The Vine Between Us

I find out from our cellar hand, Jamie, that Radoslav has recommended to Hyacinth that we trial a new blending approach for the reserve — one that would significantly alter the style I have spent three years building.
I go to find him immediately. He is in the barrel hall, crouching beside a row of French oak, making notes.
“You went to Hyacinth without talking to me first.”
He stands. He does not look guilty. “I sent you a draft last Friday. You didn’t respond.”
“I was in McLaren Vale at a tasting.”
“I know. I waited until Monday. Then Hyacinth asked me directly and I answered her.”
The barrel hall smells of wine and cold wood. The sound of our voices seems too loud in it.
“This is my reserve program,” I say. “I built it.”
“I know you did.” His voice drops, not unkindly. “I’m not trying to dismantle it, Meera. I’m trying to make it better.”
“You don’t know it well enough yet to make it better.”
“Then teach me.”
The simplicity of it stops me cold.
I leave the barrel hall without answering. I stand outside in the thin winter sun, the gravel crunching under my boots, the old shiraz vines stretching away on both sides of me, and I feel something I do not immediately want to name.
I teach him.
Not because I have made peace with any of it, but because Hyacinth schedules a joint presentation for the following week and I am not going to look unprepared. We spend four evenings at the long table, tasting through every vintage in the reserve program, working backward from the current release.
He asks good questions. Precise ones. He remembers everything I tell him.
On the fourth evening, we open a bottle of the 2019 — the vintage I am most proud of, the one that almost broke me to make — and I watch him taste it in silence. He holds it in his mouth for a long moment, and when he puts the glass down, something in his expression has shifted.
“This is the one,” he says quietly.
“Yes.”
“What happened in 2019?”
I tell him about the heat spike in February, the way we had to pick the old block two weeks early, the gamble of extended maceration to compensate. How I was not sure it had worked until the wine was already in barrel and I could do nothing but wait.
He is watching me as I talk. The room has gone dark outside the windows. Somewhere in the barrel hall, something drips in a slow, patient rhythm.
“You love this,” he says. Not a question.
“Of course I do.”
“I mean the uncertainty of it. The waiting. You’re not afraid of not knowing.”
I look at him. The tasting room is warm and dim, and the 2019 is open between us, and I realise he is not talking entirely about wine.
The second sharp moment is quieter than the first.
It is a Friday evening, the day after the joint presentation, which went well — better than I expected, better than I would have managed alone. Hyacinth told us afterward, with characteristic understatement, that we were “more effective together than she had anticipated.”
Radoslav and I are the last two people on the estate. I am writing up my notes. He is standing at the windowsill where his tasting glasses are still arranged in their careful row, looking out at the vineyard.
The sun is going down over the Barossa ranges, painting everything amber and rust.
“I should have emailed you sooner,” he says, still looking out the window. “About the blending proposal. That was wrong of me.”
I set down my pen.
“I should have responded to your draft,” I say. “I saw it. I just — wasn’t ready to.”
He turns then. The light catches the side of his face.
“Why not?”
I think about lying. I think about saying I was busy, or that I needed more time with the data. Both are true. Neither is the reason.
“Because I didn’t want you to be right,” I say. “And I could already tell that you might be.”

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About the Author

Clara Vance — a former corporate strategist, expert in the tension that builds between two desks. Her hobby? Morning coffee chats in the office where she collects ideas for her stories.

— Clara Vance

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Categories: Enemies to Lovers, Romances

Tags: 10min stories, Australia, Barossa Valley, contemporary romance, enemies to lovers, short story, slow burn, vineyard romance, winemaker romance

August 15, 2026

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