine, where they could talk
about the wines that they were drinking, and what they would pair them with.
The other three loved the idea—any excuse for friendship, food and wine sounded
good to them.

Their time spent with each other consisted of a bit of gossip, sharing
secrets, the occasional shedding of tears, and always a ton of laughter. Jamie
chronicled these get-togethers, which took place every other Sunday evening, beginning
at the cocktail hour of five o’clock—
The Happy Hour
.

At first they tried coming up with some kind of group name like The
Decanted Divas, which was sort of fun, but a bit too corny. They tossed around
Grapevine Girls, but that one reminded them all way too much of the Eighties TV
show
The Golden Girls
starring Bea Arthur and Betty White. Jamie had
said, “We might all be middle-aged or close to it, but I’m thinking we’re not
ready for bingo down at the senior center. I’m not going for Grapevine Girls.”

They almost chose The Vineyard Vixens—Danielle’s suggestion—but every
time any one of them said the word
vixen,
it started a chain of laughter
bringing tears to their eyes. “It is funny,” Danielle said. “Me a vixen?
Please! My husband left me because he was bored with our sex life.” She laughed
again, but Jamie and the others knew that it wasn’t as funny to Danielle as she
tried to make it.