The Vineyard of Lost Seasons

1.

I watch him as he watches the sunset, and for the first time in the long span of our life together, I feel pity for him. Here, in this place of rare beauty—where vineyards yield to shadowed woods, where the slopes of the hills unfurl in a thousand shades of green, where we had hoped to root ourselves and call it home—I see, with a clarity that admits no escape, that we have failed. There is no longer denial, nor hope, nor the solace of illusion; only the brutal arithmetic of an empty bank account and a cellar brimming with wine. His face, bathed in a last wash of amber light, his body thickened by the indifference of a man who has always sought relief in food—before me he stands, and I cannot help but turn my thoughts back to the beginning.

2.

Robert’s family has made wine for three generations—or, to be precise, has proudly made wine in Napa Valley for three generations. It was his grandfather, Anthony, who began it all: a wager with destiny, with the world, and perhaps with himself. An oenology university professor of modest circumstance, he resolved to prove that he could transform himself into a winemaker, a man of the soil and the vine. He started with little, yet through a union of skill, devotion, and not inconsiderable fortune, his venture grew with astonishing speed. In five years, his cellar’s name was already one to be reckoned with; in ten, it had entered the pantheon of California’s great wines.

His firstborn son, Joe, could not have been more different. Wine stirred no passion in him; indeed, as the years passed, he withdrew further and further from his father, whose heart broke in the realisation that the child he had counted on as heir would never carry forward the work that had consumed his life. It was left instead to Joe’s younger sister, Lucinda, to take up both the honour and the burden. She was as unyielding as oak, as sharp and determined as flint, and she resolved—almost defiantly—that she would prove herself equal to the legacy. Against every expectation, she succeeded, managing the vast enterprise with a tenacity and vision that silenced any doubt.

Robert entered the family’s orbit at nineteen, straddling his university studies with humble work among the barrels and casks. There, amid the scent of oak and fermenting grapes, he displayed a rare instinct for the subtleties of the craft, along with an eagerness to learn at his grandfather’s side. Anthony, delighted by what he saw, embraced Robert as the rightful heir, the grandson who could redeem the disappointment of his own son.

We should have sensed it—the first shadow falling over our story was Anthony’s death, sudden and cruel, a blow that left everyone dazed and directionless. The great wine empire he had built stood still, as though holding its breath, waiting for someone to take the reins. None of the family could move, none could decide. None but Lucinda. Even in that hollow hour of mourning, she seemed untouched by doubt. Her path was clear: her life and the cellar’s life were already one. By then, she had surrendered everything—her youth, her chance of a family, even the warmth of her own happiness—to the vineyard. Every leaf, every grape had become her children, and she tended them with a devotion fiercer than love.

When the will was read, it revealed what most had already guessed. The estate would be hers and Robert’s, but not equally. Seventy percent to Lucinda, thirty to Robert. The old man had explained it gently: Robert was still young, still learning, while Lucinda had already given her life to the vines. There was a promise, though—a clause that if Robert proved himself within five years, the shares would be divided in half.

But that promise was the seed of ruin. Lucinda had no intention of sharing. Her ambition was quiet but relentless: she would buy Robert out. With the weight of majority on her side, she made every decision alone, brushing away his ideas, his efforts, his voice. At last, weary and disillusioned, he accepted her offer, comforted by her pledge to help him start afresh with a cellar of his own. A small place, yes, but bold and intimate, where every bottle could be raised like a child.

That was when our lives crossed. I was just out of design college in San Francisco, an Oregon girl still full of wonder, still carrying the raw brightness of dreams. We met at a football game, and almost instantly we belonged to one another. Robert thought of nothing but wine—of the cellar he would build with his own hands, the vines he would plant, the bottles he would nurture. And I? I gave myself to him and to that vision. Within six months we were married, our hands blistered from work, our bodies bent over rows of young vines in the piece of land we had bought with the help of his aunt’s legacy. It was backbreaking, beautiful, intoxicating work—the kind of labor that feels like love.

3.

But love is not always understood—or respected—by others. Robert had become obsessed with retracing his grandfather’s footsteps, and, just as Anthony had done thirty years before, he refused to call upon an external oenologist. He wanted to do everything himself, convinced that he, too, possessed the same Midas touch, that his ideas would inevitably turn to gold.

After two years of toil, we opened the doors of our boutique cellar to the public, organizing tastings for buyers and for the journalists who shaped opinion in the wine world. It was a disaster. Buyers showed little interest, and the reviews in the specialist magazines were merciless. We tried to place our bottles in local restaurants and delicatessens, but the shadow of that first failure had already closed in on us.

It was in that moment of despair that we met Brett. California-born, an avant-garde artist, he had moved years before to Italy, settling in a quiet central region that was just beginning to attract the attention of European wine lovers. He had returned to his native land for a short stay, eager to deepen his knowledge of winemaking in the Napa Valley. He believed California’s energy and experimentation still had lessons for a part of Italy that, though ancient in its traditions, was young in its modern wine culture. He had married a local woman who owned land, and together they dreamed of planting vines and building a modest cellar.

The two men were drawn to each other at once. Brett hungered for guidance and advice; Robert glowed beneath the recognition, finally feeling seen as a true winemaker. For two months they worked side by side, designing the vineyard and the cellar, studying the region’s native vines. When Brett returned to Italy, he wrote faithfully each week, updating Robert on his progress, always closing his letters with the same refrain: that Robert should come to Italy, where his talent would finally be recognized.

And Robert listened. Our life in Napa was unraveling, the cellar bleeding us dry, and his mind caught fire with the dream of a new beginning. His quiet arrogance, his recklessness, carried him to the edge of an endless fall—and once again, I followed. I embraced his wild dream. Within months, we had sold our small cellar, left behind the world we had built, and crossed the ocean to Umbria, renting a modest house while we searched for land.

We found it at last: a parcel of just two acres, graced by a sixteenth-century home whose walls still whispered beneath faded frescoes. The time we spent restoring the house and working the soil was the sweetest of my life. Though our Italian was broken and halting, the people welcomed us, eager to help, eager to share. We felt carried by their kindness, and buoyed by the optimism of a new beginning. And with more than half the money from our California sale still safe, we believed—fiercely—that this time, the dream would last

We planned to create a rosé—our signature wine in California—and so we began planting the vines we would need. The red grapes were already there, one of the reasons we had chosen that land, while the white we would temporarily buy from a nearby producer, until our own plants grew strong enough to bear fruit. Once more, it was backbreaking work, but this time the labor was not only of the body.

What we had not foreseen was the brutal weight of Italian bureaucracy. Its many faces, its tangled complications, the endless waiting times for even the simplest documents, the constant obstacles placed before us as foreigners outside the European Union—it all pressed down like an invisible hand. Each visit to a government office ended in the same way: that faint, mocking smile from behind a desk, the shrug of someone who knew we had no choice but to wait. Our frontier spirit bristled against it, and each denial was met with a new attempt, a new solution, a new fight.

But wine does not wait. Bottles piled up around us, each one filled with our labor and our hope, and still we were forbidden to sell them. Authorizations never came, forms were lost, papers delayed. Our cellar, meant to be the heart of our dream, grew heavy with silent rows of wine that no one was allowed to taste.

4.

“Sometimes I think there can be no place more beautiful than this,” Robert says, his head turning slightly toward me, as though the thought had been waiting for me all along.

“You knew I was here. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was happy to remain in silence, behind you, watching the same things you were watching.”

“As you’ve done all your life.”

“Not only that,” I answer softly. “I haven’t always been silent, or behind you, or fixed on the same horizon. I have spoken, argued, supported, disagreed. I have walked beside you, yes, and looked at what you looked at, but I have also seen more, seen differently—always from another angle.”

He sighs, a heaviness in his shoulders. “And yet here you are, stuck with all this, and with me.”

“No,” I say, firmer now. “I don’t feel stuck. I could walk away if I wished. I stay because I choose to.”

His voice falters, a raw thread of need running through it. “You choose it… to be with me?”

“I choose it for you, yes. But also for what we have built here—together.”

“And what is that, exactly?” Skepticism coils in his tone.

“Do you want to see what I see?”

He nods, barely.

“I see a villa of the sixteenth century, lovingly restored, surrounded by vineyards and silver-green olive groves. Beyond, the dark edge of the woods, the rolling hills soft as a painted backdrop, and above us a sky that shifts now from blue to rose before our eyes. I see beauty. I see possibility. I see potential.”

Robert’s reply is sharp, his bitterness breaking through. “We’ve tried everything! There is nothing left but to surrender—to sell it all to some Italian producer who knows how to play the laws.”

“Sell? And go where? Begin again, chasing yet another illusion of destiny? What if making wine was never our fate? It isn’t mine, and perhaps it isn’t yours either. What binds us here is not destiny, Robert, but your obsession with becoming another Anthony. But you are not him, and never will be. The times are different, the land is different, the people are different—we are different. Why must we carry someone else’s dream? Why not allow ourselves our own?”

His shoulders slump, his voice worn thin. “Darling, I have no idea what that dream might be. All my life I’ve felt charged with the mission of continuing what Grandad began, and now I feel… emptied. Drained. I can’t conjure a Plan B out of nothing.”

“You don’t need to,” I answer gently. “Look around you. This place could become a school—a school of wine making. A place where people from around the world come to learn, to touch the mystery of grapes and soil, to make a few bottles of their own to treasure and share. You could teach them, pass on knowledge, passion, enthusiasm. I could host them, as I’ve learned to do in our years of abundance. We have this house, this land. I don’t want to leave. I still want to live this life—but differently. We just need to turn the path.”

He looks at me with surprise. “How long have you been turning this over in your mind?”

“Since the villa was restored. Especially when the young restorers of the frescoes asked about wine making in California. Their curiosity made me see how many others might long to learn, to touch this ancient craft with their own hands.”

His voice cracks, stripped bare. “I am a failure, Jo. I don’t think I can make it anymore.”

“Then trust me, as I have trusted you all these years. We will begin simply, as a bed and breakfast. And by next year, the school will be ready.”

“And in the meantime? What am I to do for a year?”

“You will walk beside me,” I say quietly, “but looking in all directions. You will open your mind, and your heart, to change.”

At last he turns to me. The light has dimmed, but in his eyes something stirs, fragile as a flame. “Yes,” he whispers. “Maybe I will.”

And I watch him, as I have always done, but with a new gaze—seeing not only his failure, but the quiet seed of what may yet grow from it.