Archive of Our Own

“This wine is star-bright, straw yellow with a gold core. Slight gas, no sediment. Medium viscosity, intense aroma, citrus fruit, lemons, lemon peel, grapefruit pith—” Nico ran through the tasting grid with well-practiced fluidity. He tended to frown a bit when he tasted, like the wine was a particularly challenging math problem that he couldn’t quite solve. It might be a little off-putting for the judges, but at this point Seb knew better than to critique Nico’s painstakingly crafted routine. Nico took an exacting sip from the glass, sucked in through the wine to aerate it, then spit it out into the mason jar they had christened the Methuselah.

“Acid is medium, alcohol is medium-minus. Dry, with a long finish. Watermelon, lemon, apricots, dried apricots, elderflower, rotting elderflower, elderflower liqueur—” Seb snorted a little at Nico’s flourish. Nico didn’t look up from the glass, but his frown deepened. “This is a white wine, from the old world, from Portugal, from the Lima region. It is two to three years old. This wine is a Vinho Verde, made with Loureira grapes, from an average producer.” He finally took a breath and looked up. Seb had seen that look of hope in Nico’s eyes countless times over the past years. He hated it when he had to let Nico down with bad news. Luckily, he didn’t have to this time.

“Nailed it. It’s a 2016 Loureira Vinho Verde.” Seb reached under the table and brought up the bottle. Nico took it eagerly and studied the label. He was smiling, just a little, for this small job well done. In the weeks leading up to the exam, getting the right answer on flashcards or blind tastings were the only things that could put a crack in Nico’s stony, serious focus. That didn’t stop Seb from trying on his own anyway.

“That’s the second one in a row. You sure no one emailed you the answers?” Seb joked. Nico’s face hardened again.

“Don’t joke about that. Twenty-three people got their master’s certification taken away that year. Stepney and Coughlan were banned from the Court for life. It wouldn’t be funny if it happened to you, would it? After all the work we’ve put into this?”

“Of course not. Just trying to lighten the mood.” Seb swirled one of the glasses in front of him, a tic ingrained in him out of pure habit. “It’s late, maybe we should call it a night.” Nico’s mood would only sour if they kept going. Seb almost wouldn’t want to get his final glass right, because he knew Nico wouldn’t be able to hide his jealousy. Almost.

“No way, you’ve only got one left to go. Go on, it’s a good one.”

“You just want to see me fail at guessing whatever crazy varietal you’ve picked out this week.”

“If I pick crazy wines it’s just because we need to be prepared for everything.”

“Okay, okay,” Seb relented and pulled the glass towards him. Nico always watched him taste with an unsettling amount of intensity. Seb preferred their big, rowdy tasting group, where insults were thrown around between palate notes and the pressure to perform was a little more diffuse.

He held the wine up to the light, then examined it above the sheet of white paper in front of him to better see the color. It was a deep garnet, warm and rich. He lifted the glass and inhaled deeply. Each wine was a shifting kaleidoscope of brilliant but fleeting scents. He began to rattle them off: red fruit, cherry, red currant, black fruit, blackberry, black currant, mineral, wet rock, wet chalk, wet granite. No oak. He barely even had to think about what he was saying, the monologue running automatically as he searched his galaxy of references for a constellation that fit this nose.

The dots connected in one beautiful swoop that made his heart skip. He didn’t even need to take a sip to taste the deep fruit, meat, and smoke in the wine. The notes stuck out in his memory. Their first trip to central France, before any of them had even earned their Advanced diplomas. Visiting endless small towns that they had only ever read about books and studied on flashcards. Drinking, actually drinking, not tasting, glasses of wine with Nico and Lewis and Jenson, on the patio of a small producer’s house, looking out over the modest vineyard.

Identifying the wine without even tasting it would just be showing off, but Seb couldn’t help himself. “2005 Beaujolais-Villages,” he said and took a healthy drink from the glass, staining his grin red.

Nico put the bottle on the table with a tight smile. “You’re really going to Dame me in our own home?”

“Fred Dame identified all the wines on his Master’s exam without tasting them. That is Dame-ing. I’m just being a dick for the fun of it.”

That at least seemed to make Nico’s smile a little more genuine.

Seb took another sip, trying to taste the French breeze along with the wine. “It reminds me of—”

“The trip to France? Yeah, I suppose it reminds me too.” Nico was inspecting the label of the wine with practiced nonchalance.

The pick was way too easy by Nico’s standards. He could only have chosen it for its sentimental value. Seb bit his tongue so as not to point it out and scare Nico off from the moment and ensure he never did anything similar again. Nico’s ambition only allowed him to look forward, never back.

Seb pulled a pair of clean glasses off the bar cart and poured two restaurant servings from the bottle of Beaujolais. “Still, it’s not every day you get it on the nose alone.” Provoking Nico’s competitiveness was comparatively easier, safer, than bringing up the past few years. He pushed one glass towards Nico. “Come on, that’s worth drinking to.”

Nico took a sip, closing his eyes as he swirled the wine around his palate. He looked peaceful for a moment. Then he leaned over and spit it out into the Methuselah.

Master Sommelier was the goal they had spent years working towards. Lewis and Nico had started the process before they could even legally buy wine. Seb had nodded through many childhood stories involving pilfered bottles from the Rosberg family cellar. Any other kids would have downed the bottle quick for the buzz. Lewis and Nico stockpiled them until they could taste them side-by-side and compare notes.

Seb was a later addition to the two of them, but the process of training for the Advanced diploma made them quick friends. They all joined Jenson’s tasting group around the same time, when three previous members passed their Advanced and went on to training for the Master exam. Despite his confident persona and quick ascent through the ranks at the Red Bull Restaurant group, the first meeting had shredded Seb’s nerves. Jenson was nice and all, but he was still a Master Somm and thus terrifying. However, Seb stammered through the correct identification of an Aussie Riesling, and Jenson had clapped him on the back, and after the tasting Lewis and Nico asked him to join them for dinner.

Dinner became weekly tastings and late-night study sessions and then eventually transformed into trips to Europe, Australia, Chile. Seb passed his Advanced on his first try, the youngest ever to do it. Lewis and Nico failed and had to wait another year. While Seb’s achievement meant awards and glossy spreads in wine industry rags and a not-insignificant pay-raise, he still moved out of his solo apartment and in with Lewis and Nico. They had redoubled their effort at studying, and while they honed their service skills in seemingly every free moment, Seb began working on what would become a mountain of flashcards and cheat sheets.

The next year was a blur as he demolished book after book, obscure bottle after obscure bottle, all while working even longer hours at Energy Station, RBR’s newest location. Nico and Lewis were fine having each other to lean on, just like in their earlier days. All Seb had to do was play the difficult customer when they wanted to practice for the service exam. It was an easy job; he could practice his flashcards in between winding them up with ridiculous requests for obscure Italian varietals served on ice.

The true madness began when Lewis and Nico passed their Advanced exam. Michael always told him that there was no way to pass the Master without training with others, so Seb had chosen to put the test off for a year and wait for Lewis and Nico to join him. There was one night of drunken mayhem, where they actually drank liquor for once and Seb pretended not to see Nico and Lewis sloppily kissing in the kitchen when they got home. Then training for the Master exam began in earnest.

Quizzes and flashcards replaced conversation. Every meal was an exercise in pairings. They went to three different tasting groups and hosted one in their dining room every other Monday. A calendar hung on the fridge, the date of the exam circled in red and surrounded by exclamation points. “When is the Master exam again?” Seb sometimes asked Lewis, just to see his expression morph from mortification to confusion to amusement. They lived wine, they drank wine, and sometimes Seb would ask Lewis why God didn’t give them gills so they could breathe wine as well.

The date on the calendar arrived than any of them thought it could. Seb had, by his count, tasted over 2,000 wines in the past year alone. He had made twice as many flashcards. He had blind tasted with every Master Somm who lived within a four-hour drive, practiced the service portion with them as well. The extra year of preparation, the long nights after becoming the head sommelier at Essere, the hours he had spent analyzing Lewis and Nico’s tics as they tasted, they would all be worth it soon enough. Only three days, three exam portions, stood between the three of them and the little red badge that made them Masters.

Lewis was the only one who passed. Not just among the three of them, but among the group of 40-odd sommeliers who took the exam. When he accepted his diploma he was radiant, proving again how singular he was, exactly how much he deserved his blossoming position in the wine world, no matter what his detractors said. Seb blinked back tears as the room toasted to the newly minted Master Sommelier. Equal parts love and jealousy threatened to overwhelm him, but he just sipped his champagne and sought out Lewis for a much-deserved hug. Nico was conspicuously absent. Seb found him by accident, vomiting in the bathroom.

Within a month Lewis was hired as the wine director at Alinea. He moved out in pieces, dragging his feet and still paying rent until all that remained in his room was a stack of books and a full-length mirror that he bequeathed to the house. Seb tried to savor the last few days in the house with the three of them together, but Lewis was fielding calls at least once an hour, and Nico either wouldn’t come out of his room or would be gone, unexplained, for hours at a time, and then Seb had his own disappointment to deal with, hanging over him in a cloud.

Nico took his failure harder than Seb did, no doubt. He had been working full-time at a Michelin-star restaurant, the youngest wine director they had ever had, but the week after the exam, he quit. He joined more groups, bought new books and started booking flights to Spain, Italy, New Zealand, living off his comfortable family trust. Seb would have been more jealous if he didn’t know the weight that came with being the son of the only Finnish Master Sommelier, one of the most senior active members of the Court. Especially being the son of someone like Keke. However, Nico had begun unloading a bit of the weight by declining his father’s offers to visit and help with the training. It was part of a pattern of cutting, simplifying, streamlining. Nico had started to answer questions about his accent with a nod and a definitive, “German,” rather than actually getting into it like he would before. He got a flip phone and always declined when Seb asked if he wanted to watch a movie together. If he didn’t need someone else to pick wines for blind tasting practice and run flashcards with, Seb wasn’t sure Nico would even stick around.

So the job of finding a new roommate to help cover their exorbitant Los Angeles rent fell to Seb. It wasn’t hard; Daniel was a RBR expat whose time at Energy Station had just overlapped with Seb’s. He was only studying for his Advanced, and he tended to have raucous tastings with a coterie of up-and-coming somms barely past their 21st birthdays, but he was reliable and his smile was a welcome counterpoint to Nico’s deepening scowl. Seb liked him, he really did. But he also kept catching himself waiting for Lewis to come through the door, beaming with the mischievous smile that meant he had found a bottle really worth trying. Nico only ever brought home bottles as a challenge.

It was past two in the morning when Seb finally made it back to the apartment. A double shift at Essere, followed by a tedious but much-needed management meeting with Mattia and Charles, had left him dead on his feet. Still, he took care to slide his key into the lock as quietly as possible. Daniel was liable to be awake at any hour of the day, but Nico kept a strict sleep schedule that meant silence and lights out at 11 p.m. sharp. Seb cringed a little at the sound of his Ferragamos on the wood floor, but then he saw Nico’s head peek around the corner from the kitchen.

“It’s pretty far past your bedtime, isn’t it?” Seb asked. He shouldn’t even mention it. Nico was always touchy when something disrupted his routines.

Nico stepped out of the kitchen with a full Bordeaux glass in his hand. He swayed a bit, then steadied himself against the wall. “I’ve been thinking about becoming nocturnal. No distractions at night.” He took a rough, messy gulp from the glass. Where he was usually so measured and precise, he was now awkward and overexpressive. He gestured to the rest of the darkened house in a wide motion that made the wine slosh and threaten to spill. “Now that I’m free from having to work, or see anyone, or keep any kind of normal human schedule. Could be good for me. Maybe then I won’t misidentify a Shiraz as a Malbec and look like a complete amateur in front of a bunch of people who have barely passed their Certified, god—”

“I’m going to sleep. You should too,” Seb said and headed towards his room. Nico would be a terror in the morning, and Seb would have to talk him down from the headache and the panic over the fucked up schedule. How many flashcards would they have to do together until Nico felt he had sufficiently atoned? Yeah, bed. Seb needed sleep. The Nico situation could wait until morning.

Nico had other ideas. He caught Seb’s arm before he could slip into the hallway. “Wait, stay up with me a little more.”

“I’m sorry but I really should go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Nico huffed. “You’re doing that thing you always do.”

“What?” Seb asked, irritated by Nico baiting him.

“You never, fucking, see me, it’s like you’re just humoring my presence now that Lewis isn’t here.”

Seb was taken aback. Nico could be petty and passive-aggressive when he wanted to be, but he was never this dramatic. “What the hell are you talking about? We spend basically every day together. You should be sick of me by now.”

“And you never ask how I am,” Nico mumbled. Wasn’t that rich, coming from him.

“Well if you didn’t make me feel like you were going to bite my head off if I talked about something other than wine—”

“You find plenty of time to make fun of me.”

“Make fun? Jesus, I’m trying to be your friend.” Seb barked out a bitter laugh. “You’ve just been making it pretty fucking hard, you know? I’m not sure if you noticed but even Daniel’s given up trying.”

Nico crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Well, sorry that I’ve been trying to make sure I don’t get left behind again this year.”

“Left behind? I thought we were in this together. Now, who is tolerating who?”

Nico rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” Seb said. He wished Nico would just be straight with him and let him go to bed, instead of leading him around this stupid argument.

“I know you’re going to make it this year. And if you don’t you’ll be fine. You have confidence even when you’re failing.” His voice was getting shaky, brittle. “I can’t do it. I have to make it. I have to. I hate what it’s doing to me.”

Wired on adrenaline and exhaustion, all the advice Seb could think of to offer him was It’s your own damn fault. A younger version of himself would have let Nico have it, but now he had enough wisdom to bite his tongue. “We should talk about this in the morning. We can get brunch and leave the flashcards at home. We can just talk like people do.”

Nico looked at him with an expression Seb couldn’t place. He bit his lip like he was also holding himself back from saying something regrettable. Seb prayed that it wasn’t some complaint about his schedule. If it was, he might scream. Instead, Nico darted forward and kissed him, stumbling a little as he did, bracing himself against the hall with his free hand.

Seb was surprised not just by Nico kissing him, but also how he kissed him, messy and rushed with the taste of wine on his lips. If Nico had spent the year making an art out of self-restraint, then he hadn’t brought it to his kissing yet. Seb gently pushed him back with a hand on his chest. “This isn’t what you want,” he said, looking down at the floor between their feet. “You’re drunk.”

“So what?”

“I’m not Lewis,” Seb said and ducked under Nico’s arm. He turned the corner into the hallway. “Drink some water and go to bed.”

Seb hadn’t planned on sharing a hotel room with Nico regardless, but now he was doubly glad that he made arrangements with Kimi. Nico’s intensity in preparing for the exam had reached new heights in the previous weeks. Seb had been glad for the long hours he was working. He might have taken some days off to study, Mattia would have surely understood, but the demanding customers at Essere were easier to deal with than Nico and the quiet tension that infected the whole house.

Seb had roomed with Kimi last year, and it had gone better than he’d expected. Kimi kept normal hours, didn’t list appellations in his sleep, and was good at nurturing a comfortable silence. Seb found out that the rumors claiming Kimi drank a shot of vodka before going into his blind tastings weren’t true. He did it before the service portion, and it was tequila.

Seb unloaded his suitcase full of wine and flashcards onto every available surface in the hotel room. Kimi looked at it all with an air of bemusement.

“So be honest with me, are you even trying to pass at this point, or do you just end up here out of force of habit?” Seb asked, dry as bones.

Kimi shrugged and made a non-committal noise. “I have to come at this point. The Masters would assume I died if I didn’t. I can’t disappoint them.”

“Oh, it’s just for the free champagne isn’t it?”

“Caught,” Kimi said, conspiratorially. Seb chose to believe that Kimi’s smile was in response to the joke, not the thought of free alcohol.

Wine Theory Oral Examination. 11:30 a.m. Paddock A, Marina Bay Conference Room. Proctors: A. Prost, MS and M. Hakkinen, MS.

Seb smoothed out his suit jacket again, checked that his tie was straight. His fingers felt idle without flashcards to ruffle through, but the time for preparation was over. There was just a nondescript tan door between him and finding out whether three years of studying were worthwhile. A tap on his shoulder startled him into realizing that he had been staring, as if he could get the door to give up some secrets about what he would face behind it.

“Hey man, you ready?” Nico asked. He was wearing a light gray suit that Seb had never seen before. The fabric had a gentle silvery shine to it, but Nico managed to make it look expensive, not tacky. The dark circles under Nico’s eyes complemented the whole getup, but Seb figured it probably wasn’t intentional.

“God no, but is anybody?” Seb replied, glancing at the door out of the corner of his eye. It should be any minute now. “You’re looking good though. Very New York.”

“Oh, thanks,” Nico said, looking away like he did whenever Seb tried to compliment him. “Maybe after this we can finally burn the flashcards and go back to being real people again.”

“Maybe,” Seb said and winked, crossing his fingers. The door to the Marina Bay conference room opened slightly. His heart skipped a beat. “That’s me. Good luck, Nico. If anyone’s ready for this, you are.”

Nico looked unsure, but he still pat Seb’s shoulder as he headed towards the door. “See you on the other side,” he said, barely loud enough for Seb to hear.

Well Sebastian, thank you for being here today to take this oral exam on wine theory.

Thank you, it’s an honor to be here.

We can begin in English, if that’s okay with you. Can you please name the three DO varieties of txakoli?

Getariako Txakolina, Bizkaiko Txakolina, and Arabako Txakolina.

Please define baumé.

Baumé is the French measurement of the amount of sugar in a wine.

How many gallons are in a Tun?

252.

Please name a Greek vermouth producer.

I’m sorry but I’m not aware of any.

That’s alright, thank you for your candor. Please name the legal subregions of Moravian wine production.

Compared to theory, service was a breeze. Jenson had been assigned as one of his difficult customers, and he smiled supportively even while he attempted to haggle for a five-figure bottle of Romanée-Conti. Fernando was a bit tougher. He was more committed to his role, frowning and complaining as he rejected each wine Seb proposed he try. Seb must have crisscrossed the ballroom to the makeshift cellar in the corner half a dozen times. On the last trip he spotted Lewis at one of the other tables, pointing animatedly at the wine list as Romain nodded eagerly and looked completely lost. Of course Lewis was going to be here, rookie Masters were required to. Was Nico also doing service this hour? Seb hadn’t seen him after theory to check. For his sake, Seb hoped he wasn’t.

Seb was so busy staring that he almost ran into Kimi, who dodged him with a surprising amount of grace and managed to give him a very unprofessional thumbs-up from under his serviette. Seb turned his attention back towards the array of bottles in the corner. Fernando wanted a Barolo, not too tannic and under $40. Maybe the Barbaresco would placate him. Before he even headed back to the table he heard a Spanish-accented voice above the chatter of the other tables. “The service in this place! Unbelievable!”

Seb swore under his breath and hurried back across the room, bottle and clean glass in hand.

Deductive Tasting Exam. 1 p.m. Paddock B, Interlagos Conference Room. Proctors: D. Hill, MS and N. Mansell, MS.

Thank you for joining us for this final portion of the exam. Can you please confirm that you have not received any outside information regarding the wines in today’s flight?

All I know is that there are three reds and three whites.

Perfect. You have twenty-five minutes. The time will begin when you touch your first glass.

This is a ruby red wine, with some salmon variation along the rim. There is minimal staining and no evidence of gas. Viscosity is medium. The nose is— wow— the nose is full of red fruit, dried red plum, raspberry, cranberry, black fruit, dried black plums. There are tea notes, leather, tar. Definite presence of oak, french oak, baking spices, vanilla, cinnamon, clove. On the palate— this wine has medium-plus alcohol, medium acid, medium-plus tannins. More red and black fruits, definite prune quality, as well as pomegranate, strawberry. Fungal notes, truffle, black truffle. Some meat notes, game meat, venison. This wine has a long, complex finish. This is an old-world wine, this is a wine from Italy, from Piedmont, from Cuneo. It is a Nebbiolo, a Roero Riserva, 2015, from a high-quality producer.

Thank you. You may move on to the next wine.

“Have any of you heard from Nico?” Seb asked the group of anxious somms in the lobby. He was met with a field of blank stares. Either they hadn’t heard anything, or they had and they wish they hadn’t. Neither was a good sign.

Some pleading, charming, and puppy eyes got the front desk to give up Nico’s room number. As he rode the elevator up he replayed his own mistakes on a loop in his head. A couple of botched translations during the Spanish and Hungarian portions of the oral exam. A joke with Jenson during the service portion that might have skirted the bounds of professionalism. And then there was the frustrating flight of wines during the blind tasting. He called one of the whites an old-world Chardonnay when it could have easily been a Chenin Blanc. Had he tasted wax and wool? He rested his head on the cool mirrored wall of the elevator and reminded himself to breathe.

He really wasn’t in a position to cheer Nico up if that’s what he needed, but who else would volunteer this job? Seb wondered if it was selfish that these were the moments when he missed Lewis the most.

He knocked on Nico’s door and was greeted by a long silence. Maybe he should have texted first; Nico had a tendency to go on long runs when he was overwhelmed. But the last tastings had just finished. The verdicts would be given in two hours. They all had to be ready to put on a fresh suit and a brave face and sit down one-on-one with the Master who would tell them if they passed or not. Seb knocked again.

“Who is it?” Nico called from behind the door. Not out running after all.

“It’s Sebastian, can I come in?”

The door swung open with surprising force. Seb let himself in and saw that Nico had sat back down on the bed. His tie hung loosely around his neck and his hair was sticking up in several places. Seb sat on the other side of the bed. Nico pulled away, even though there was a foot of space between them.

“Should I even ask how it went?” Seb asked.

“Sorry, I was taking a nap. Didn’t sleep well last night.”

“How could you nap after that? I had to take a few laps of the hotel before I could even sit down afterward.”

Nico shrugged. “How do you think you did?”

“There were two I know I got, wine two was definitely Sangiovese, and I’m almost certain six was new world Sauvignon Blanc. The rest I feel fifty-fifty on,” Seb said. His confidence fell with each candidate he compared notes with.

“Sauvignon Blanc? Fuck, I called Albariño.”

“Oh, no way, it was full of oak.” Seb hated how defensive he sounded. He was sure of his call. At least, he had been.

Nico scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed. “Wine one?”

“Roero Riserva. Tons of red fruit, and the truffle notes, with the alcohol content—”

“Huh, I called it Burgundy. Pinot Noir. Did you not get the anise notes? No, it definitely wasn’t tannic enough for Roero.” Nico always turned dismissive when his confidence was shaken. Seb tried not to take it to heart.

“See, I said wine three was Pinot,” Seb said.

Nico sighed. “Damn, I called Tempranillo. There was American oak all over it.”

“Fuck,” Seb said. He flopped onto his back and stared up at the ceiling.

“Yeah.”

Neither of them spoke. Nico picked at a loose thread on the comforter. Seb shouldn’t have come up to see him. Nico could have dealt with himself and they could have compared their picks at the afterparty, commiserating or celebrating. They could have avoided the early, uncomfortable conclusion that with their differences in calls, only one of them could have passed.

The minutes ground on towards the final verdicts. They sat in uncomfortable silence until Seb finally excused himself to freshen up. Heading back down to the conference rooms was an out-of-body experience. Seb watched himself huddle in a group with the other candidates, chatting nervously and falling silent every time a Master walked by.

Romain was the first one to get his results. He shook hands with Fernando as he left the room, then faced the group. “Next year, mates.” There was a chorus of sympathetic noises from the gathered. Kevin gave him an awkward hug.

Fernando looked down at the list in his hand. “Nico Rosberg?”

Nico had been sitting in a chair off to the side, but he quickly made his way over to the meeting room. The door to the left of Fernando opened as well. Kimi emerged, shrugged, and headed away from the group, in the general direction of the bar. Jenson was a second behind, looking a bit worse for wear. Seb knew he hated giving results and only did it every third year as the Court mandated.

“Come on Seb, you’re up,” Jenson said, and waved him into the room. Seb knew how this went from the previous year. Just two chairs facing each other. Jenson would pick up a manila folder with his results in them. He’d look over the scores, even though he already knew if Seb had passed or not. Then the moment of truth.

Jenson shut the door softly behind him. “So how do you think you did?” he asked conversationally.

Seb tried to smile and breathe. “I think theory was alright and service went well. No thanks to my customers of course.”

“People are just nasty these days aren’t they?” Jenson said with mock-horror.

“And, well, you're never sure about the blind tasting, you know? I felt confident about my picks but then you hear about everyone else’s and you start to question everything.”

Jenson smiled faintly. “I definitely remember that feeling.” He cleared his throat and opened the folder. If Seb thought he could move he might have tried to peer over the top and catch a glimpse of the scores. Instead, he stayed planted in his chair and watched Jenson scan the page.

Jenson cleared his throat and closed the folder. “Well, I think you’re a very good judge of your own performance. You passed theory and service. Unfortunately, you did not pass the deductive tasting portion of the exam. You’re invited to retake that portion of the exam next year and will have a chance to earn your MS then.”

He probably said more after that, knowing Jenson, some gentle encouragement, jokes that betrayed how much he hated to give Seb the news. But Seb heard nothing but white noise, a rushing of blood in his ears that consumed everything else. He shook Jenson’s hand and walked out like a zombie. Next year.

Nico glowed as he went up to accept his diploma. Mika affixed the maroon pin to the lapel of Nico’s jacket, then pulled him in for a hug. A photographer took photos of Nico and Keke standing side by side, holding their diplomas up proudly. The crowd aww-ed in unison. Seb downed his champagne in one go and left early.

Eleven Madison Park called the day after the exam and offered Nico a job. He must have already had it lined up, contingent on his passing. Another entry on the list of reasons he couldn’t let himself fail. Of course, he hadn’t said a thing to Seb about it. Seb returned to LA one friend, roommate, and training partner lighter. What was it Nico had said about getting left behind?

Seb gave Daniel the job of finding someone to fill Nico’s room. Max shouted while he played video games and called Seb mate and had that same hungry, determined look that Nico had worn well until he didn’t. Max also claimed to be taking the Master exam next year, but hadn’t written a single flashcard. There was no doubt in Seb’s mind that he would be a nightmare when he failed the exam for the first time. Christ, he was really getting too old for all of this.

He went back to the routine he thought he was finally going to leave behind: tasting groups, work, sleep. Repeat again and again and again. 52 more weeks of this and then he would have another 25-minute chance to break the cycle. At least this time he didn’t have to study theory or service. He gifted his boxes of flashcards to Daniel and Max, listened to them quiz each other over breakfast. He helped Nico burned his own when he came back to pack up his stuff.

Business at Essere didn’t slow down for him. He didn’t care, he picked up extra shifts, stayed busy, put himself in a position to try as many wines as possible. 51 weeks to go.

40 weeks to go and there was a knock on the door. It was nearly eight in the evening. Whoever knocked was lucky anyone was home; it was the first night any of them had off all week. Seb padded to the door, pulling on a hoodie to make himself presentable.

Nico was standing outside the door, dressed way too formally for LA. “Oh, hey,” Seb hesitated. Nico was looking at him hopefully, but he didn’t say anything. “Aren’t you supposed to be in New York?”

“I was out here for a work trip, and I figured I could— Sorry, I should have texted or something, but I liked the idea of a surprise. Am I interrupting something?”

“No, no, come in.”

Nico set his shoes neatly to the side of the door like he always did.

Seb spotted the bottle in Nico’s hands, the label concealed inside a brown paper bag. “Host gift?” Seb asked. “I bet you could swipe some pretty good stuff from the cellar at your place.”

“I hate to disappoint but it’s nothing that exciting. Just something I thought you might like,” Nico replied.

“What is it?” Seb reached out for the bottle, but Nico drew it away.

“That’s for you to figure out. Come on, I know you’ve been working on your blind tastings.”

Seb tried his best not to read smugness into Nico’s voice. “Okay, but if I have to do this then so do you.”

“I think I’ve still got it,” Nico said, cocking an eyebrow.

“Good, then I’ve got something that will be perfect. Stay there.”

Nico sat in his chair at the kitchen table, the one on the end of the table, while Seb darted into his room to find the bottle. It was stuffed in the back of the closet, in a case with a couple of others that Seb figured he must have been saving for a special occasion but ended up forgetting about. He wrapped the bottle up in a clean t-shirt to obscure the label and contents.

Doing this with Nico again let Seb imagine that New York was just an extended vacation. That Nico would be back here eventually, stuck back in their cramped apartment, performing this same parlor trick over and over until it they just accepted it as the most important thing in the world. But this Nico wasn’t the one who had chafed against the confines of the apartment until he broke free. Seb saw a natural ease in him now, a confidence that didn’t seem paper-thin. A whole person again. He had scraped the lower depths of his own humanity and come out on the other side. Seb wondered if he would have to make that journey himself, if the descent was worth the eventual victory.

He came back into the kitchen brandishing the disguised bottle. “Do you mind if I pop it in the freezer for a few minutes. Sorry, if I’d known you were coming I would have had it chilling.”

“The freezer? That’s not exactly Court standards,” Nico mused.

“Look, I’m glad you’re here, but I’m not glad enough to break out an ice bucket.”

Nico waved him into the kitchen. “I’m just kidding, the freezer is fine.”

Seb wrapped the bottle in some damp paper towels and tucked it in beside Max’s Costco-size bottle of vodka.

“So why are you really here?” he asked as he sat down at the table.

Nico raised his eyebrows. “I told you, I was in the area—”

“You were in Napa. Daniel showed me your post on Instagram. So why’d you make the long, long journey down to LA? Did you miss my face that much?” Seb flashed Nico a cheeky grin. Nico stared down his glass and pursed his lips.

“Oh my god you totally did. Don’t worry, it’s normal, I’ve been told I have certain charms—”

“Seb—”

“What?”

“It’s just—” Nico started, then paused. He swirled the remaining wine around in the glass. “It’s been— I just thought getting the MS, like, I knew it would still be hard work for sure, being at the top of the field, but it’s not— It can be really tough, grinding work and yeah, you know, sometimes I just miss this.”

“This?” Seb scoffed, and gestured around the apartment. “You must be crazy. You were miserable last year.”

“Maybe so. But you refused to give up on me. I don’t know, I just really appreciated it. You can’t do all this alone.”

“No you can’t,” Seb agreed, and sat back in his chair. Nico was still fiddling with his glass, old habits and all that. Seb swallowed the thought of loneliness and kept going forward. “So you’re telling me the Master Somm lifestyle isn’t Veuve Clicquot with your ten closest friends every night? What about Lewis?”

Nico snorted. “I barely see anyone from outside the restaurant, let alone from another city. We go to the same events sometimes, but, I don’t know, it’s not the same. We used to be so similar you know? Somewhere along the line, we became our own people.” Nico sighed. “You know he judged my blind tasting?”

Seb nearly choked on his own tongue.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I couldn’t believe it either. I almost considered not going.”

“No way.”

“No, really, I couldn’t stand the idea of him watching me fail. I was sure I was going to freeze up and bin it. The year before was brutal enough. But no, I went, obviously, and it was weird, good weird. When I started I almost felt like I was back here, right here,” he tapped the table, “and the worst that could happen if I got it wrong was that you two would take the piss and I’d live, you know? It didn’t feel like life or death at that point.”

“You could be on my panel this year. I’ll have to get them all right just to see your face when I do.” Seb could imagine Nico on the other side of the table with surprising clarity. He’d always had the presence of an experienced somm, even when they had just been starting out. The red pin was just the confirmation.

Nico smiled. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re implying.”

“Uh-huh, right.” Seb looked in the direction of the freezer. “Should we get started?”

“For sure.”

Seb got back up and pulled the chilling bottle out of the freezer. “I’ll be disappointed if you don’t get this one,” he said.

“No hints!” Nico said, but he seemed less adamant about it than he would have been a year ago.

Seb brought out the Methuselah and a couple of sheets of white paper. They poured their glasses and traded them across the table. Nico immediately lifted the glass of Seb’s selection to his nose; not correct procedure, visual analysis should come first, but Seb wasn’t going to argue it.

“Well, Masters first,” Seb said, offering Nico the floor.

“If you insist,” Nico said, already holding the glass up to the light. “This wine is straw yellow, fading to water white at the rim, clear, with no signs of gas or sediment. The nose is very delicate, interesting, hm, with notes of underripe fruit, underripe peach, underripe melon, lemon, lemon skin. Flowers, wildflowers, cut flower stems, hay. No evidence of oak. I think I’ve got you pegged, Seb.”

“Do you?” Seb replied neutrally.

“I think so,” Nico said, more than a little pleased, and took a sip. “Medium-minus acidity, medium-plus alcohol. Dry. Stone fruit again, peaches and apricots. Citrus fruit, lemons, limes, as well as tart green apple.” He hummed thoughtfully and took another drink before continuing. “Definite salinity, seashells, seaweed. I’m surprised there’s nothing swimming in there. Exceedingly light body, medium finish. Yeah, I know this one.”

“So are you going to guess or just leave me in suspense?” Seb asked, leaning forward in his chair. He’d forgotten that Nico could actually be a fun tasting partner when he wanted to be.

“Possible grape varieties include Pinot Grigio, Muscadet, Riesling, and Müller-Thurgau. This is a wine from the old world, from a cool climate, with an age range of one to three years. In conclusion, this wine is from Germany, from the Rhine valley, from Rheinhessen. It is a Müller-Thurgau from a high-quality producer, three years old.” He punctuated his conclusion with another victorious sip from the glass. He looked at Seb over the top of the rim, daring him to argue.

“You’re wrong actually,” Seb said cooly. He reached for the bottle to reveal the label.

“Am I?” Nico replied. Seb never should have tried to bullshit someone he’d spent nearly every day with for two years. He set the bottle down in front of Nico.

“It’s four years old.”

“You bastard!” Nico crowed. “You were trying to play it cool but I totally had you. I should have Dame-d it.” He laughed to himself, and Seb found himself laughing too. “You’re so damn sneaky. Okay, your turn.” He pushed Seb’s glass a little closer to him.

“Don’t want to bask in your success a little more? It’s okay, I can wait,” Seb said.

“Oh come on, get on with it.”

Seb relented, picking up the glass and swirling the wine a little. “This wine is a true bright yellow, with no evidence sediment or gas. The nose is—” he inhaled deeply. There was a memory there, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “The nose is moderately intense, little evidence of fruit aromas, but there’s honey, honeycomb, beeswax, honeysuckle. Definite ginger notes, fresh ginger. Maybe some petrol, like a petrol station after rain. Wet pavement.”

“Petrichor,” Nico offered.

“I know what it’s called.” Seb took a sip. “This wine is dry verging on off-dry. High acidity and medium-plus alcohol, really nice round texture. Lots of ripe fruit, ripe peaches and apricots, ripe citrus, lime. Spices, warm spices, pepper, clove, nutmeg. Mineral notes, slate, flint. Definite diesel quality.” The smell and taste of gas on pavement again. They had ridden scooters along the steep hills that flanked the Mosel River, pushing the limits of safety as they tore down the wet roads. Fuel mixed with the smell of late-harvest grapes. Lewis had picked at the sickly-looking vegan sausages offered in the B&Bs. Nico had dodged questions about his accent. Seb had wondered what it really meant to be home. Their only break during that punishing first year when they all studied for the Master exam.

Nico looked at him expectantly. “Come on, you don’t know this one?”

Seb took another sip to confirm. They had visited the vineyard and cellar on their last day. There was no way Nico had forgotten. “You know I know what this is. This is a Reisling Spätlese. Mosel. Bernkasteler Doctor. 2007. And it’s not cheap.”

Nico set the bottle down on the table so Seb could see the label with its gothic lettering. “You’re right, it’s not cheap.”

Seb laughed a little, brought the bottle closer to inspect the label. “Is this who we are now, a couple of ancient somms who sit around drinking the wines of their youth and reminiscing? Christ, keep this up and you might even make me nostalgic for studying theory.” He shuddered for dramatic effect. “You were thinking of the trip of course.”

“I was thinking about you,” Nico said, matter-of-fact.

Oh.

“And don’t look at me like that, you let me show up with no warning, pulled a bottle of very average Müller-Thurgau out of your closet, chilled it, and told me it was perfect and that you’d be disappointed if I was wrong. You remember Sonoma: that guy who refused to believe a good bottle of wine could be produced anywhere further north than Tuscany.”

Seb remembered. “I could tell you were getting pissed but weren’t showing it.”

“You ordered him a glass of the tragically underpriced Müller and shut him up better than I could have,” Nico said, his voice warm at the memory. He drained what was left in his glass.

Nico was infuriatingly right. Seb himself had forgotten why exactly he’d had that bottle in his closet in the first place. But now he remembered checking the wine list at the restaurant in Sonoma and keeping his eye out for that same bottle, snagging it when he spotted it on the shelf at the store and waiting to surprise Nico with it when the mood was right. But then Nico never seemed to be in the mood for memories, and then he was gone.

“I don’t know why we expected anything better from an American,” he joked, in a weak attempt at deflection.

Nico didn’t let himself be distracted. “If we go around buying wines that remind us of each other, I’m not sure that just makes us old and nostalgic,” he said. Seb could tell when he was really joking and when he was hiding his chronic earnestness behind a layer of irony.

“Then what does it make us?”

“Well, it makes me a whole lot less lonely.”

The confession was startling. The Nico that Seb had known would never have admitted to something as sad and human as loneliness. Work had always been the solution, not the problem. Seeing Nico with his walls down, the polish gone, Seb saw him. Saw him not as half of Nico-and-Lewis, or as Keke Rosberg’s son, or as a problem that Lewis had left him with when he fucked off to go be great and successful in Chicago. No, he saw a man, a friend, someone who knew him better than possibly anyone else in the world, even if he himself was often a mystery to Seb. Now that he’d gotten that first glimpse he realized how much more of Nico there was to see, and how little chance he would have to see it.

“When do you go back?” he asked. Any other time he would have tried to hide the urgency with which he wanted to know, but fuck it, if Nico was going to be honest tonight then so was he.

“In the morning. I know, it’s short, but I just wanted to— I don’t really know what I wanted out of this. But I’m glad I came.”

Seb’s stomach was slowly rising into his throat. He fought the urge to play with his glass, or slip back into glib repartee. Were they really doing this? He finished off his glass for a bit of courage.

The chair screeched under him as he pushed back from the table. “Can I take your glass?”

Nico pushed the glass towards him. “Only if you bring me a clean one. I didn’t just bring the Doctor for you.”

Seb stepped around to the other side of the table counterclockwise. It was contrary to his training but it was the shortest route and he didn’t want to give himself more time to think his way out of this. He stopped next to Nico’s chair. Nico looked up at him quizzically, his lips parted just a little. Seb took the opportunity and leaned down to kiss him, soft and tentative, a question more than a confession. He braced himself with one hand on the back of Nico’s chair to stop himself from trembling.

Kissing Nico now was miles away from that night a year ago. Nico didn’t demand, he gave. He pressed back into the kiss, then sucked on Seb’s lower lip as he pulled away. Nico was blushing. “I’ve never tried a wine like that before,” Nico said.

“Want to try it again?” Seb asked, and he knew how corny it sounded but Nico was already standing up and pulling him closer, until he could feel the heat of Nico’s chest against his own.

“With a wine like that, it would be foolish not to,” Nico whispered against his lips, and kissed him again. His hands came up to cup Seb’s face, holding him close as his tongue curled into Seb’s mouth. Seb wondered if Nico could taste peaches, apricots, pavement, and petrol, if he could taste their past, where they’d been. To him, Nico tasted clear, like sweet water, a spring that ran deep but only let him drink from the fraction that bubbled to the surface.

Nico was leaning his weight into Seb, pressing against him everywhere he could while they were still standing. It made Seb feel more wanted than he had been in years. He broke the kiss to blink away the tiny pinpricks of tears that threatened to come to his eyes. He took a shaky breath, then looked back at Nico, his kissed-pink lips and his wide eyes. “Is it too forward to say that we’ll be alone until around midnight?”

“I don’t know, it depends on what you had in mind,” Nico said, but he was smiling coyly, stifling a giggle, running his hands up under Seb’s hoodie, and walking backward in the direction of Seb’s room, pulling Seb along by the belt buckle.

Midnight came too soon.

He flew to Aspen, roomed with Kimi, retook the blind tasting portion of the exam. Called Rioja, Merlot, Syrah, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, White Burgundy. Nico was there, not across the table in the tasting room but waiting on the side of the stage, cheering him on when he went up to accept his pin and diploma. Lewis and Nico jostled each other to get the chance to hug him first, and when they did Seb hugged them back as tight as his suit would allow. The hard back of the pin he wore dug into his skin through his clothes. With their chests crushed together, he could feel theirs as well, a twin ache.

The following morning he woke up in Nico’s room, the triumphant opening chords of Fratelli d'Italia bursting from his phone.

“Good morning, Mattia,” he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Nico briefly looked over from his side of the bed, then covered his face with a spare pillow and turned back over. It had been a late night.

“Sebastian, I just saw the news! Congratulazioni, you’ve done it!”

“I still can’t quite believe it,” Seb replied. There was a moment when he woke up when he had forgotten where he was and what had happened the day before. The pure relief of it overwhelmed him again and made him laugh.

“I can, it’s been a long time coming. Now, I didn’t want to tell you before the exam, because I knew how focused you were, but now that we’ve gotten such great news, you should know.”

Seb sat up, suddenly more awake. “Yes?”

“We’ve just signed the lease on a space in New York City, twice the size of Essere. Ferrari Restaurant Group’s first outpost on the East Coast. And we want you there as the Wine Director.”

“Oh, wow, thank you—” Seb glanced at Nico sleeping next to him.

“Now I know you will be getting a lot of offers, but we think this is a wonderful chance to make connections in New York and build a wine program from the bottom up—”

“I’ll do it,” Seb said, all hesitation gone. For the first time in years, his future was wide open. No more waiting. No more killing time. A real life was there, waiting for him to start it. He hung up and grabbed the pillow off of Nico’s head. He leaned in close enough to whisper in Nico’s ear, had to stop himself from laughing as he began to sing. ”Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today, I want to be a part of it—”