The Wine Route – Part 1: Puncture

"It's flat," said Paula, to nobody.

It was a mild, drizzly afternoon in the vineyards of Alsace, with the rows of vines running up the hillsides in neat green stripes and little half-timbered villages tucked into the valleys. Paula, thirty-four, an accountant from Dublin, had been cycling the wine route for four days and had not punctured once. The universe, evidently, had been saving it up.

She was crouched beside the road with a spare tube in one hand and no idea what to do with it when a battered white van pulled up. A man leaned out of the window, tanned, with a wool cap and crinkled grey-green eyes.

"You need help?"

"I've got it."

"You have the tube upside down."

She looked. He was right. "I have it almost."

"Let me."

Etienne, thirty-seven, got out, took the wheel and mended the puncture in four minutes with quick, patient hands. He ran a family winery two kilometres up the road, he said. His grandfather had planted the vines. "Come," he said, wiping his fingers. "Dry off. It is only a glass of wine."

"I should keep going."

"The rain is getting worse."

"It is, isn't it?"

His cellar was cool and quiet, with barrels stacked in rows and a tasting table by a single lamp. He poured her a glass of pale gold Riesling. She sipped. Lime, stone, flowers, a long crisp finish.

"That's extraordinary."

"You are the first person to say so who did not want to sell me something."

"I just want to drink it," said Paula, laughing.

They tasted six wines. They talked about vines and Ireland and the poetry of puncture repair. At the sixth glass, she realised the rain had stopped an hour ago, and she hadn't noticed.

"Paula," said Etienne. "I would like to ask you to stay. For supper. And I would like to kiss you, if you would like that."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Late Harvest.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Late Harvest.