At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [46]
Lori relayed her idea of turning the old manor into a bed-and-breakfast, and Paul and Derrick returned so much attentive enthusiasm that Cici finally had to beg, “Please, you two! Don’t encourage her.”
“Well, all I know is that if you served meals like this to your guests you’d have a virtual gold mine.” Derrick spread thick purple jam on yet another buttered biscuit. “Bridget, what is this jam? It tastes like . . .” Derrick bit into the biscuit. “Wait, I’ve got it . . . Pinot noir! That’s what it tastes like.”
Bridget laughed as she got up to help Ida Mae with dessert. “Maybe it is. I made it out of the grapes from the vineyard out back.”
“Pinot noir jam,” mused Derrick. “Now there’s something you could bottle and sell.”
Lori’s eyes took on a speculative light. “Say, that’s right. All those little specialty shops in Washington and Baltimore are just filled with gourmet delicacies like that. They get ten or twelve dollars a jar!” She twisted in her chair. “Aunt Bridget! Have you ever thought about that?”
Paul murmured to Cici, “These children are consumed with high finance, aren’t they?”
And Cici sighed in return, “Aren’t we all?”
Bridget returned from the kitchen with a bubbling peach cobbler made from the peaches they had frozen last year from their own trees. Ida Mae followed with the coffeepot. “No, I haven’t thought about that, Lori,” she said. “But if you’re willing to do the kind of work it would take to get those grapevines under control, we can certainly give it a try.”
“We could make cabernet jam and chardonnay jam and pinot grigio jam . . .”
“Only if you have cabernet and chardonnay and pinot grapes,” Derrick pointed out.
“Of course,” Bridget went on, dishing up the cobbler, “you’ll have to be careful of snakes—they love to hide out in grapevines—and remember the wasps last year, girls?”
Lori said cautiously, “Snakes?”
“Besides,” Cici added, “I think we’d have to harvest a lot more grapes than we have to turn jam making into a commercial venture.”
“They used to make wine here,” Lori pointed out. “How can there be enough grapes for wine and not for jam?”
Paul said, “I had no idea the vineyard was still here.”
“If you could call it that,” Bridget said.
“It’s a mess,” Lindsay admitted, “just like the orchard. When we first moved in, I planned to have all the gardens and the orchard and the vineyard cleared out and trimmed back and looking like a picture postcard by now. But it’s a lot of land, and a lot of work.”
“But you can still get grapes,” Lori pointed out, “from tangled vines.”
Paul smiled and toasted her with a jam-spread biscuit. “True enough, princess. Maybe after lunch you’ll take me on a tour and we’ll see just how much jam is left on those vines.”
Derrick, glancing around the table, cleared his throat. “And now that the subject has turned, inevitably, once again, to wine . . .” He looked questioningly at Cici.
She smiled. “Okay, Derrick, let’s have it. Noah . . .” She reached across the table to tap his arm. “It’s impolite to listen to headphones at the table. Ida Mae, wait. This concerns you, too.”
Ida Mae, looking impatient, stood by the swinging door to the kitchen with her arms folded. Noah, equally impatient, removed the earphones and dug into his peach cobbler. Paul looked longingly at his own cobbler, but gave his partner his attention. Derrick cleared his throat.
“The good news is,” he said, “the broker was able to sell your wine.”
The three ladies shared a hopeful look.
“The bad news is,” Derrick went on, “it wasn’t for as much as we’d hoped.” He reached into his vest pocket. “I have your check.” He removed an envelope, hesitated a moment, and passed it to Cici.
“The wine itself is still collectible,” Derrick went on quickly. “And the fact that this was the last bottle of a popular vintage makes it even more so. Still . . . the eight thousand dollars that was paid for the other bottle was a fluke, I’m afraid.”
Cici looked inside the envelope, smiled, and passed the envelope to Lindsay.
“How much?” Lindsay asked before she looked inside.