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The estate wakes before the sun during harvest, but I prefer these few minutes when darkness still holds the upper vineyard. I carry coffee in one hand and a paper sack in the other as I follow the path toward the stable. Reid knows where to find me if the winery catches fire.

The stable doors stand open. Air scented with hay, leather, and straw meets me inside. Walter waits at his half-door as if my arrival is written into his day.

He is a sixteen-year-old Irish Draught with a golden chestnut coat, a pale mane, and a broad white blaze dividing his face. His compact body still carries the muscle for long rides through the vineyard. Walter came to us six years ago when Harold and June Whitaker sold the neighboring farm and moved closer to their children. They had raised him from a colt and could not bear the thought of him going to auction. When they asked whether I would take him, there was no decision to make.

Walter lowers his head over the door, presses his nose to my chest, and begins searching my jacket with determination.

“I brought apples today,” I tell him as his nose works toward the pocket where I usually keep peppermints.

He pulls back and studies me with dark eyes that convey an impressive degree of offense. The expression is so human that a smile finds me before I can prevent it.

“You’re becoming spoiled,” I inform him, opening the sack to show him the sliced apple inside.

Walter bumps my shoulder hard enough to send coffee against the lid of my cup. He’s never demanded affection from anyone, but food has always existed under different rules.

“Assault will not improve your position.” I take an apple slice from the sack and hold it out on my palm. “You’ll eat what I brought, or Mila can listen to your complaint when she arrives.”

Walter curls his lips around the fruit and chews with enthusiasm that exposes his earlier outrage as theater. I rub the white blaze above his eyes, finding the place that makes his lashes lower. He leans into my hand until his forehead fills my palm, and the tension I carried from the house eases slightly.

He knows today is different, although there’s no reason he should. September 23rd means nothing to him beyond cool air, fresh hay, and fewer peppermints than he considers acceptable. To me, it’s been twenty-one years since my best friend Misha died.

The barn entrance darkens as a broad figure steps through it. My uncle wears a faded green flannel shirt beneath a weathered canvas jacket, with work jeans tucked over boots stained by vineyard soil. At seventy-one, Leo remains stocky and strong from a lifetime outdoors. Thick silver hair escapes beneath an old Dragorin Vineyards cap, while permanent lines surround brown eyes that miss very little.

“You gave him the apple,” Leo says as he approaches Walter’s stall. “Now he knows looking offended gets him what he wants.”

“He was going to receive it either way,” I reply.

“Walter doesn’t know that.” Leo pats the horse’s neck before offering him a peppermint from his pocket. “Your mistake was arriving without proper supplies.”

Walter accepts the candy and turns his full attention toward my uncle.

“You’ve undermined me,” I tell him.

“He deserves competent management.” Leo reaches into his jacket for the small notebook in which he has recorded weather, soil, and harvest observations for more years than our youngest employees have been alive. He refuses to wear a watch because he claims the vineyard tells him the hour, but every page bears the exact date. “The picking crew has started in East Two. The fruit held well overnight, and the forecast gives us three dry days before rain returns.”

My gaze moves toward the open stable doors, where the sky has begun to pale behind the Cascade foothills. “Brix?”

“Twenty-four point six before dawn. Acidity is where we want it, and the seeds have browned.” Leo slides the notebook into his pocket.

The sugar level puts the grapes within harvest range, but numbers alone can’t tell me whether the flavors have fully developed.

“Taste them yourself,” Leo adds, “because you’ll do it whether I tell you to or not.”

My father used to accuse us of the same habit. Leo and Pyotr Dragorin crossed an ocean with their wives, then planted the first estate vines together. My father wanted a vineyard worthy of the family name, while Leo wanted to work the land beside his brother. More than thirty years later, he still manages every acre and trusts the vines before any laboratory report.

“I’m walking East Two now,” I tell him. “Come with me.”

Leo looks at Walter, who has returned his nose to my jacket in case a peppermint has appeared through divine intervention. “You should search him again. He lies.”

“I remember who provided the contraband,” I reply.

My uncle’s low laugh follows me as I give Walter the final apple slice. We leave the stable together and walk toward the eastern blocks while the first edge of sunlight rises above the foothills.

Rows of Cabernet Sauvignon descend along the slope in precise green lines, their leaves touched with early gold. Beneath them, dense clusters of dark fruit hang against the trellises. The picking crew works with speed earned through experience, clipping each cluster by hand and lowering it into shallow bins to protect the grapes. Their conversations carry through the rows in English and Spanish, punctuated by the snap of shears and the rumble of a tractor moving fruit toward the winery.

I greet the crew leaders by name as Leo and I pass. I know the permanent employees, the returning seasonal workers, and many of their families. My father taught me that a man who will not learn the names of the people beside him has no right to claim their labor as his success.

Near the middle of the block, I stop beside a vine and lift one cluster in my hand. The skins show even color, with no splitting or rot hidden beneath the leaves. I pluck a grape, press it between my fingers, then taste it. Ripe blackberry and dark cherry come first, followed by tannin that grips the sides of my mouth. The numbers told us the fruit was ready. The flavor confirms it.