My family locked me in the basement to give birth. Days later, they returned to find a dark red liquid seeping from the door. As my mother screamed, a voice whispered behind her, “Looking for me?”

Romanée-Conti. Vintages he spoke of with religious reverence. I systematically uncorked them with a rusty screw from the toolbox, pouring the heavy, complex liquids into a wide, shallow plastic storage basin. Under the jaundiced glow of the single exposed lightbulb, the pooled wine was thick, opaque, and horrifyingly visceral. It looked exactly like continue reading …