The morning starts in fog so thick the far end of the row isn’t there, and for most of the year that is the whole job: walk the rows, watch the weather, wait. Then one week in September the waiting breaks. The whole valley shows up with baskets, lunch gets eaten sitting in the dirt of the center lane, and by dusk the crates are through the barn door bleeding juice down their slats. The press turns. The vats go loud, then quiet. The year moves underground after that, into stone rooms where a hundred barrels do absolutely nothing while somebody with a lantern tops each one up and writes it down. By the time anyone raises a glass, the vineyard is back in fog, starting over.
Seventy-two watercolor-inspired illustrations follow the year around that loop. They open in the fog and long shadows of the rows and stay honest about the work all the way through, from the punch-down breaking the surface of the vat to the hose coiled by the floor drain when the day is over. Then down the worn stairs, where bottles sleep in stone bins under years of dust. Partway through, the collection steps into a room most wine art never enters, the winemaker’s study: the harvest ledger open in its leather binding, the parcels hand-drawn on the wall, next year’s cuttings bundled and labeled, the founders watching from a sepia photograph on the shelf. It ends at a farmhouse table, plates stacked, one glass still going. The palette runs the course the year does: green and silver-grey in the rows, ruby and garnet and burgundy at the crush, stone and oak and lamplight for the long middle, linen and candle-warm cream at the table.
For wineries and vineyard estates, wine brands and labels, wine bars and restaurants, hospitality brands and boutique hotels, wedding and event designers working in wine country, food and drink editorial, stationery and publishing, and anyone whose work ends with two glasses and a cork on the table. Cellar & Vine stands on its own, and it anchors the table the brand’s food collections gather around: the wine to Le Fromager’s cheese, the bottle behind The Maison’s hotel bar, the pour beside Chef’s Table’s kitchen. A single cluster or a pair of secateurs will carry a label. The cellar will hold a wall. The full set will take a brand through the whole year, from the first fog on the rows to the last glass nobody’s finished yet.
