Zhou Dagen straightened his spine; he was already in his fifties. Life is only once, with no second chance at fifty. He was gifted, endowed with a more sensitive tongue than anyone else since he was a child.
He was a lover of wine, but it was also wine that left him alone in his twilight years. At thirty, he had the chance to go to France, the holy land of spirits, for advanced studies. But at that time, he was also appreciated by a domestic distillery that offered him a job as an appraiser. After weighing the pros and cons, Zhou Dagen chose to stay in Mo City.
Little did he know that the distillery offering him an olive branch specialized in making counterfeit and branded liquor. Out of helplessness, he could only go against his conscience and help the distillery replicate a variety of beverages that closely matched the tastes and quality of the famous brands.
By the time he was forty, the counterfeit distillery was ordered to shut down by the government, and his behind-the-scenes counterfeiting was exposed. No one in the industry dared to employ him, and he had forever lost his opportunity to study abroad. No one would appreciate a wine taster with a tarnished reputation.
Pello’s words were nothing special, but they dug up the past Zhou Dagen had hidden deep in his heart. He paused as he was about to step toward the staircase and sighed, "George Ballantine brewed his first bottle of Bailintan at the age of nineteen; I am already fifty-three."
"Youth must have its aspirations, middle age its reflections, and old age its revelations. (Borrowed from the slogan of a wine lover’s advertisement because it’s well-written.) Perhaps you will, at the age of a hundred, brew your own ’Bailintan’. Success that comes too early is not necessarily a good thing," Su Ziceng murmured casually as if offering comfort or blessing. Whether it was one or the other, coming from a woman who had been drinking, it was different.
Drinking should be accompanied; few drink alone like Zhou Dagen. What you drink alone is not so much the wine but the emotions. When men drink with men, they often get into competitive drinking. When a man drinks with a woman, especially with a woman he admires, the wine tastes different. The usual restraint between drinking buddies is gone, replaced by spontaneity, and a woman’s tender words become the best side dish to the wine.
At this moment, Su Ziceng’s cheeks were flushed with the hue of rouge from drinking, her beauty like peaches in bloom. Amid the clinking of glasses, there was a unique charm, even Zhou Dagen, an older man, was momentarily dazzled.
Pello did not speak again; as he looked at the reflection of Su Ziceng’s face in his wine glass, he could never have imagined that today, while tasting wine, he would also gain a transparent understanding of the woman sitting opposite him.
Su Ziceng was once an extravagant oil painting, but at some point, it washed off its gaudiness and brought out the delicacy unique to Eastern women. With every frown and smile, she carved out a different kind of charm.
"Hahaha," Zhou Dagen burst into laughter, realizing he couldn’t even match a young girl. The fleeting years came easily and should go just as freely; what was he, Zhou Dagen, a lonely man, doing starting to believe in the deceiving numbers of forty or fifty? Having drunk too much, with no outlet for release, his frustration morphed into tears of confusion, which fell from the corners of his eyes: "Well said, a truly worthy ’Bailintan’. It seems it’s time for me to make a comeback."
Su Ziceng was rendered speechless, exchanging glances with Sister Mu. They never expected that Zhou Dagen, whom they couldn’t cajole no matter how hard they tried, would surrender over the course of a meal.
After the meal, Sister Mu left some space for Su Ziceng and Pello. After clearing the leftovers, Su Ziceng formally thanked Pello. Were it not for him pouring out his efforts and his wine, Zhou Dagen probably wouldn’t have agreed so readily today.
"No need to thank me, just accompany me for a drink when I need it in the future," Pello said with a smile, shaking his head, proposing this peculiar form of gratitude. Most of the time, he was as genteel as he was back in Kelly Women’s College, making reasonable requests, but today his smile held a hint of something deeper.
"Agreed," replied Su Ziceng, her words lacking sincerity. The sky had completely darkened, as if a black curtain of night had replaced the room’s lighting. At a loss for words, she could only mechanically wipe the table over and over, until the man standing beside her vanished from the gleaming tabletop.
When she got home, the living room had been tidied. Su Ziceng glanced at Chang Mei’s room; after the confrontation earlier that day, Chang Mei had not gone to complain to Su Qingzhang. Today’s events had been too smooth. Well, now that she had secured a qualified appraiser, the next step was to get the liquor store in order. She would go tomorrow to sign the transfer contract for the liquor store and then find a way to get Shang Yin to cough up some good wine.