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I expected to be arrested. Or fired at. Or set upon by dogs. I was driving down a semi-rural road at a speed that would have been mocked by passing toddlers, stopping every few dozen meters to peer at mailboxes, gates, and doorways. A few shouted imprecations came from behind closed shutters, and I hurried along, unable to understand the words but quite clear on their meaning.

The early days of my life of crime? Not quite. I was in Bourgueil, a peaceful wine-growing area in France’s Loire Valley, and I was looking for a winery. All I had was an appointment, an address, and a partially-understood conversation with the suspicious woman at the village tabac that finally set me on the right road after a few fruitless circlings of the town center. There was, as is the case as so many of France’s best family wineries, no sign, and none of the familiar trappings of a winery – barrels, tanks, vine sprayers – were in visual evidence at any of the addresses I’d yet studied.

Just as I was about to give up and turn around, I finally found what I was looking for: the name of the proprietor etched into the side of a twisted, accident-victim mailbox.

Tentatively – one doesn’t want to run afoul of the ubiquitous French sense of privacy or their dogs’ noisy and occasionally biting sense of territoriality – I drove through the open gate into a dusty courtyard. A man with deeply wine-stained hands emerged from a nearby shed, frowning pointedly at the notebook in my left hand. “Monsieur Iverson?” This was the place.

We hopped in his ancient truck and headed (at knuckle-whitening speed) a few miles out of town, into a hidden grotto beneath a gently-sloped vineyard. In a series of uninviting 10th-century caves straight out of some Appalachian horror film rested the majority of his wine production: wire cages holding yet-to-be-labeled bottles in one, a few dozen boxes waiting for shipment in another…and in the dank tunnel into which we cautiously stepped – there was no light – a few dozen barrels that were far outstripped, in both mass and volume, by the thousand-year growth of cobwebs and mold that lined the ceiling and the walls. There was a chill that set my teeth to chattering. This place was creepy.

The winemaker drew a few tastes from a nearby cask, pouring them into dubiously-scrubbed glasses retrieved from a rough-hewn wooden table strewn with hammers, chisels, and more filthy glasses. I sniffed…gingerly, then with more gusto. The wine was unbelievably good, even over the persistent aromatic drone of the cave itself, and we shared a shy but silly grin at the sheer joy of it. I asked where I could spit; he shrugged and directed a thin arc of expectorate at the floor. I followed suit. And then there was another wine, and another, and another, each better than the last. A few dozen sniffs, swirls, and spits later, having worked our way through most of the barrels in the cave, we were back outside, continuing our tasting on the hood of his truck. The glasses left little red circles in the rusted light green paint. And the conversation grew more passionate, moving away from technical details to history, philosophy, and unrepeatable asides about his quantity-minded neighbors. Soon, he was following each taste with a retreat into yet another cave, retrieving older vintages from his private stock.

We were no longer spitting. My afternoon plans were already lost, and these were the sorts of wines one swallows. Instead, I was listening to him earnestly explain how one old bottle was “his wife”…loyal and true, the product of many years of love and comfortable familiarity, while another was “his mistress”…a passionate and elusive partner full of mystery and unplumbed excitement. (At this point, it may be clear why I’m not naming the winery.) Later, back at his house, he let me buy a few bottles of the younger wines, but sent me away with two extra gifts: one bottle of each of the women in his life.

“Ah, but wait,” he warned. “Don’t drink them together. The wife and the mistress can never be allowed to meet.”

(First published in stuff@night, 2008.)