“Of course.” Jordan pulled a business card out of her purse. “That’s all my information, if you wouldn’t mind passing my card along to your sales director. You can tell her that my store’s wine club has over eight hundred members who would be introduced to your wine with a recommendation from both my manager and myself. Between the two of us, I think we can get much of the Chicago wine community very excited about Barrasford Estate’s upcoming release. What distributor do you use in the Chicago area?” By law, she wasn’t permitted to buy wine for retail use directly from the winery, but if Barrasford used one of her regular distributors, they should have no problem brokering a deal.

“Midwest Wine and Spirits, I believe,” Claire said.

Jordan nodded. “I work with them all the time.” She pointed to the card. “I plan to finalize my May wine club picks during this trip, so ask your sales director to give me a call before the weekend is over if she’s interested.”

A few minutes later, Nick and Jordan were seated at a table on the winery’s open-air terrace. Several other groups, mostly couples, sat at nearby tables, and the atmosphere felt more casual and welcoming than the other parts of the tour.

Sitting across the bistro table with his dark sunglasses, facial scruff, jeans, and black button-down shirt, Nick looked decidedly bad-boyish for a wine tasting. Not that Jordan particularly minded. No offense to the guys she typically dated, but Nick blew them all out of the water.

“You drive a hard bargain,” he said in reference to her negotiations with Claire.

She waved this off. “What I proposed is a good arrangement for everyone.” A light breeze blew her bangs into her eyes, so she smoothed them back into the bun she’d pulled her hair into after getting dressed at the hotel.

“Do you think the sales director will contact you before Monday?” he asked.

“I think the sales director will contact me before we leave here today,” she said confidently.

Nick studied her through his sunglasses. “That’s a bold call. I guess we’ll find out how good you really are.”

Claire returned with a tray filled with six glasses of wine and a basket of crackers. First, she set down the two biggest glasses, one in front of each of them. “I brought you each another glass of our cabernet. As a comparison, I thought you also might like to try some barrel tastings from next year’s vintage.” She set two smaller tasting glasses in front of each of them. “So after we harvest the grapes and ferment the wine, we fly in a professional taster from France—the renowned Philippe Fournier—and set him up in a room with samples of wine from our twenty-eight different vineyard blocks. For three days, he tastes the wine and gives us recommendations on the percentage each of the samples should contribute to our final estate cab.” She smiled. “Then everyone drinks and parties for two days, before we get back to work.” She clasped her hands together. “So, are there any questions I can answer for you at this time?”

“I think we’re good for now. Thank you,” Jordan said.

When they were alone again, Nick leaned in and spoke under his breath. “And the hundred-dollar-per-bottle question is: does any of that make a difference?”

“If people enjoy the wine enough to spend a hundred dollars on it, then sure.”

He looked skeptical.

“You can’t think of it as merely a beverage, Nick—every glass of wine is its own experience,” Jordan said. “Approach it the same way you might approach, say, a new relationship.”

He looked even more skeptical now. “A relationship?”

Jordan picked up her glass of cabernet. “Sure, think about it. You start by looking at the wine. That’s your first impression. You ask yourself, ‘Does this look good to me? Am I interested in finding out more?’ Then you get a little closer to the wine. You try out its aromas, and if it’s something you like, your body reacts instinctively, begins to hum with the anticipation of going further. You let the wine begin to tease you, draw you in, seduce you. You’re close at this point to getting a taste, but you’re not there yet. Maybe you hold out a little longer, delay that final gratification, keeping yourself right at the edge for as long as possible. And finally, when you get to the point that you just can’t wait anymore, you taste. You give yourself over to the rush, the smooth, silky feeling of the wine, its flavors, its scent, and you taste again. And again. Until you feel that flush begin to build, that warm, tingly euphoric feeling that goes on and on, even after the last drop is gone, before you slowly float down on a cloud of bliss.”

She tipped her glass at him. “Now that’s what drinking wine is about.”

Nick’s expression remained unreadable, his eyes hidden behind the dark sunglasses. Then he looked over at Claire as she passed by their table. “I think we’re going to need a second round.”

She clapped her hands with delight. “Wonderful! Glad to hear you’re enjoying the wine.”

After she left, Nick took off his sunglasses and set them on the table. He picked up his glass and tipped it to Jordan. “All right, Rhodes. For you, I’ll give it a real shot.” He swirled his glass, smelled the wine like a pro, and took a good, hearty sip.

He closed his eyes for a moment, as if debating, then he looked at her. “Black cherry. And licorice.”

Jordan’s wine-geek heart nearly burst with pride. “I knew you had it in you.”