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A Good Year

By: Pajman



Below is my own personal diary. I started a week after I turned 18. It was meant then to be a record for myself of what I thought then would be the craziest week of my life. How wrong I was. I'm 19 now, and what you're about to read is how I slept with no less then 365 men in 365 days. A different man a day. 

As you'll soon see, sometimes I slept with men repeatedly, and sometimes with multiple people at once- but not a day passed without a new dick. 

You may not believe this is a true record of my last year, you might think I'm stretching the truth or just making it all up- but I'm not. The only thing I have change is the names- except mine. I really am Kim. Oh- and I had to sort of 'novelize' it so it's readable. So sometimes I explained things to the reader that I obviously would not need to explain to myself. 

Day one. My Birthday.

Today I became legal. Since I was 13 my mum reminded me every birthday not to have sex until I was an adult, until I was 18. She warned me of all the dangers heartaches and risks and she told me sex was not a Childs decision.

I love my mum, and I know she's smarter then I am. So I promised not to have sex till I was 18- and I meant it. But for the last year I hated that I had. I was in love with my boyfriend, Josh -- or thought I was. In the end he fucked a slut from school because I wouldn't spread my legs for him. 

But I'd become an adult. If I decided to fuck someone, I could, and I though I probably would. 

The only problem with that is my family wants to spend the whole day celebrating. I'm not sure when I'll be alone long enough to fuck anyone. But I decided to play it by ear, after all, it didn't have to be my 18th birthday that I lost my virginity, any of the many days after would probably do. 

The party was a big one, I had invited all my friends from school, work and netball and mum had invited the extended family as well as our neighbors and her friends. There had to be a hundred people there. It was a hot day so daddy cooked a barbeque and everyone jumped in the pool. There were plenty of hot guys there.

I showed off my hot body at the pool as much as I could, I wore my new 2 piece bikini and let all the boys cope an eyeful of my huge firm milky tits. I was glad to see Derrick checking out my curves, he's my friends older brother- now in collage- and he's completely hot. I toyed with the idea of letting him be my first. 

One of my girlfriends whispered into my ear that Billy was checking me out. I turned and looked towards him and our eyes locked for a moment, before he got embarrassed and looked away. He was sitting on the side of the pool and I could see his prick pressing into his swimmers. Me and he girls both giggled. Billy was only week or two older then me and he lived next door, he was a total computer geek- he had no idea how to even talk to girls.

Everyone ate Daddy's food and sat around the table talking about me, mostly embarrassing stories of when I was 5 or 6. And then I got to open presents. As much as I loved the attention I snuck back into the house for some booze, It was legal for me to drink now I was 18, but I was still sure daddy wouldn't like it. 

As I stood in the kitchen with the fridge door open, sculling back my second cold beer I heard the backdoor open. I ignored it, I wasn't doing anything wrong. With me standing in front of the open fridge the way past me into the kitchen was almost completely blocked, but someone squeezed past me. 

Normally when someone squeezes past u like this it's acceptable to put a hand on them as you pass- for balance and to reassure them. It could even be acceptable to do it on someone's ass if you knew them well enough, but I wasn't expecting anyone to squeeze my ass as the walked past. It gave me goosebumps. 

I turned to face whoever it was as he passed by, and was shocked to see my older cousin. 'Was that just a playful cousin thing? Or is my cousin coming onto me?', he smiled coyly at me but I still couldn't read his intensions. At that moment I was interrupted by three of my girlfriends who literally dragged me away. 

The party eventually dwindled, but 20 or so people hung about to watch movies with us and play pictionary. I wanted to go out drinking in town, but mum quite sternly reminded me some of these guests had traveled interstate to see me today- and that I should go drinking next weekend. 

I went to bed happy, but a little annoyed. I didn't get the chance to fuck anyone. 

Now I forgot to mention one important person at my party. Garry. Garry is an old friend of my dads, they both served in Desert storm together. Garry saved my dad's life once (I don't know the details) during the war, so he's treated like family, better then family really. We all call him Uncle Garry. 

Garry's one of those guys who went to war and came back a different person, he can't hold a job or a relationship cause he gets these flashbacks or gets really depressed. Whenever things go badly for him he moves in here for a few months and we all look after him. 

This was one of the few times I had seen him happy. He had a job at a warehouse and dad thought he had a girlfriend (even though he refused to admit it) and he brought me an awesome present (a large silver framed mirror). I'm telling you this because about a half hour after I fell to sleep he crept into my bedroom.

I was fast asleep after a day of food, booze and sun. I was exhausted. Garry (or so he told me later) carefully snuck into the room after he could hear the house had gone to sleep, and he simply stood there looking at me as I slept. For five minutes he stood there, watching me breath and staring at the bits of my body exposed from under my covers (I sleep naked).

He moved over to the bed and grabbed the sheets. I was to tired to realize anything had changed. I'm blond, with shoulder length hair and white skin (although the sun the day had made me more pink then white), I'm not a stick-figure-model -- I have some fat on my bones but also a big round ass and large breasts. And that was what he saw when he looked at my naked body curled up on the bed. 

One of his hands reached out and stroked my thigh with a feather touch. In my sleep I began to dream of Derrick and of his hand on my thigh, I let out a soft involuntary moan. Encouraged by my moan he used both his hands to caress my body. He explored my legs, my butt, my waist and eventually settled on gently rubbing my breasts. 

I was still sleeping, and still thinking of Derrick's hands, dreaming that Garry was Derrick. In my dream I had seduced him, and I was guiding his hands. He rubbed my tits in awe and bent down to suck on my nipple. The sensation was amazing and I remember thinking how this was just a dream and I couldn't wait to feel this for real. 

His sucking became more and more urgent, and he sensed I was waking. He worried what would happen when I woke, but instead of this making him retreat it drove him to move forward all the faster. He carefully rolled me aside onto my back and gently opened my legs.

In my dreams I kissed derrick and layed on my back for him, opening my legs. I gasped as I felt his hard cock press into my moist pussy. I gasped in surprise, in pleasure, and I began to realize it wasn't all a dream. Someone was pressing their hard dick inside me. 

For a few long moments I wasn't sure where I was, my mind raced with scenarios. I had been kidnapped and was tied up in someone's dungeon, or maybe someone had broken into our home and was raping me as they robbed us. When I realized these ideas both turned me on more then they scared me I was a little disgusted with myself.

I felt him push his cock in deeper, pushing against my cherry and I considered keeping my eyes closed and letting some mystery man take my virginity. But curiosity got the better of me. 

Staring back at me were Garry's lustful eyes. His hands were pushed into the pillow on either side of my head and he was thrusting deeper inside of me. He wasn't an unattractive man, I had fantasized about him for a while when I was about 16, but he was not who I pictured as my first man. 

It was to late, as I considered weather or not to let him get far enough inside me- he did. I could feel his hard cock thrust me open, stretching my pussy to accommodate his monster. I gasped and bit my bottom lip, I was unsure I could handle it, he was pushing inside of me to quickly- he was too big. I didn't realize it but I had begun to shake my head. 

He slowed his thrusting, and looked me in the eyes. He even gently brushed my cheek with the back of his hand- like I was his little princess. He kissed me on the lips and then whispered into my ear. 'Babe, don't fight it. The first time is never easy but if you accept me into you it can become so much more enjoyable for you'.

He didn't say anything about the new girlfriend of his who he was cheating on, he didn't apologize for putting his cock into me or say anything about the fact he was ment to be my daddy's best friend. He just said relax. 

The deed was done, no one else could take my cherry now- so I decided to take his advise. I nodded and he instantly picked his pace, pounding me over and over with his cock. It hurt, but also felt good, and I was slowly able to take more and more of him inside me. 

I began to make little moans, soon I was moaning more and more loudly and he had to put a hand over my mouth to stop the whole house hearing it. But his cock never missed a beat, if anything it got faster and harder as it slide in and out of my wet pussy. 

"I've watched you for a long time" He whispered into my ear. "You were forbidden fruit, you still are- but seeing you in that skimpy outfit today made me realize I had to be the man to take your innocence. "

He was looking at me with such adoration, with genuine elation of finally having me all to himself. I smiled back at him, I felt pleased I could make this man- my 'uncle', a man who had so much unhappiness in his life- fulfill this dream. I kissed him on the lips, sliding my tongue inside his mouth. He responded by kissing me passionately, but tenderly and by using a hand to rub and twist my nipple. I moaned in his mouth. 

His cock was pounding my cunt so hard now that the bed was shaking, I could feel an orgasm building somewhere inside me and I wrapped my arms around him. Each thrust of his manhood inside me made my head swim, as if I was passing out for a brief moment each time he pushed his deepest into me. 

Then suddenly he slide it out of me. For a moment I was very confused, and upset but he walked to the head of the bed and dangled his cock in my face. It smelt like my pussy, and it was thick and long, with a slight curve like a pirate sword. I knew what he wanted before he told me, and I wanted it too. 

"I can't risk cuming in your pussy -- as much as I'd love to- so your going to learn about sucking cock."

With no other warning he pushed it forward and rested the bottom of his helmet on my bottom lip, then he slid it forward into my waiting mouth. It tasted gross and intoxicating at the same time, and I felt a hunger for it in my belly. I'd never sucked a cock before, or even seen one, but my instinct was powerful and I let my lusts go to work on it. 

He moaned almost instantly. So far so good I remember thinking. I tried to lean my head back and open my throat, I pulled my lips over my teeth so I wouldn't bite him and then I wrapped my hand around the base of his warm cock so I wouldn't have to swallow the whole thing. Just 6 inches was hard enough, without tackling the rest. 

I read once in a Cleo that you should suck like you're trying to get a gold ball out of a garden hose, that's what I did. I sucked hard, and I sucked fast, and when I needed to breath a little I licked around his head, or along his cock from the balls to his cock-hole. 

Now it was him moaning so loud the house might wake, but it was because he was cuming. He'd only lasted about seven or 8 strokes in my mouth before his cock gushed a big load of hot steamy cum into my mouth. I couldn't take it all and I spat his cock and hic cum out- and it all spilled onto my naked boobs. 

He smiled, but a guilty look suddenly appeared on his face. He pulled up his pants and fled the room leaving me covered in his cock juice and without an orgasm. I had to bite my tongue not you yell 'Come back here and finish me off!'- dad would not have been impressed. 

So instead I let my fingers play with my clit. I had been real close before, so it didn't take long to reach the brink again. I don't know what possessed me to do it that first time, but as I began to cum I scooped a big wad of his cum off my tits and sucked it off my finger. 

After the orgasm rocked my body I lay back and considered what had just happened. I had been fucked in my sleep by my daddy's best friend. I woke up with a cock inside me and accepted it. Was I a Slut? A Nympho? Or was this normal? Did everyone do this, but just not talk about it- like a universal dirty secret. 

As great as that had been, the orgasm had not been brought on by sex with a man. Just before I fell to sleep I promised myself I would fuck someone else soon, and this time I wouldn't let them leave until I came by their hand (or cock or tongue-or whatever!).

A Good Year



Writers block is a total bastard for any author. You start with a brilliant idea for a story and somewhere along the line it no longer seems brilliant. The flow stops, the ideas dry up, and all that you are left with are scattered stagnant pools of words. 

I guess my biggest problem is that I try to come up with different scenarios for each of my stories. Finding a new and different one is getting increasingly difficult. I have tried on several occasions to use different story devices, some work, some don't, some that I thought worked well enough were crucified by my readers, while others that I thought long and hard about before posting were praised. I have been tempted on a number of occasions to come up with a successful formula and stick to it, but if I wanted to do that I would be writing for a publisher like Mills and Boon who use the same formula for just about every story that they publish, change the name and occupation of the protagonists, put your mind into neutral and produce soppy romances, boring, but making shit loads of money.

This was the dilemma facing me one morning some time ago. I had my usual light bulb moment in the early hours, a story had formed. It was complete, it had a beginning, a middle and an end. My characters were well formed in my mind, who they were, what they did and why, I even had names for them all. Sometimes these light bulbs were turned on by a single thought, or even a comment made to me at some time in my past that had resurfaced in my memory. Sometimes there was a beginning and nothing else, sometimes and ending only, whatever the catalyst, in my mind, at that moment, the finished product was a clear vision.

My motivation to get out of bed that morning and head for my study, to crank up my computer and begin, was tempered by the fact that this was the middle of a particularly cold winter, and my bed was warm and my study cold.

By the time that I'd consumed my breakfast and taken my dogs for their early morning stroll and toilet break on the beach (don't worry, I pick up after them), I'd just about forgotten everything that was so clear a couple of hours earlier. Try as I might it just wasn't happening for me. A rough draft of the storyline might help, but no, I remembered the beginning and the ending, but the stuff in the middle eluded me. Develop the characters and see whether that helps, but apart from the name that I'd assigned to my hero, the other names failed to materialise.

The process of actually writing a story is as varied as the thought process that kicks it off. There are times, such as this morning when it's cold and miserable outside and I'm not able to do the things that I had planned, when I find that I can set aside blocks of time for the sole purpose of writing. If the mind is in gear, and the story is fresh in my mind, it can flow as fast as I can type, sometimes faster, which leads to more than a few typos, and my output is prodigious, other times I can find it difficult to achieve anything of value. 

Nothing for it but to save what little I have and file it, along with several other false starts, in the vain hope that inspiration would return.

Okay, what I have for this story so far comes from two different sources, both connected with the wine industry here in Australia, in particular the McLaren Vale district of South Australia. The first concerns aspects of the region. My main character is Jenny Blaylock, a young girl recently graduated from Willunga High School and in her gap year before beginning her wine making studies at Roseworthy College (part of Adelaide University). Willunga High has wine making as part of its curriculum, and the students produce wine each year. She is the daughter of a second generation wine making family, although her family have been growing grapes in the district for over a hundred years. Her father Greg is also a viticulturist, and the product that they produce is entirely their responsibility, from the vineyard to the bottle. This then is the background for this story. 

The other source is also connected to the wine industry. On a visit to the Coonawarra region in the south east of South Australia, I was speaking with a young French winemaker. "Why are you here in Australia making wine?" I asked her.

"Because here you have freedom." She said. "You can do things that we are not able to do back in France,"

And this sums up the industry here, we are not bound by tradition, we have had to find ways of overcoming the variable factors that impact on the industry, from climate and weather to government policies such as the wine with-holding tax, that has forced a quantum shift in production techniques, to the ever-changing tastes of the consumers. We are driven by the consumer rather than dictating what the consumer should drink.

So it is, two sources, the first a love of wine, in particular, red wine, to be specific McLaren Vale Shiraz, and the second a comment, that have led to a story based on them both: 

*****

A GOOD YEAR

"Why are you picking these grapes now?" I spat the grape onto the ground in front of me.

"What do you mean why are we picking them now? We always begin the harvest at this time." His name was Pierre, this was the vineyard of his family's Chateau, and he was in charge of the harvesting of the grapes.

"But they are not fully ripe, too acidic, and to make really good wine you have to pick them when they are fully ripe and the sugar content is at its peak." I spoke from experience, having grown up with viticulture and winemaking. My name is Jenny Blaylock and I am spending my gap year in France, gaining experience in traditional winemaking before I start my Oenology course at the University of Adelaide's Roseworthy campus, where my father had trained, before he took over the family vineyards and winery.

The wine world has at last acknowledged the status of Roseworthy in producing winemakers who are instrumental in changing the way wine is produced and my father has taken it a step further in applying a new technology to the vineyards.

Up until recently it had been a holiday. With my friends, Susie and Meg, I had arrived in London six months ago and we had done most of the tourist things, drank a little too much too often than was good for us, watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, took in a couple of West End shows for the cultural side of it, and off to Paris on the train for some serious shopping and partying.

After a week in Paris, Susie and Meg had decided that they would never learn French well enough to stay there for very long, and were prepared to head back to London when we met them. We heard the English accents first and then met Timothy, Nigel and Harry, three banking types in Paris for a weekend of debauchery. They invited us to join them, Susie and Meg were all for it, but I wasn't so sure, but I went along for the ride so to speak.

We found ourselves in Nigel's hotel room, Susie and Meg were right off their faces and it wasn't long before their clothes were scattered all over the floor and they were being mauled by all three guys. "Come on Jenny, don't be such a wimp." Meg had spat out a cock long enough to issue the invite. She had another cock jammed into her pussy and was obviously having a good time, as for me this sort of thing, waking up in the morning with a monster hangover and cum all over you, wasn't my idea of fun. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against sex, in fact I enjoy it, but on my terms and one thing that I do not enjoy is to have too much to drink and lose control of the situation. Another thing I hate is having to fight off some drunken slob who's intent on fucking me regardless of what I think.

Harry made a half hearted attempt at getting me to join them, if you can call groping me between the legs an attempt, no finesse at all, but I declined and he went back to Meg's mouth. At some ungodly hour in the morning I woke and felt someone grab my legs and pull them apart while another pair of hands tore my panties aside and fingers pushed roughly into my pussy. "Get the fuck off me!"

"Come on, you know you want it, you Aussie girls are all the same, you might protest at first, but in the end you want it so bad." He was naked and, while his cock wasn't fully hard, he was about to shove it into me. I managed to get my leg free from whoever was holding it and I brought my knee up into his groin as hard as I could. "Fucking hell!" he cried between sobs, "How could you let her do that?" He rolled off me clutching himself.

"You others will be in for the same treatment if you try anything." I gathered my gear and left. 

Susie and Meg staggered into our room mid afternoon looking like death stoked up. "What happened to you? We woke up this morning and the boys said something about Harry having to hold an ice pack to his balls because of you."

"They tried to rape me." I didn't want to elaborate further.

"We were having a good time."

"You two were dead to the world and they were still up for action, I think they were on speed or something, so they thought that they would fuck me while I was asleep. Unfortunately for Harry I woke up and kneed him. If I could have done the same to all of them I would have."

"Yeah well, when we and they eventually came to, they shoved us out into the hall and chucked our clothes out after us, we had to get dressed in the hallway. Do you realise how busy those hotels are? There were people everywhere thinking that we were sluts." She realised what she had said. "Which I suppose we were."

A couple of days later they met a couple of Spanish guys and left me in Paris to follow them to Spain, which left me to implement my plan to travel to the wine regions and find work in the vineyards. There was little to do in the actual vineyards until the harvest but I was able to find work in the cellars as the vignerons prepared for the harvest, and this was how I found myself here in Chateau Rombault in the Cote De Rhone region of France. I had helped prepare the presses for the crush, the vats for fermentation and the barrels for aging, and now I was walking through the vines with Pierre. 

"What do you know of winemaking?" He seemed offended at my criticism of his tradition, I was being challenged to prove that I wasn't just another backpacker working my way through Europe as a grape picker. I had only just started in this vineyard so I guess he could be forgiven for his scepticism.

"My father is a viticulturist, and a vigneron, and has been producing award winning wines for as long as I can remember, he even has a couple of Intervin gold medals to his name." That should impress him.

"My family has been making wines here for centuries, long before they even had grapes in Australia."

"And I bet you have been making wines the same way all of that time. When everything works for you your wines will be good, not great, just good, and when things are not perfect you produce piss de chat, vinegar."

"If you are so knowledgeable what would you do?"

"By the taste of that grape I would say that it is about 10 Baume and you need it to be closer to 12 before you pick it. I would wait for two or three weeks before I picked these grapes."

"But if we wait it might rain and spoil the grapes."

"How old are these vines?"

"Two, maybe three, hundred years."

"And do you irrigate them?"

"No."

"Then you have nothing to worry about."

"I think maybe you should speak to my father, he is the vigneron, and he gives the orders." Pierre had come to the conclusion that he was never going to win this argument and would be happy to pass me on to someone with a greater knowledge. 

And so I found myself sitting in the cool of the cellars of Chateau Rombault talking to Pierre's father. He would have been around fifty years old and had that leathery face of a man who spent most of his life under the hot sun. "Pierre tells me that you disagree with our methods."

"Yes Sir, I do."

"What experience do you have that allows you to comment, have you made wine yourself?"

"Yes, in fact I have. My father allowed me to make wine for the past two years from the vineyard that he planted the year that I was born."

"Pah! The grapes are far too young to produce good wine, the vines must be at least one hundred years old."

"Not so. These vines are deep rooted and do not require irrigation, they have been heavily pruned so that all of their energy is in the fruit and not in the vine. If you wish to try my wine I have a bottle of it in my luggage."

The expression on both of their faces when I came back with the bottle was one of polite condescension. They would try it before telling me it was garbage. I pulled the cork from the bottle. "I see that you still use the cork, I thought that all of the wines from Australia come in screw top bottles."

This is where this story ground to a halt. I could't decide whether to continue with the romance, or to give it context with a background into the wine industry, because wine was central to the story. After looking at the story title for months as I scrolled through my saved files, the story line began to develop, but not as originally conceived. I chose the latter course, mainly because it gave more grounding to the main characters.

"Not all. The problem with the corks is that the inside of the bottle neck is not perfectly cylindrical, and the cork doesn't always seal properly allowing the wine to spoil, we used to lose between ten and twelve percent of our wines from spoilage. There are two solutions to this problem, the first is to use screw caps and the other is to source better bottles. My father found a bottle maker who is able to produce bottles with close to perfect inside necks, so we still use corks." I poured a small amount into each of the three glasses that sat on the bench. The older man raised his glass to his nose and sniffed the wine, a puzzled look came over his face. He took a sip of the wine and swirled it around his mouth, the look remained. He picked up the bottle and read the back label. 'This Shiraz is produced from a small parcel of vines in our McLaren Vale vineyard that was planted in 1983 using a revolutionary new viticulture technique. The grapes were picked when fully ripe and the sugars had reached their peak. The juice was fermented on the skins in open vats that have a system to circulate the juice under the must to control the rate of fermentation. The juice is then extracted using a traditional basket press before being placed in controlled temperature stainless steel vats to complete fermentation for 2 to 3 months. It was then placed in year old French oak casks to age for 18 months, then a further 12 months in new American oak before bottling. The wine was bottle aged for a further 12 months before release.' The label was signed 'Jennifer Blaylock, Winemaker'.

"You made this wine?"

"Yes. My father acted as consultant in that, if I had a problem he gave me advice, but I did all the work myself."

"This wine is from grapes less than twenty-five years old, impossible!"

"Not only is it possible but it is true. Tell me what do you think?"

"It is good, very good." He picked up the bottle and filled all three glasses. We drank in silence.

"Could it be that this young girl from the other side of the world can teach you something of winemaking?" Pierre asked.

His father ignored the comment. "You mentioned that your father used a new technique in the vineyard that produced this wine, what is that?"

"About thirty years ago there was a storm with heavy rain and my grandfather noticed that the grapes on the old vines were not as affected as those on the young drip irrigated vines, which were badly affected, and the berries began to burst before they could be picked. He lost a large percentage of his crop and that got him thinking, so he had some core samples taken from next to the main trunk of both the new and old vines. From those samples he found that the main roots of the old vines were very deep into the water table, and they had very few surface roots so the rain didn't go into the vines, at least not until after harvest. The younger vines, because they had been drip irrigated, had a root system that was close to the surface, and they were affected by the rain almost immediately. He found that they are also more susceptible to the hot surface temperatures of the soil that we experience in the summer, sometimes as high as 45 degrees and the berries would dry up and not produce as much juice."

"My father thought about this problem and worked on the principle that new vines should be deep rooted so that the roots were in the water table and not at the surface like traditionally planted vines. If the roots went directly into a water supply there would be no need for irrigation. It took a while, and much experimentation, but finally a solution was found."

"The vines for the new vineyard were propagated in long bio-degradable tubes and the roots were encouraged to travel at least a metre and a half to find water. When first propogated, he created a false water table some 20 centimetres below the surface. As the roots grew down, he raised the tube to encourage the roots to follow the water table. The vines were two years old before they were ready to plant and the roots were hanging out the bottom of the tubes. You see, the soil in the vineyard is a layer of heavy clay over limestone, it is in and under this limestone that the water sits, so what he did was to bore down into the water table for each vine tube to sit in. Most of the rain in McLaren Vale is winter rain and that is when the vines are dormant, so they have no need for surface roots. The roots went into the water table and the tube eventually degraded into the soil. The other benefit of this technique is that the water that is pumped through the drippers comes from a bore that has a meter on it and we have to pay for water usage, while the water that the roots absorb from the water table cannot be measured, so it cost us nothing."

"We got our first pickable crop four years after the vines were planted, and the juice was blended with other juice because it wasn't ready to stand on its own. Father wouldn't allow me to make wine purely from that vineyard until the vines were fifteen years old. Because the vines were planted the year that I was born, he decided that I should be given the opportunity, if I wanted it, to make the wine from it. I wanted that opportunity, and what you have here is the result of that first vintage. What do you think of it?"

"Your wine is good, it is different from ours, there doesn't seem to be very much tannin in it."

"That is the Australian way with wines, they are fruit driven, the berries de-stemmed so the fermentation is on skin only. I didn't want the oak influence to be intrusive, which is why only year old casks are used for the initial maturation, and then into new oak to soften the palate. The oak influence is softer, more subtle, it is the fruit that is important, why would you grow good grapes just to kill the flavours with tannins?"

"But the tannins are important in the aging process."

"Too much tannin results in wines that are dominated by it, they are thin and there is no fruit flavour to them. Everything about the wines that we, and most Australian winemakers produce, is that it all begins in the vineyard. The vines are monitored to ensure that they have water when it is needed although this is less important with our deep rooted vines, these are dry grown and not irrigated, so water is there at the time when the new growth is happening and after the berry set, they have all the water that they need. The grapes are picked when the sugar is at the level that we want for the wine that we produce, the grapes for this wine are hand picked to ensure that the berries are not damaged before they are crushed. Because of the uncontrolled nature of the wild yeast, the fermentation is controlled by killing all of the wild yeast before crushing, and adding a controlled amount of yeast to achieve the right balance. It is all about balance, the wine is allowed just enough time on oak to balance it before it is bottled. Because this is a premium wine we allow an extra year of bottle age before it is released, although it could be drunk a year earlier. By controlling the process in this way, the Australian wine industry has gained a reputation for producing consistently very good wines year after year, whether the weather is favourable or not."




A Good Year



"Why then are you here? What can we teach you that your university cannot?"

"While what is taught is good to maintain consistent high quality for volume production there is still a place for a combination of traditional and modern methods in the production of premium boutique wines such as we produce in our winery. There is much to learn from tradition." That seemed to please him.

He walked off into the depths of the cellars and returned with a bottle in his hand. Pulling the cork he poured some into my glass and handed it to me. I looked at the colour and was expecting the worst, it had a slightly brown tinge to it. I picked up the cork and sniffed it, it had a slight musty smell to it, and close inspection revealed a thin line of wine the full length of it. Without comment I handed him the cork. "I haven't tasted this wine yet, but its smell and the cork tells me that I will be disappointed with it." I took a sip. "I was right, it has oxidised, it is bad."

He took the glass from me and tasted the wine. In disgust he spat it out. "You are right, it is bad."

"We are losing less than one percent of our production now. My father believes that the use of screw caps will prove to be both a blessing and a curse. It will preserve the wine so that in ten years they will be as good as when they were bottled, but they will not get any better. Good wine needs to age, the flavours need to develop and that is why we still use corks, we believe they allow the wine to age. We have a lot of money riding on this."

"What you say is not the way that we have made wines for generations, we see no need to change the way that we do things."

"If you are happy with your wines then don't, I am not going to tell you that I am right and you are wrong, because wines that I like, you may not like. Wines are a subjective thing, one of our winemakers told me once that price and reputation count for nothing; if you like the wine, buy it, if you don't like it then don't buy it."

"Where do you sell your wines?"

"Mainly through our cellar door and mail order, we have an extensive mailing list, and we supply one specialist retailer in each capitol city, although we have found lately that we have to restrict our supplies to this market because we don't make enough to give them what they want."

Pierre and I became inseparable, we spent time in the cellars tasting wines, we spent time in the vineyards testing the grapes and I was invited to eat with the family and given a room in the family house, I had become part of the family. Pierre's mother was a brilliant cook and my clothes were beginning to shrink.

A couple of days before the grapes were ready to pick Pierre and I were in the cellars watching the workers finish the cleaning of the press and the fermentation vats in readiness for the harvest. "Jenny," He took me into a dark corner behind some casks and out of sight of the workers, his arms were around me and his face was centimetres from mine. He saw me glance at the mattress on the floor. "This has been here for several generations but until recently it was a straw filled palliasse and not comfortable, so I had a mattress put here. I was conceived in this corner, it is tradition."

"I hope that you don't intend to get me pregnant here." I was going to add that it would be impossible but his lips got in the way again, and when he stopped kissing me the subject had changed.

"It is going to be very busy when we begin to crush, and we will not have this time with each other for some weeks. I wish to spend all of the available time with you, not just walking around this place, but with you." To reinforce his words he kissed me again, his soft lips pressed against mine, his arms closing tighter around my body.

I did not resist, in fact I openly encouraged him, my tongue pushed against his lips and entered his mouth, meeting his along the way. My arms circled his neck and held his head to mine. My hips pushed against his, forcing him against a barrel, he didn't seem to mind.

When my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness I noticed that the mattress looked to have been used more than once, and I would guess that I was not the first girl that Pierre had brought into this corner. I told myself that there was nothing wrong with this, after all I liked Pierre and it was obvious that he liked me, and what I had felt when my arms went around his body told me that he was pretty well put together and the bulge in his pants right now spoke of a good sized cock, not huge, but then not small either. I figured that I wouldn't be disappointed.

His hands went to the buttons of my top and he lifted it over my head revealing my bra. Yes I was wearing a bra, not one of your frilly lacy sexy things, or your uplift bra, but a very practical sports bra, one that I could take off at night, wash in the hand basin and hang over the towel rail and it would be clean and ready to wear the next day. He lifted it over my head and stood admiring my tits, which if I had to, I would describe as my best features. They stood there without sagging, they were well rounded and the nipples were responding to his caresses in the best way possible for both of us, they were making both of us horny as hell.

I worked on his shirt until I had it off revealing a trim body with the makings of a six-pack and a brushing of black hair covering his chest. The hair felt great against my nipples. I felt his hand slide under the waist band of my slacks, and my panties and his finger push into my pussy. I couldn't wait to get his pants off and get a glimpse of his cock and I guess I took him by surprise at the ferocity of my attack on his clothes. Within seconds his pants were at his ankles and I had dropped to my knees in front of him and engulfed his cock with my mouth. With my arms around his tight butt he had no option but to stand there while I blew him off, not stopping until I felt his cum spurting down my throat. You think he was surprised, hell he couldn't have been as surprised as I was, this was the very first time that I had done anything like this, my previous sexual experiences had all been very ordinary, a small amount of fumbling fore-play and a short burst of missionary fucking until he had shot his load and then it was over, but here I was, taking total control of the process away from Pierre and enjoying the experience immensely.

We lay on the mattress and he regained control, his fingers tracing patterns over my body causing me to tremble as his caresses hit the right spots. I lay there in anticipation of him bringing his tongue into play, after all I had been hearing stories about the Frenchman's prowess with the tongue, and let me tell you, if I found the stories are true I would not be disappointed. His tongue did things to me that were beyond what I had imagined possible and before long I was a quivering, whimpering mess begging him to put this weapon away and get the real one working.

While his tongue did wondrous things to my pussy and even more wondrous things to my clit, his cock was perfection to the insides of my pussy, sliding in and out in perfect time to my needs, and his finger replaced his tongue in caressing my clit. I had never, ever, experienced anything quite as sensational as this and for the first time ever I experienced an orgasm, and for the first time it was followed up by I don't know how many others before he pulled his cock from me and emptied himself on my stomach.

"Why did you do that?"

"I do not want to give you a child."

"Well if you'd asked I would have told you that there was no way that I would be touring around Europe with the ever present possibility of meeting someone like you who I would have sex with, and not come prepared. I'm on the pill silly, so next time you can come inside me, okay?"

There were several next times before we had to leave our little boudoir and go in for dinner. Pierre's mother looked at us strangely when we walked into the dining room. She signalled for me to follow her into the kitchen. "You and Pierre, you have been making love this afternoon?"

"Yes we have."

"It is not for me to tell you what to do, but you are not the first that he has done this with, and when the harvest is complete he will not be too sad to see you leave, you understand this?"

"Yes. You should know that I have no illusions that this will be any more than a casual thing between us because I will have to return to Australia to begin my studies, to work on our next vintage, and make my next wine. So you see, this to me has no future."

The next weeks were frenetic, I was placed in charge of one of the picking teams, they were all English speaking back-packers so it seemed logical that I should be in charge of them. We picked in the morning until it got too hot and the berries began to shrivel and then I went into the cellars to help with the crush. I worked beside Pierre and his father as the berries were crushed and the juice drawn off for fermentation. They still used the traditional methods and when I tried to get them to change what they were doing I was met with glares from both of them and gave up, choosing instead to observe and hopefully learn something from the way that they did things.

Because, at my suggestion, they had waited a little longer before they picked the grapes, this vintage would have a slightly higher alcohol content than previous years, something like 13 percent which was low by our standards and even lower than some of the heavy Shirazes that were coming in at over 15 percent. The first indication when we tested after fermentation, was that it would be a good vintage and Pierre's father took me aside and quietly thanked me for my suggestion to delay picking. "I would like for you to come back next year and we will check out this wine."

"I would like that, and I would also like it if you and your wife could come to Australia and visit with us when we are putting down our next vintage, so that I can show you how I make my wine, would you come."

"We will see." He left it at that.

Pierre and I made love for the last time the night before I left, and he made many promises that I was sure that he wouldn't keep, and that didn't bother me, because I made promises to him that I had no intention of keeping. He professed his undying love for me and, was hurt when I explained to him that I couldn't respond in kind because I had my future to consider, and I wouldn't guarantee that this would include him, especially if it meant me relocating to France. I didn't expect him to come to Australia.

Again there was a break in the writing of this story, I had too many things happening in my life and just finding the time and motivation to sit down and actually write, was just too difficult. The story was saved and filed for at least another six months. Plus, I was at a loss as to where it was going, I had digressed too far from the original concept and I found it difficult to establish this new direction. Did Pierre stay in France? Or would he find a pretext to come to Australia?

It was on that note that I left them and caught a bus back to Paris where I took the train back to London and was reunited with Susie and Meg. They had enjoyed themselves immensely but not with the Spanish guys that they had left Paris to follow. I was regaled with stories of their sexual adventures through Spain and Italy, which they thought would make me jealous. I was certain that much of what they told me was exaggerated, but what the heck, I could play at that game, so I told them of my torrid relationship with the son of a world famous vigneron who had fallen so far under my spell that he was prepared to give it all up to follow me back to Australia, and that it was all that I could do to persuade him not to give up his life for me. 

They laughed when I told them of my attack on his clothes and how great his tongue was, and I detected a note of jealousy when I told them of how many times that I came every time we made love. But, as all good things have to end, we found ourselves on the plane back to Australia.

My parents were waiting for me when the plane landed and they asked dozens of questions about my trip on the drive home. My father in particular wanted to know if I had picked up any winemaking tips. I explained my experiences, leaving out the sex of course, with Pierre and his family and we both agreed that there was little to be gained by following their methods, so it was off to Roseworthy to be taught by experts.

My course included both viticulture and winemaking so I was busy, too busy to get involved in the social aspects of university life. Don't get me wrong, there were several guys who I found interesting, and who were obviously interested enough to ask me out on dates, but I declined citing my workload and family commitments, but in the back of my mind I got the feeling that there could be another reason for not wanting to go out on a date.

That feeling was answered for me on a Saturday morning in December. I had completed my year's studies, and was helping my father in the Cellar Door sales area, explaining the intricacies of our wines, when a familiar face walked through the door. At first I didn't recognise him with the sunlight behind him, but as he moved further towards me I knew who it was, Pierre!

I completely forgot all about the people that I was serving and ran around the end of the counter and flung myself into his arms, showering him with kisses. When I eventually calmed down I looked at him, "What are you doing here?"

"You didn't know I was coming?"

"No, how could I, I haven't spoken to you since I left France."

"But my father has been speaking with your father for months now, it was they who arranged for me to come here." I looked at my father who had a sheepish look on his face, he had decided to surprise me. "My father told me that I was no use to him moping around all the time like I was, and that I should come to Australia to see you and get you out of my system, oh and to maybe learn a little from you and your father."

I turned to my father, "And to think that you knew about all of this and didn't tell me, how could you?"

"You were moping around too, and when Pierre's father sent me an Email to ask if Pierre could come here to learn about winemaking and how you had impressed them, by the way, the wine that you helped to make is turning out to be one of their best ever, I jumped at the chance for you to decide one way or the other what you wanted to do with your life. While I have great hopes for you here, if you choose to return to France, then your mother and I will back that decision."

Pierre was placed in the guest room, that just happened to be right next to mine, and after showering and changing into fresh clothes he joined us around the barbeque as my father attempted to destroy some perfectly good steak. Actually my father is an excellent cook and the steaks were done to perfection. We hadn't bothered about starters, choosing instead to get right into the main course which consisted of steak and a fresh garden salad that included a couple of the region's famous products, Kalamata olives from one of my father's friends processing plants, and goats cheese from a local cheese-maker. Pierre was suitably impressed with them.

The wines that we had with the meal were from my first vintage and the extra bottle age had done it no harm at all, it compared favourably with one of my father's fifteen year old Shirazes which was served after mine. Pierre chatted with my father about his plans to help with all aspects of the upcoming vintage. My mother and I cleared up the dishes and took them into the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher.

"I understand that you and this Pierre got on very well while you stayed with his family."

"Yes, we became very good friends."

"More than good friends, at least that's what Pierre's mother has told me."

"Is there anything that I have done that you don't know about?"

"Probably not. Look, what you do is your concern, just be careful and don't do anything that will destroy everything that you have worked towards from the time that you were a little girl."

"Don't worry about that. For now I'm about having a good time and I don't intend to let anything spoil it."

It was close to midnight when we all headed for bed. Pierre's room was further down the hallway than mine and we stopped at my door to say goodnight. "This is my room." I said between kisses, "As you can see there is no lock on the door, so if you want to come in for a chat or something, feel free."

He felt free, and it only took him ten minutes to decide that he wanted to see me. I heard the door quietly swing open and the silhouette of a naked body slip into my room and under the covers, where he was met by my naked body. "What took you so long?"

"I had to shower." His mouth found mine and cut off any further conversation.

Decision time again. Do I continue with the romance or do I draw the reader into the hard work involved in the grape harvest and the making of wine. The romance at this time was secondary to the work involved, to the point that I could not just write it off in a few sentences. This was the life chosen by Jennifer and Pierre, and to gloss over it does no justice to the hard work and dedication that they have to demonstrate. It also gives context to their personalities.

"We have a lot of work to do starting from today." Dad said at breakfast, "The Sauvignon Blanc are just about ready to pick so we need the crushers cleaned and ready, the bins and buckets for the pickers thoroughly cleaned, the fermentation vats prepared as well as the press. So it's noses to the grindstone and hands to the wheel for everyone, holiday is over. And just so you don't get any ideas there's no mattress in the corner."

"Dad! Jesus, can't we have any secrets?"

"Just winding you up."

"I don't understand how you say it, noses to the grindstone, winding you up. What does this mean?" Pierre asked.

"Noses to the grindstone means we're in for hard work, and winding us up means that he is joking with us, having his idea of fun."

"Oh, I see." He had a puzzled look on his face still. "I think I will not understand your sense of humour."

"Don't worry, I'll explain it as we go along. We can discuss it later. . . " I stopped there, Mum and Dad could draw their own conclusions without me actually coming out and saying it.

It was hard, hot and sweaty work, and it wasn't only the steam cleaning that brought on a sweat, the humidity was higher than I could remember it, and this would mean that it would be uncomfortable for the picking gangs when they arrived. They were due to start in a week, and everything had to be in readiness, because once the picking began it was pretty much a 24 hour day for the cellar crew, and that included me and Pierre. Love making would be non-existent for the duration, although the odd kiss and cuddle could be arranged.

By the time that the picking began we had everything ready, the holding tanks had been cleared of a vintage, the bottling line worked non-stop clearing enough capacity for the upcoming harvest. It was time to catch breath for the hard times ahead. Pierre and I took every opportunity to work up a sweat and catch our breath in the knowledge that we would be on short rations for the foreseeable future.

It was clear and sunny, the temperature was in the mid-teens (Celsius) at 6:30 when the first picking gang arrived. Dad went out with them to show them which rows to pick and to drive the tractor that would bring the bins back to the crusher. After the grapes were crushed and de-stemmed, the juice was pumped into the fermentation tanks. These were white wine grapes so the juice was separated from the skins straight away. The natural yeasts had been killed off so I added the right amount of yeast from a culture that we had been preparing for the vintage. We had a thermo-syphon system in place that would circulate the juice through a heat exchanger to keep it at a constant 21°C so that we could control the fermentation. 




A Good Year



As soon as this phase was completed the juice was pumped into stainless steel tanks to continue the process, and the fermentation vats were cleaned for the next lot of grapes.

I took Pierre with me to my vineyard, (okay I didn't actually own it, yet, but to Dad and I it was mine) to supervise the start of the picking. These were Shiraz grapes and had come along really well. The weather forecast was for mildish temperatures for the next couple of days before a high pressure system would result in hot northerly winds for the next week or so. We had to get the grapes off the vines before that happened so Pierre and I spent the day with the pickers. The real work of making wine was about to begin.

The grapes were placed into the fermentation vat with the skins floating on top. Every three or four hours the skins had to be pushed down to expose the juice to as much of them as possible, and in order to release the carbon dioxide that was trapped under them, so that the resultant wine would have the right colour. This process went on for two weeks, meaning not a lot of sleep, until the fermentation had dropped right back to almost nothing, and then the juice was pumped off and the skins put through the basket press to extract as much of the remaining juice as possible. Testing showed me that the sugar/acid balance was perfect and the juice was then pumped into the stainless steel tank to finish the fermentation process. This would take a couple of months before it would be transferred into the oak casks for the next phase. It would sit in these casks for at least 18 months before being transferred into new oak casks to soften and take up the vanilla flavour of the new wood. I explained all of this to Pierre as we prepared new oak casks to receive the juice from the vintage of two years ago.

"We can't stop just because my wine is at the stage where we have little input, we have the rest of the harvest to process." I told Pierre as we took a night off to recover from our efforts. We have just made love for the first time in over a week and it was less than perfect. We were both tired and unable to make the heavy physical love that we had experienced in the past, and while I like the slow and gentle style, this was too slow and too gentle, and both of us were in danger of falling asleep in the middle of it. "This would be the main reason that I would give up wine-making. It was okay before you came along, I had no-one to stay awake for, but now I somehow feel that I'm letting you down."

"Cherie, you are not letting me down, I understand that we require the stamina for the work. But let me warn you that when this harvest is finished you and I will make the love so much."

"I'll keep you to that." I told him as I closed my eyes. I was asleep before he could reply, although I did feel his lips on mine.

The next few weeks were hard work. Because of the heat, we began picking at first light, and because, the heat was affecting the berries we could only pick until late morning. Then it was into the relatively cool of the cellars to test juice and pump juice from fermenters to holding tanks to casks as required. The good thing was that we were able to sit down to a proper feed at night, instead of eating on the run as we had been. We still didn't have the stamina to make love properly, but it was better than nothing.

Our picking season lasted six weeks and before we knew it, it was time for the pickers' party. This consisted of a barbecue in the winery grounds with lots, not too much, of wine from previous vintages for the pickers to taste, after all they had picked the grapes. 

"Guys." Dad tapped a knife against his wine glass. "Could I have your attention please." Quietness descended. "I know that I say this every year, but thanks for your efforts. I know that it was hard work at times, what with the heat and the need to get the grapes off the vines at the right time, but we did it, you did it." He held his glass up. "This wine is the result of your efforts of three years ago, and if I might say so, it was a good year. But let me tell you, this year looks as if it's going to be an even better year. That will be something to look forward to in three years time. What I'm trying to say is, you guys come back every year, and every year you do a great job. I couldn't ask for better pickers and I want to reward you accordingly." This brought a cheer from the pickers. "Each of you will get a bonus, don't tell the tax man, and a six pack of wine of your choice, except Jenny's wine, all of that has been pre-sold for the next two years, we don't even have enough for tasting at the cellar door. Sorry guys, but not even grovelling to her will get you any, so you'll have to make do with my wine. In fact, I can announce that as soon as she has completed her studies she will be offered a job as a consultant winemaker at Chateau Rombault in France!" Another cheer from the pickers.

"She'll show them Froggies how to make wine." Someone shouted.

Pierre stood and held up his hand for silence. "My name, for those of you who don't know me, is Pierre Rombault, and I came here this year to see for myself how you make wine in Australie. Jenny has already had an influence on the way that we make wine, and we are looking forward to having her working with us, not only so we can make wine as good as yours, but we see the benefit of selling your wines in France. I have the personal reason for having Jenny with us. I want to marry her so that I can come here every year to be with you all."

"I hope that's not the only reason." I told him. His answer brought more cheers from the pickers, he kissed me, his arms around me, pulling my body into his. I, of course, returned the favour, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling his face harder into mine.

"Get a room why don't you." Someone shouted.

"Drink up guys." Dad told them.

"I think that we're prepared to suffer through this crap." One of the gang leaders held his glass up. "It's not all that bad." I caught a worried look on Pierre's face, how could he be so derogatory about a good wine like this? "Nah, just kidding, we are honoured to be a part of producing the best wines in Australia, the best wines in the world!"

This brought a loud cheer from the rest of the pickers. As the party broke up, Dad and I went from one to another of the pickers, thanking them, and telling them that we would see them again next year. Pierre was with me and he smiled and shook hands with them. He had been cheek kissing them like the true Frenchman that he was, but I put a stop to that. It wasn't a matter of my jealousy getting in the way, I saw that the male pickers were not comfortable with this, on the other hand, the females didn't seem to mind.

The time was rapidly approaching when I would have to say good-bye to Pierre. As soon as the harvest was over, and most of the work done as far as the wine was concerned, it was back to my studies, and this meant that during the week I would be boarding with a winemaker friend of the family in the Barossa, close to the Roseworthy campus, only coming home for the weekends. Pierre would have to go home.

It was a sad time for the both of us, and made even sadder in the knowledge that my University studies would prevent me from travelling to France for their harvest. With luck and financial help from Dad, I might be able to sneak in a week or two during the semester break. "Promise me that you will not be using the mattress until I can get to your Chateau." I whispered to him after our last lovemaking.

"I promise, on my heart I swear that no woman will entice me to make use of it. But you must also promise that you will not make love to any man until we meet."

"I promise, not one of the studs that are studying at Uni will succeed in getting me to share his bed." I felt safe enough in making that promise, even though there was any number of likely candidates, there were plenty of other girls who were willing to fill in for me.

It was a tearful moment when I went through airport security to say good-bye. I don't know what his fellow passengers thought when they saw us clinging to each other and both weeping as I kissed him that last time. A couple of his fellow passengers showed an interest in him, and I was already jealous. Damn, I wish that I was going with him.

"Jenny, how's your new wine looking?" Craig Burroughs, Chief Winemaker of Brown's Creek Wines, family friend and whose house I stayed at during the week, asked as I unpacked my bags.

"It looks like it will be a good one, we got the balance as near to perfect as I can remember, the acid, sugar and Ph are all at the optimum levels. Dad's keeping an eye on it for me."

"That's great. I still have some of your first vintage and let me tell you, it's aging nicely, in 10 years you won't be able to tell much difference between it and say a Grange or Hill of Grace, at least not the hundreds of dollars price difference."

"I wouldn't quite go that far, although the locals are looking on it with almost the same reverence as David's (Noone) 75 Shiraz. That seems to be some sort of local benchmark of perfection, they go weak at the knees at the mere mention of it."

"Yeah, it has a well deserved reputation. What's this I hear about a Frenchman coming over for the harvest, and it wasn't just for the wine harvest I'm told."

"My parents talk too much. I worked at the Chateau Rombault during my gap year and made an impression on the Vigneron and his son, Pierre. They sent Pierre over to see how we do things in our winery."

"And that was all?"

"My lips are sealed." I said with a grin.

"So I can spread the word to the young bucks that they'll be wasting their time chasing you, is that it?"

"If you could, I don't have the time to fend them off."

"Consider it done. Now, tell me what you think of this." He had taken a bottle of his latest release Shiraz and poured us each a tasting sample.

I looked at it, the colour was a deep, almost purple, red, it stuck to the sides of the glass nicely. So far, so good. I nosed it and found it fruity with the hint of vanilla that I would expect from a wine that had been aged in new oak. I took a sip and my centre palate welcomed its full fruitiness. "It's early days but I can see it developing into a nice drop."

"I like it, it's probably the best that I've produced. I was working at something of a disadvantage with this one, we got a massive heatwave right when we were about to pick. I had to make the decision of whether to stick to hand picking and lose some because we couldn't get them off the vines quickly enough, or go with machine picking where we could pick during the night when it was cooler."

"You went with the machine, right?"

"How did you guess?"

"That's what I would have chosen. We're lucky, we don't have as many really hot days as you have up here."

"I was even tempted to ring your father to see if he had any spare juice that I could blend in with mine to soften it."

"You could have rung, but Dad has every berry accounted for, we're having to limit our allocations to our traditional resellers because we can't keep up with the demand."

"I should be so lucky."

"It's the future of wine marketing, build a reputation for a high quality product, limit production to create a demand for that product, and you can ask a higher price. It has worked for Penfold's Grange and Henschke's Hill of Grace, they have become investment wines, people buy them for the sake of being able to boast to their friends that they have them, but few actually drink them. At over $120 a glass it would have to be a very important occasion to crack open a bottle."

We discussed the factors involved in wine production for another hour before tiredness dictated that I should go to bed. These discussions further enhanced the information that I gained from my lecturers, I was able to share what I learned with Dad during the occasional lull in festivities at our Cellar Door on my weekend visits home.

"Jen, I have a suggestion."

"Oh yeah, what is it this time?" Dad's suggestions usually revolved around our wines and what we wanted to do with them.

"You have your semester break coming up, and we thought that you might like to spend it at Chateau Rombault, what do you say to that?"

Just as I launched myself at him and hugged him, a couple of customers came through the door. They stopped and stared at us, trying to decide whether they were intruding on a personal matter and should leave, or wait to see what happened next. They waited, and when Dad explained what it was all about they were suitably impressed, especially when he told them that his daughter (me) was going to France to act as a consultant to the Chateau Rombault, one of the premier wine producers. They were even more impressed when Dad opened a bottle of my Shiraz to taste. They were so impressed that they asked for a dozen, they were disappointed but understanding when they were sold only two bottles.

"I think that we'll have to put POA instead of the price on our list, we could have doubled, trebled even, the price that we ask and got it."

"Don't you dare do that. I don't want to get a reputation for being greedy, we look at our production costs and add a reasonable amount as mark-up, and that's it. I want people to buy my wine to drink and enjoy, not to stick in their cellars to gather dust."

"We'll see if you still think that way in five years time. Now, you didn't answer me, do we book a flight for you to France?"

"Why do you even have to ask that question, of course you book it."

"That's good." He took an envelope from under the counter and handed it to me. "Because I already have."

I tore the envelope open and drew out the tickets. I glanced at the time and date of the outbound journey before launching myself at him again. This time we were not interrupted.

"You seem to be happier than I have ever seen you." Joe, a fellow winemaking student said as we walked to class.

"Yeah, I just found out that I'm going to France over the semester break, I have a job as a consultant at Chateau Rombault, I'm going there to check on the progress of their latest vintage."

"You, a consultant? Getting a little ahead of yourself aren't you, you haven't even finished your degree."

"It came from some work that I did during my gap year. The winemaker was impressed with the sample of my first vintage that I took over there with me. He asked for some help with the vintage that was happening while I was there, and the last that I heard was that he reckons that it is the best vintage for years, so he has offered me a job consulting on future vintages. It would seem that, once I qualify, I'll be spending half my time here and half in France."

"Lucky bitch, the best that I can look forward to is working for my father in his winery."

"Luck didn't have anything to do with this. My first vintage from my shiraz grapes was a good one, and I can thank Dad for that. It came from grapes that he planted the year that I was born, and that he always intended for me to use to make my own wine. The result was better than I expected, and I put that down to his new techniques in the vineyard and his advice to me when I was making the wine."

"Are you going to expand your vineyard?"

"Possibly, probably actually. Dad has already planted more vines using his new technique and they will be ready for harvesting as a stand alone crop next vintage, up until now they've been used in blends, but they're mature enough now to be included in my next vintage."

"I still say that you're lucky. Lucky to have a father who has come up with this magical new technique that you're always banging on about, but won't tell anyone what it is. Lucky that your father has the confidence in you to let you make your own wines. Lucky that you got it right the first time."

"Like I said, luck didn't have anything to do with it, it was as a result of hard work, a lot of trial and error before Dad got it right in the vineyard, and a lot of money in the development stage. We're nowhere near recouping our establishment costs."

The next few weeks were busy, what with assignments to hand up to be graded and practical work with the university's own winemaking programme as part of my assessment. And then there was packing in readiness for my mad dash to France. I spoke with Pierre and he told me that he would meet me at Orly and would book a hotel room for the night so that we could do some catch-up lovemaking before going home to the Chateau. I got all moist in anticipation.

Almost before I knew it I was being swept off my feet by an exuberant Pierre. "Cherie, I have missed you so very much, come, I cannot wait a second longer." He grabbed my bag and literally dragged me from the terminal to a waiting cab. "Hotel Bretonne M'sieur, vite, vite." He shouted in response to the driver's asking our destination. I was covered with kisses and in one brief moment I looked into the rear view mirror to catch the smiling eyes of the driver. I signalled that he maybe should be concentrating on his driving. It made little difference to his driving, I got the impression that there were only two controls on this vehicle, the accelerator and steering wheel, brakes appeared not to enter into his method of driving.

We arrived at the hotel and there were bemused looks from the staff as Pierre ushered me through the foyer and into the lift. The bed was inviting, it was prepared, the covers drawn down and a single red rose had been placed on a pillow. Pierre picked it up and formally presented it to me. "For you Cherie, to show my love." He then took me in his arms and lowered me to the bed. The layers of clothing were slowly peeled from my trembling body, to be replaced by his lips, his exploration took forever, and by the time he had reached my sopping wet pussy, I was begging for his cock inside me. The bastard kept me waiting in anticipation for ages while he, and his tongue, worked their magic down there. Eleventy-seven orgasms later (okay I exaggerate) I felt his cock enter me, and all hell broke loose, if it hadn't been for the pillow that I clenched between my teeth, I would have screamed loud enough for the staff to call the Gendarmes. And to think it was only 3:00 in the afternoon, there was still the night ahead of us. Could I survive this pleasure? I resolved to either survive or die trying. 

Morning brought with it a resumption of our lovemaking. I can't believe that I actually begged with to stop, but after 9 hours of almost non-stop loving my body decided that too much was too much. My mind was still up for it but fatigue had set in big time. The fact that Pierre didn't protest at my wanting to stop suggested to me that he too was feeling the need for sleep. I don't know about him, but I fell asleep instantly and didn't wake until I heard him get out of bed to admit the room service waiter. The large pot of welcome coffee was emptied quickly and we had to use the jug to make coffee from the provisions provided. The breakfast of croissants did little to fill the gaps in our bellies left by the fact that we had forgotten completely about food last night.

We checked out, we attracted attention as we staggered through the foyer, arms around each other, laughing our stupid heads off, and into Pierre's car that had been brought around by the valet guy from the hotel car park.

We stopped just outside Paris for a more substantial meal, and arrived at Chateau Rombault mid afternoon. I was greeted warmly by Pierre's parents and shown to our room (it had obviously been assumed that he and I would sleep in the same bed) before joining M'sieur Rombault in the cellar.

"I want you to taste this wine that you helped us make. It is still too young to bottle yet but it is showing a great deal of promise." He extracted some wine from the cask and placed a small amount in three glasses.




A Good Year



I looked at the colour, sniffed the aroma and sipped a small amount. He was right, it was still too young and under-developed, but it showed excellent potential for a wine that should improve with cellar age for at least fifteen years, it had staying power. "You are right, it will be a very good wine. I wouldn't release it until it's at least five years old and I'd also make sure that most of it is retained and released in small quantities each year. The true wine connoisseurs will appreciate its development as it ages."

"Why do you suggest this?" M'sieur Rombault asked.

"It's a marketing strategy. The first release will tempt the palate, the second will wet the appetite even more, and each time it is released it will be anticipated. What has to happen is, as each new wine is released, it must build on the reputation of the previous vintage, this way the demand for the new product is already there, even before it is released."

"Is this what you have done with your wine?"

"Yes, but unfortunately my first vintage was only a small volume, and we are fast running out. The fortunate part is that the second vintage was even better than the first, and there is more of it. At this time we do not anticipate increasing our production, preferring instead to have demand exceed supply, not by much mind you, we don't want the consumers to walk away from it. If they know that, by shopping around they may be able to find supplies as further wine is released, they will wait for the new release rather than trying someone else's wines."

One of my early morning flashes of inspiration kcked in. This story was drifting, there was no drama, no pizzazz, I needed a conflict and couldn't even remember if the original storyline had one, but if it did, it wasn't this one. I needed something that would create a conflict, and I needed a twist to explain why Jenny behaved so irrationally.

I worked in the cellars and, when we were not overly busy, I helped Pierre's mother in the kitchen, learning about the regional cuisine that they took for granted. In the evenings Pierre and I went to bed early and made love for some time before going to sleep. It was fast approaching time for me to leave and I wasn't looking forward to it one bit.

Two days before I was to leave my life was dealt a sickening blow. I had come from the house to the cellars to find Pierre deep in conversation with a girl. Neither of them noticed me as I slipped between rows of barrels, but I sure as hell noticed them and what they were doing. She was very beautiful, but that wasn't what concerned me most, she was also very obviously pregnant. They chatted for some time, and it looked as if they were the best of friends, he even placed his hands on her belly, not something that a boy normally does to someone he doesn't know well. When the conversation finished she threw her arms around his neck and they kissed, not the kiss of a couple who were merely friends, but the kiss of very good friends, lovers even. My heart dropped and I ran back to the house, dashing through the kitchen to my room, our room, and began throwing my stuff into my case. I was not going to stay here one moment longer than I had to.

I heard Pierre come into the kitchen. "What is the matter with Jenny? She came rushing through here and down to your room." His mother asked.

"I don't know, I haven't seen her for at least an hour."

"Well something is wrong, you had better go and speak with her."

I heard the door open and he came into the room. "Don't touch me, leave me alone!" I screamed at him.

"Cherie, what has happened?"

"Don't you Cherie me you pig, now leave me alone while I pack the rest of my things, and then I'm leaving never to return."

"I do not understand, what has happened?"

"You made a promise that you would not have sex with any girl but me. . . . ."

"But Cherie, I have kept my promise."

"Listen Frogshit, I know that you have not kept your promise. Here I was, prepared to spend the rest of my life with you, marry you and have your kids, not necessarilly in that order, and you go and do this to me. Now get out and leave me alone!"

"This is not true, I have kept my promise."

"Not another word! Get out!" I pushed him out the door and slammed it shut.

As soon as I had finished packing I dragged my case out the door and began to walk up the drive to the road. A car stopped beside me, I expected it to be Pierre, but it was his mother. "Jenny, what is happening, why are you angry and why are you leaving?" She asked through the wound down window.

"You had better ask your son that. He promised me that he would not make love to any girl but me, and now I find that he has not kept his promise."

"Where are you going?"

"I am walking into town to catch a bus to Paris, and then I'm going home."

"Don't you think that you should come back and talk this over with us, not just Pierre, his father and I love you as a daughter, and we do not want you to leave like this."

"If you want to help you can drive me into town and drop me at the bus station."

"Very well, but you are making a big mistake, if Pierre told you that he has kept his promise then I believe him, not just because he is my son, but I know him not to lie." She pushed the door open and I climbed in. We drove in silence to the bus station. She carried my bag for me and kissed me a sad good-bye. I was sad to be leaving her, it wasn't her fault that her son couldn't keep it in his pants, but I was not going to hang around and allow him the opportunity to try and talk me around.

When I got to Paris I found that the first available flight out to Australia was not until the next morning, and I wasn't about to hang around Paris and give Pierre the opportunity to be waiting at the airport to accost me as I was leaving, so I caught a train to London. I went to the airline and spun them a story about being in London and getting a call from my mother telling me that my father had been injured in an accident and I was looking for the first flight home. They got me a seat (cattle class, but beggars can't be choosers) leaving in the morning. The connection at Kuala Lumpar was overnight so it would be almost two days before I arrived back in Adelaide.

The flight was long, somehow in first class it doesn't seem so long, boring, not overly comfortable, the fat dude in the next seat kept slumping over on to me and snoring, so I spent much of my time walking around in the confines of the Jumbo.

We arrived early in the morning and I rang home. "Hi, it's me, I'm at the airport, can someone come and pick me up?"

"How come you're home early, has something happened?"

"Not now, later I'll tell you all, I just want to get home and curl up and die. I'll wait in the coffee shop at the international arrivals call me when you're close and I'll wait outside for you. 'Bye." It would be at least an hour before someone got here, so I made myself comfortable with a coffee and bruschetta for breakfast.

My phone beeped telling me that I had a message. I switched on my Inbox. '5 Minutes'.

I grabbed my bags and went outside. Soon a familiar car slid to a stop in front of me and the boot (trunk) popped up. I threw by bag in and scrambled in just as a parking Nazi was heading in our direction, they don't give you much time for greetings.

"Okay, spill, what has happened, have you had a fight with Pierre?"

"Everything was fine until the other morning when I saw him and this girl. It was obvious that they were more than friends, and it was also obvious that she was pregnant, and that he was comfortable with that fact. We had words and I left, end of story."

"What happened might have been obvious to you, but if there is one thing that I have hoped you would do was to consider the alternative reason for what you saw."

"Mum, when you're in love as much as I am, I was, seeing something like that is a major shock and not something that can be taken lightly. I had to get out of there." I was beginning to get angry with her for suggesting that I could be wrong, how can I misunderstand the evidence of my own eyes, what I saw?

"We'll get you home and sit down and talk this through, okay?"

"Whatever." I sulked.

"I know that you've been hurt, but try to forget all about it until we've had a chance to discuss it."

Back home and a cup of coffee later (I was thinking that something a little stronger might be more appropriate, but then I remembered that I had drunk something stronger in London and it didn't help).

"Now, tell me exactly what happened." Mum said.

"The other day I was going to the cellars to tell Pierre and his father that lunch was ready and I saw him, and her."

"Her?"

"Yes, her. A girl that it was obvious he knew very well indeed. She was beautiful, better looking than me, and she was also obviously pregnant. They talked for a while and he rubbed her stomach, and when they finished they kissed, not a just friend type kiss, more a lovers kiss."

"And so you ran off, packed your bags and left, is that it?"

"Yes." I was beginning to think that this was not going all my way.

"Did you give Pierre a chance to explain?"

"What was there to explain? I saw what I saw, isn't that enough?"

"Look, darling, we have been having long conversations with Pierre's parents, and while at first he would say nothing, the story eventually came out. The girl was his cousin Chantelle. . ."

"So he's been fucking his cousin, it gets worse."

"Just be quiet and listen. Yes she's his cousin, who it turns out he hasn't seen for almost a year, you do the Matth. She has been in Paris, at the Sorbonne, and she has found herself in a spot of bother with one of her professors. They were lovers and he has told her that he would marry her. When she told him that she was expecting his child, the story changed. He was married and said that he would not leave his wife. Pierre and she had been close and she went to see him as someone her own age, for advice. He promised to go with her when she broke the news to her parents about the baby, and he even offered to convince his parents to let her stay with him and his parents, if her parents reacted badly to the news."

"Oh." I hadn't thought there could be any other explanation.

"So you see, it was simply him offering her support and she thanking him for that support."

"Shit, what have I done? Will he ever forgive me?"

"Look, there's not a lot that you can do right now, why don't you go to your room and have a sleep and we'll arrange for you to speak to him and his parents tonight. Then we can see what needs to happen, that's if you want it to happen. By the way, his mother gave me a message for you, I don't understand it, but it seemed important that you hear it. She said to tell you that when Pierre got home from his visit here he burnt the mattress."

"I do still love him." I realised that I did still love him and that I might have been hasty in my judgement of him.

I walked slowly to my room, deep in thought. The blinds had been drawn and it was dark. I didn't need to switch on the light. I kicked off my shoes, stripped to my underwear and fell on the bed.

"Cherie. . . " This voice came from the corner of the room. How the fuck did he get here and what was he doing here? He came closer. I leapt from the bed and engulfed him, forcing him back against the wall. "We need to talk."

"Fuck talking, that can come later, just after you tell me how you managed to be here waiting for me, and what a stupid jealous little idiot I've been, but that can come after I show you how much I love you."

"What was this 'Frogshit' you called me?" He asked after my third orgasm and his second.

"Well," I said as I fondled his flaccid cock trying to will it back into life. "Frog is a derogatory term for a Frenchman, and because I thought that you were a total shit about then, Frogshit it was. It was the best that I could think of at the time."

"So, I am no longer a Frogshit?"

"No, you're not. There is one thing that I need to tell you that might go some way to explain why I did what I did."

"What is that?"

"Before I went over to France, I had decided that, because you and I were in love and we'd spoken of marriage, that I should forget all about birth control, I wanted to fall pregnant, I wanted your baby, And when I saw you and her being very friendly, and she was pregnant, I guess that I lost the plot. I felt betrayed, that you no longer loved me and it hurt, my whole world as I knew it, as I dreamed it would be, came crashing down around my ears. I wasn't thinking straight, I know that now, and I'm sorry. Am I forgiven?"

"Yes Cherie, you are forgiven. When you say that you are no longer on birth control, do you mean that you do not want to wait until we marry to start a family?"

"Before, after, who cares what order we do it in, which brings me to something else. While it's too early to tell, there's a fair chance that I will soon be pregnant. I was ovulating in Paris, and while my period might only just be a couple of days late, I can't be certain that I'm not already pregnant. But just to be sure, we'll just have to keep doing it."

We were still at it when there was a gentle tap on the door. "Okay you two, get yourselves cleaned up, it's dinner time."

"I understand that you two have been playing catch up." Dad said as we sat down to eat. "Are you sure that this is the best move at this time, what happens if you get pregnant?" He looked at me, and then Pierre.

"I want to get pregnant."

"But what about your studies, and if you have a baby, are you going to stay here or in France, have you thought about that?"

"Yes, if necessary I'll continue my studies as an external student. As for where we're going to live, we'll divide our time between here and France, that way the kids will have the influence of both worlds."

"Have you discussed this with Pierre's parents?"

"My parents told me that I was not to come home without Jenny, or at the very least, her promise to come over whenever she can." Pierre said. "When I tell them that we are to marry, they will welcome her with open arms, and when I tell them that we, and our children, will divide our time between here and France they will be very happy. They love Jenny almost as much as I do, and it hurt them very deeply when she ran away. They wll now be very happy."

And that is why my Shiraz is now known as the 'Pierre Rombault' and I sign my back label 'Jennifer Blaylock-Rombault, Winemaker.' It has won the 'Jimmy Watson' trophy for the year's best red wine, and has been consistently scored a very respectable 97 out of 100 by wine judges here in Australia. And that is also why the top Chateau Rombault Shiraz has the appelation 'Vin méthode Australie' on its label and the back label is also signed 'Jennifer Blaylock-Rombault, Vigneron.' Even the traditional Vignerons and wine lovers in France have had to concede that it is an outstanding wine.

Okay, we have a happy ending, not the original one, I know that, because once I had moved away from the original storyline, I found it imposssible to reach the ending that came to me that early morning so long ago.

One thing I have to say is that, in the past, many people have criticised some of my other stories for finishing too soon and demanding another chapter. Someone once said; 'leave them wanting more', and in a lot of ways that is what I do. It is also that I would like the readers to use their imagination and think how they would like it to end. One possible scenario, if you follow this storyline, is that Jennifer and Pierre will live happily ever after in both worlds. Chantelle's parents will, when she tells them of her pregnancy, shrug their shoulders in that peculularly Gallic way, look at each other with a smile that hints of secrets past, say 'Amour, toujours amour' and allow her to stay with them and have the baby, thereby removing the potential of future conflict from the story. Or, the story about Chantelle was a lie, and she and Pierre continued to have an affair, ultimately leading to much heartache and the end of Jenny's romance.