Caleb Vance lived in a world bleached of flavor, a monochrome ghost of a life that was all the more torturous for the vibrant, colorful world he remembered. For a man who had once built a celebrated career on the exquisite nuances of sensation, this was a hell of profound and specific torment. His palate, once insured by Lloyd’s of London for a million dollars, had been a finely tuned instrument, capable of distinguishing the precise mineral tang of volcanic soil in a Sicilian Nero d’Avola from the delicate, flinty undertones of a Sancerre grown on limestone. He could taste the difference between French and American oak, could identify a wine’s vintage by the subtle fading of its tannins, could smell a summer rainstorm in a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. He was, in the esoteric world of high-end sommeliers, a maestro.
Now, he was nothing. Two years ago, a freak accident—a late-night fire at a dry cleaner next to his apartment building, a cloud of vaporized perchloroethylene and other industrial solvents—had done something catastrophic and irreparable to his olfactory nerves. The world’s leading neurologists had given him the clinical, sterile diagnoses: severe, chronic anosmia and its close cousin, ageusia. Caleb, however, preferred his own, more poetic definition: he was a ghost at the feast of life. Wine, his passion and his muse, now tasted of sour, acidic water. A perfectly marbled, dry-aged steak tasted of textured silence. The scent of freshly cut grass, of his morning coffee, of the woman who sat next to him on the subway—all gone. The world’s rich, complex symphony of aroma and flavor had been replaced by a single, monotonous, grey note of nothing.
His career, of course, had evaporated overnight. The prestigious position at the three-Michelin-star restaurant, the fawning profiles in glossy magazines, the life of refined sensation and quiet influence—it all vanished along with his senses. He now lived a quiet, obsessively ordered, ascetic life in a minimalist apartment that overlooked the Hudson. The view was beautiful, but to Caleb, it was just a silent, moving picture. The apartment was a mausoleum to his former self, filled with the ghosts of his passion: towering, custom-built wine racks stood empty, their dust-jacketed voids a constant, reproachful presence. Crystal decanters, once used to coax the delicate soul from a venerable Bordeaux, sat clouded with disuse. His vast library of books on viticulture, enology, and the great wine regions of the world stood untouched, silent testaments to a language he could no longer speak. He was a curator of a museum to which he had irrevocably lost the key.
His grief was not a passive sadness. It was an active, malevolent entity in his life, a grey, tasteless shroud that smothered every potential joy. His relationships had withered. How could you share a meal with someone when you couldn’t taste it? How could you connect with a world from which you were so profoundly disconnected? His nights were the worst. He spent them online, not out of boredom, but out of a morbid, self-flagellating compulsion. He would scroll through the websites of elite auction houses—Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Acker Merrall & Condit—and lose himself in the listings for fine and rare wines. He’d read the florid, evocative tasting notes written by his colleagues, his rivals, his replacements. He would mouth the words, his mind struggling to construct a phantom sensation from the clinical poetry. “An opulent nose of black cherry, crème de cassis, saddle leather, and a hint of cigar box… The palate is full-bodied and complex, with a long, lingering finish of dried herbs, licorice, and graphite.” It was a unique form of torture, reading the sheet music for a symphony he could never again hear, but it was the only connection he had left to the man he used to be.
It was on one of these late, lonely nights, deep in the digital catacombs of a clandestine, invitation-only auction site known to its elite clientele only as “The Collector’s Cellar,” that he found it. The site was a haven for those whose tastes were too rare, too expensive, or too illicit for the mainstream houses. The listing was cryptic, almost a riddle, starkly different from the detailed, verbose descriptions of the other lots.
Lot #666. One (1) bottle, Lacrima Mortis. Provenance: Vigna di Corvi, Valle Oscura. Vintage: Inconnu.
Tear of Death. The name was absurdly, theatrically gothic, like something from a Poe story. Caleb, with his encyclopedic knowledge of oenology, had never heard of it. He had never heard of the vineyard, Vigna di Corvi, nor the valley, Valle Oscura. The Vineyard of the Crows, the Dark Valley. And the vintage was listed as Inconnu—Unknown. That was impossible. The vintage, the year of the harvest, was the most fundamental piece of information for any bottle of wine, the cornerstone of its identity and value.
There was no photograph of the bottle, only a simple, stark text description, a block of white text on a black screen. “For the palate that has tasted everything and found it wanting. An experience, not a beverage. We guarantee no vintage, only a singular moment. Authenticity is self-evident upon tasting. Sold as-is. We assume no liability for the experience therein. Caveat emptor.”
It was a charlatan’s pitch. A theatrical, high-stakes bit of marketing designed to lure in the world’s most jaded, wealthy collectors, the ones who had tasted every DRC and Screaming Eagle and were now looking for a new, transgressive thrill. Under normal circumstances, Caleb would have dismissed it with a contemptuous laugh and closed the browser. But his circumstances were not normal. He was a man drowning in a sea of sensory deprivation, and the phrase, “For the palate that has tasted everything and found it wanting,” felt like a dagger aimed directly at his heart. He was a man who wanted nothing more than to taste something, anything, again.
The bidding, he saw, was already astronomically high. It was being conducted in a silent, anonymous digital ballet of escalating numbers, each bid a testament to the obscene wealth and boredom of the participants. On a reckless, desperate impulse, fueled by two years of pent-up rage, a deep well of self-loathing, and a single, flickering photon of insane hope, Caleb placed a bid. He logged into his investment account, looked at the substantial figure of the insurance payout—the money he had received for the death of his palate, a sum he had never touched, thinking of it as blood money—and he began to liquidate it. He threw a number at the screen that made his stomach physically clench, a number that represented the final, desperate burning of the ships of his old life. He confirmed the bid, closed the laptop with a snap, and stared into the darkness of his apartment, his heart hammering against his ribs.
The next morning, a discreet, encrypted email with no subject line appeared in his inbox. It contained only three words: “The lot is yours.”
A week later, a plain, unmarked wooden crate arrived at his apartment. It was delivered by a bonded courier in a severe black suit who said nothing, his face a mask of professional indifference. He had Caleb sign for it on a digital tablet with a stylus, and then he turned and vanished back into the city’s indifferent churn. There was no return address, no shipping label, only a series of complex customs stamps from Italy.
Caleb carried the crate into his apartment and set it on his dining room table. It sat there for hours, a plain, wooden Pandora’s Box. He was terrified to open it. It was a monument to his own desperation, a hugely expensive folly. He would likely open it to find vinegar, or worse, just cheap, bad wine, a final, humiliating joke played on the great sommelier who could no longer taste. But the mystery of it, the sheer audacity of its presentation, was a powerful lure. The promise, however faint, of an experience.
That night, he decided. He would face his folly. He performed the ritual of opening a bottle of fine wine for the first time in two years, his muscle memory guiding him through the familiar, comforting steps. He lit a single, unscented candle to provide clean light. He selected a specific glass from his collection, a delicate, hand-blown Zalto Burgundy, a vessel with a wide bowl designed to amplify the most subtle of aromas and deliver the wine perfectly to the palate. He found a sturdy, old crowbar in his toolbox and pried the lid from the wooden crate.
Inside, nestled in a bed of black, straw-like packing material that smelled faintly of dry earth and herbs, was a single bottle.
It was unlike any wine bottle he had ever seen in his life. It was made of a dark, almost black, opaque glass that seemed to absorb the candlelight, revealing nothing of its contents. It was shaped like a classic Burgundy bottle, but it was heavier, thicker. And it was sealed not with a familiar cork and foil cap, but with a thick, uneven cap of black wax, into which a strange, sigil-like crest had been pressed while it was still soft. The crest was a stylized raven with a key held in its beak. There was no label, no government warning, no indication of grape, region, or year. It was a vessel of pure, terrifying mystery.
He took a deep breath, his heart pounding. He carefully chipped away the brittle black wax seal with the small blade of his sommelier’s knife. Beneath, there was a cork, as black as ebony and ancient-looking, seemingly fused with the glass of the neck. He centered the point of his corkscrew, the familiar heft of the tool a comfort in his hand. As he twisted the worm into the cork, he felt a strange, almost imperceptible vibration travel up the metal, a low thrum that seemed to resonate in the bones of his hand. He braced the lever on the lip of the bottle and pulled. The cork came out not with a celebratory pop, but with a soft, sighing hiss, like a final breath being released after an eternity of being held.
He poured a small, two-ounce measure into the Zalto glass. The liquid that flowed from the bottle was a shocking, vibrant crimson, the color of fresh, arterial blood. It was unnervingly beautiful, seeming to glow from within in the candlelight. He swirled it in the glass, his wrist moving with practiced ease. He watched the “legs” or “tears” of the wine cling to the side of the crystal. They were thick, viscous, slow-moving, indicating a high alcohol content or a significant amount of residual sugar. Or something else entirely.
Then, he did what he had not been able to bring himself to do for two years. He steeled himself for the familiar, frustrating wave of nothingness. He raised the glass to his nose, tilted the bowl, and inhaled.
And the world exploded.
It was not a scent. It was a landscape. The first wave that crashed over his stunned senses was the smell of a sun-drenched field of wildflowers, of clover, wild honey, and warm, dusty earth. It was so vivid, so powerful, that he could almost feel the heat of the sun on his skin. Beneath that was a second, more complex layer: the crisp, clean, effervescent scent of a young woman’s laughter, a sound he somehow smelled, a scent of pure, unadulterated, uncomplicated joy. And finally, a faint, metallic undertone, a coppery tang like a new coin, the scent of vitality, of life itself.
He gasped, stumbling back, the glass shaking precariously in his hand. He could smell. He could smell. Tears, hot and uncontrollable, streamed down his face, tears of shock and disbelief and an overwhelming, painful gratitude. It was a miracle. It had to be a chemical anomaly in the wine, something that had shocked his dead nerves back to life. He didn’t care. It was real.
With a trembling hand, his whole body shaking with the force of the experience, he brought the glass to his lips and took a small, reverent sip.
The moment the liquid touched his tongue, his apartment, New York City, and the 21st century vanished.
He was no longer Caleb Vance, a broken, 45-year-old man in a sterile apartment. He was a young woman, no more than twenty, with long, auburn hair that whipped around her face in a warm breeze. He was running, barefoot, through a sun-drenched meadow of tall grass and wildflowers in what felt like the south of France in a time before the Great War. He could feel the soft, tickling blades of grass beneath his bare feet, the warmth of the summer sun on his shoulders, the light, cotton summer dress fluttering against his skin. He could feel the effortless strength in his limbs, the deep, easy breaths of a body in its absolute prime.
But it was the emotion that was the most powerful. He could feel an overwhelming, heart-achingly pure joy, a love for a young man with kind eyes and a crooked smile who was running just ahead of him, his own joyful laughter echoing in the warm, still air. He felt the man stop and turn, his arms open. And as he ran into the man’s embrace, the world was a kaleidoscope of brilliant sunlight, reciprocated love, and the sweet, innocent taste of a stolen kiss. The moment was perfect, eternal, crystalline.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was gone.
Caleb was back in his apartment, on his knees on the cold, hardwood floor, the wine glass fallen from his nerveless hand, its precious contents spilled in a crimson pool. He was gasping for breath, his heart pounding not with fear, but with the profound, physical echo of a joy so pure it was painful. The memory, the experience, was not his own. He had not remembered it; he had lived it. It was a perfect, fully immersive recording of a single, perfect moment in a stranger’s life. A young woman, in a field, in love, perhaps a century ago.
He stared at the spilled wine, the color of a fresh wound on his pale floor. The glorious scent still lingered in the air, a ghost of the meadow, but it was already fading. He frantically, desperately, licked a drop of the wine from his finger. Nothing. The flavor, the scent, the miracle, it was gone. His palate had returned to its grey, silent, mocking prison.
He understood with a clarity that was both exhilarating and terrifying. The experience was in the first contact. The auction listing’s strange phrasing was not a boast; it was a literal description. “Authenticity is self-evident upon tasting.” This wine didn’t just have notes of fruit and earth; it had notes of memory and emotion. The terroir was not soil; it was a soul. The vintage was not a year; it was a life.
He spent the rest of the night in a state of feverish wonder and dawning, cosmic horror. What was this wine? How could it possibly do what it did? Was it a drug? A neurotoxin? A form of liquid hypnosis? Or was it something else? Something older, more terrible, and more wonderful than he could possibly imagine. He looked at the bottle. He had poured perhaps two ounces. There were at least twenty-four more ounces of the liquid. A dozen more glasses. A dozen more moments. A dozen more lives.
He was a man who had been starving in a sensory desert for two years, and he had just been given a single, exquisite taste of an oasis. He knew, with a certainty that terrified him to his very core, that it was a poison. It was an addiction in its purest, most potent, and most seductive form. But he also knew, with that same terrible certainty, that he would drink it again. He had to. He would trade what was left of his soul for another taste, another fleeting moment of sensation in his grey, flavorless world.
He carefully, reverently, put the black cork back in the bottle of Lacrima Mortis, his hands still shaking. He had bought it to feel something. He had gotten his wish. He had felt the pure joy of a young woman’s love in the 1920s. But as the last of the phantom scent of wildflowers faded from the room, a new, colder feeling began to creep in. He had tasted her joy. But the name of the wine was not Lacrima Gaudii, the Tear of Joy. It was Lacrima Mortis, the Tear of Death. What other moments, what other emotions, were waiting for him in the dark, silent depths of that bottle? He was a sommelier again, but the vintage he was about to explore was not of the grape, but of the grave. And he was thirstier than he had ever been in his life.
