“All of it?” Saverio asked again.
“All of it,” came the answer from the other end of the line. “I’m sorry.” The dejected voice belonged to Saverio’s friend, Alfonso. “Maybe we can save a few gallons, but I checked all of them and they are either bad or very bad.”
Saverio could not contain his disappointment, but he was not surprised. This was the third year in a row that Alfonso called with the bad news that virtually all the wine they had made had spoiled.
“You don’t mind if I come by,” Saverio asked.
“No,” came the reply after a second’s hesitation. “Of course not.”
Saverio wanted to see it with his own eyes, smell it with his own nose, even though he knew there was virtually nothing you could do to save wine that was spoiling. You could always let it sit a few more weeks and pray that the smell of rotten egg and the taste of acetic acid wouldn’t take over completely. He had heard of paesani who added “powders” to try to reverse the spoilage, but he wouldn’t know where to begin. Besides, that stuff could make you sick.
In the end, he knew he would get stuck with another hundred bottles of vinegar that he wouldn’t know what to do with. He still had a few litres that Alfonso gave him from last year’s batch. The rest Alfonso flushed down the toilet. That’s what he said he did. Saverio hated to think about it, but he was beginning to doubt his friend. His cellar was cursed, or something else was going on. But what, Saverio wondered.
Saverio and Alfonso had connected through a mutual acquaintance and discovered that they came from the same town in Italy. It had been Alfonso’s idea to make wine together.
“I have all the equipment,” he told his younger friend – “the crusher, the press, the barrels. You buy your own demijohns, gallons and bottles, and, of course, your own grapes. We can be more efficient if we work together,” he had told Saverio confidently.
Alfonso had been in Montreal a decade by the time Saverio settled there in the late 1950s. In just a few years Alfonso had managed to save enough money to buy a house in Saint-Michel, the burgeoning neighbourhood north of Little Italy, where many Italians were moving to. The duplex, which he had paid for in cash, provided him, his wife Nina, and five teenage sons and daughters all the comforts. The rental income from the upstairs flat was an added bonus. Best of all, the house had a backyard for growing vegetables and a cantina for making wine.
Saverio’s cramped two-bedroom flat above a diner by the Jean-Talon Market in Little Italy did not afford him any of this. On summer nights the odour of restaurant food wafting from the kitchen vents fused with the noxious stench of rotting restaurant garbage by the back staircase. In winter, it was never warm enough because the insulation was so poor. His wife Zena and two young boys complained, but for now there was little they could do on his small salary.
“I don’t know,” Saverio had replied to Alfonso’s proposal, feigning uncertainty, but excited by the prospect. “What about Nina? Won’t she mind a stranger making wine in her basement?”
“Leave that to me,” Alfonso had assured him. “Besides, you’re not a stranger. We’re paesani!”
And so the pact was sealed. Saverio was excited to tell Zena the news. A standard thirty-six pound crate of fresh grapes would yield about ten litres of wine. At about three dollars a crate, it made economic sense. It would also avoid the hassle of buying wine at Quebec’s Commission des liqueurs where wine and liquor were sold from behind the counter, like prescription medication, thanks to the phoney morality of the Catholic Church.
Once, when Zena went to pick up a gallon of Saverio’s favourite Malbec, the short, bald man behind the counter asked her a bunch of questions. Did she live in the neighbourhood? Was she married? Were the little boys hers? Who was the wine for? Did her husband know she was buying wine? The man had enunciated the words to mimic an Italian accent. Did he think that by doing so his questions were less incomprehensible, Zena had wondered.
At the end of the interrogation the man disappeared behind a narrow passageway which led to the stacks where the different liquors were stored. He re-emerged many minutes later with a gallon of the wine in question, a hard expression on his face. Zena handed him the money, lifted the gallon from the countertop, and walked away without a word.
“What a stronzo,” Zena had said, as she recounted the incident to Saverio. “You would think that in such a modern city people wouldn’t stick their nose in other people’s business. This is worse than the shit-hole village we left behind,” she griped.
“The French-Canadians don’t know anything about wine,” Saverio said, swept away by his wife’s fury. “They only drink beer. Just give them a 24-case of Molson on a Friday night and they’re in heaven the entire weekend.” Now that the wine had spoiled again, there was no way to avoid going to the Commission.
These thoughts meandered through Saverio’s mind as he drove the matte-white 1960 Chevrolet Bel-Air he had bought second-hand from his cousin for 300 dollars – a considerable sum in 1964.
The weather was warm and pleasant for a Sunday morning in late March. The sidewalks were lined with thin streaks of water from melting snow piled on front yards.
Saverio thought about all the hours of work that had gone into producing vinegar, again! Another 10 crates and nearly 40 dollars – more than a week’s wage – literally down the drain.
All three years, he and Alfonso had bought the grapes together at the Jean-Talon Market in September, 10 crates each. They had loaded them into Saverio’s Bel-Air – Alfonso didn’t own a car – and carried them one-by-one down the narrow staircase to Alfonso’s cellar. They had taken turns emptying the contents of each crate into Alfonso’s slightly rusted crusher and turning the crank, as the crusher sat atop one or the other of the two wooden barrels they used as fermenters.
The situation was perplexing. How can must turn into vinegar three years in a row? Was it something about the grapes? The equipment? The air in Alfonso’s cellar? Everything Saverio knew about making wine told him it shouldn’t happen. The must was fine when they transferred it from the demijohns into gallons shortly into the new year. Yet, once again, his friend had called with the bad news.
Saverio stepped out of his car, climbed the four steps leading to Alfonso’s house, and rang the doorbell.
Nina opened the door, her faced flushed from her Sunday morning toils in the kitchen.
“Alfonso is downstairs,” she said, leading the way. “Would you like a coffee?”
“No, thanks,” Saverio replied. “I’ve had a couple already.”
“Are you sure?” she insisted.
“No, really. I’m fine, thanks,” he said as he headed down the stairs.
Alfonso’s cellar was small but functional. Situated under the back porch, its thick cement walls had been poured as part of the foundation of the house. Even in summer, the temperature was cool, which was perfect for storing wine. The unfinished grey dirt and gravel floor kept the air damp, and the light of the single bulb hanging by a wire socket was dim but sufficient.
A crude wooden rack with six shelves rested unsteadily against the wall to the left of the entrance. Alfonso had fashioned it himself from scraps of wood he had filched from home construction sites in the area. Another similar rack stood alongside the wall perpendicular to the first, the sides of the two racks almost touching. On the shelves were the gallons with all the wine the two men had made. The black caps of those on the highest shelf of each rack nearly touched the concrete ceiling.
Alfonso, his back to the door, was pouring wine from a gallon into two glasses resting on a wooden stool in the middle of the cellar. The stool’s three legs extended diagonally outward beyond the perimeter of the seat.
“Oh, Sav. There you are!” Alfonso exclaimed, when he saw his friend. He put the gallon on the stool and handed Saverio a glass. “I came down this morning to check on things,” he continued. “I opened one gallon, then another, all of them… The smell of vinegar hit me right away.” He shrugged.
Saverio did not have to taste the wine in the glass to know it was spoiled. The scent of vinegar was obvious. He stood motionless by the doorway, gazing at all the gallons on the racks and wondering.
It wouldn’t be hard to turn one gallon of good wine bad. Just expose it to air for a few days or taint it with a little vinegar. You could also mix equal parts of wines of different temperatures for near-instant vinegar. The thought hardened in Saverio’s mind. But why? To cheat a man of a few dollars’ worth of grapes? But what if he was wrong? What if all the wine had, in fact, spoiled naturally? Still, the question remained. How?
“I am very sorry,” Alfonso said, trying to sound convincing. “I don’t know how this happened again. Maybe it’s the grapes we’ve been buying.”
Saverio remained silent, staring pensively at his friend.
“I know how to make wine,” Alfonso said, breaking the silence. “I’m a good winemaker,” he continued, apologetic and nervous at the same time.
“I believe you,” Saverio finally replied.
Alfonso let out a long, quiet sigh, relieved by Saverio’s words.
“But what you are also,” Saverio said, “is a bad liar.”
“What?” Alfonso was startled.
“You’re a bad liar,” Saverio repeated calmly.
Alfonso bristled at the thought of what Saverio might do.
“But… I…” said Alfonso, feigning incomprehension. “This morning… when I came down…” He stopped mid-sentence. “All of them… I checked every… Smell the gallon, smell it,” Alfonso insisted. His voice was loud but thin. He picked up the gallon that was on the stool.
Now Saverio knew for sure. He turned to leave.
Alfonso stepped forward to thrust the gallon of spoiled wine towards Saverio when his foot caught one of the legs of the stool. The stool tipped over causing the glasses of vinegar to crash to the floor. Off-balance as he caught the stool, Alfonso lunged forward involuntarily and out of control, smashing his shoulder against the edge of the wine rack that was by the door.
The gallons on the shelves clanked as the rack bounced hard off the wall behind it. Then it swung forward in slow motion. For a moment it seemed that it would steady itself. But before Alfonso could regain his balance, the rack swung past the point of no return and crashed to the floor. On the way down, its top edge caught the shelves of the other rack, causing it to collapse, as well. All the gallons were shattered to smithereens, their ruby liquid flowing onto the cellar floor. Grazed by one of the falling racks, the light bulb on the wire socket cast crazy shadows against the walls of the cellar as it swung back and forth.
The flood lasted only a few moments. Almost immediately the liquid was absorbed deep beneath the dirt and gravel surface. The sweet aroma of fresh wine saturated the air.
Looking away from Alfonso, Saverio shook his head in disgust.
In a matter of days, the deep-laden liquid would turn to vinegar. Its stench would permeate the air for years, making the cellar useless for winemaking.
Alfonso staggered to his feet, a look of defeat on his face.
Saverio turned and walked out.
“The Wine Cellar” also appears in A Literary Harvest: Canadian Writing About Wine and Other Libations (Longbridge Books, 2024)
Domenic Cusmano is a writer, editor, publisher, literary translator, and communication professional. He is co-founder and publisher of Accenti Magazine. His short stories and essays have been published in anthologies in Canada, Italy and the United States. His English translation of Francesco Filippi’s Noi Pero Gli Abbiamo Fatto Le Strade, Le colonie italiane tra bugie, razzismi et amnesie was published by Baraka Books in 2024 under the title But We Built Roads for Them: The Lies, Racism, and Amnesia that Bury Italy’s Colonial Past.
