Diary fragment · 2 min read ·
The Notes of a Cellar Clerk
A wine merchant's clerk who works alone in the cellars under a Murrow department store keeps a diary of the bottles that have been opened in the night, and the labels he is asked to write for them.
- dated: November, the week before the store's centenary
- narrator: Leonard Ames, cellar clerk
- reliability: reliable
Monday. The cellars run under the whole block, four levels deep, and I have the lower two. Racks of claret, a cask of port nobody has tapped since the war, the sparkling range for the wedding trade. My job is to check the stock against the book and to keep the labels straight. Simple work. I like the quiet.
Tuesday. Found the cork pulled on a bottle of 1928 Margaux. The bottle is in the back rack, where I put it myself at the start of the month. The wax is intact. The cork is pushed in neatly, the way a careful man does it when he means to bring the bottle back. There is a glass on the shelf beside it, half full, clean, with the dust undisturbed around its base.
Wednesday. The manager asked me to write a label for the centenary bottle, a special cuvée, with the store crest and the year. I wrote it. This morning I found the same label on a bottle I have not opened, and beneath it, in pencil, someone has added a line in a very neat hand: *Drink it with someone you have forgiven.*
Thursday. Checked the cask. Empty. I am certain it was full on Monday. The tap is closed and the dust on the floor is wet in a neat circle, as if somebody had stood there for a long time.
Friday. Sat on the bottom step with a glass from the back rack and a lamp, and waited to see who came to open the bottles. Nobody came. But at about two in the morning I heard the cork of the 1928 Margaux go, very softly, and the sound of someone pouring. Then a second glass was set down on the shelf, and then a third.
Saturday. The store opens its centenary display tomorrow. I have been asked to write the labels for the rest of the vintage stock, and I find I have already written them, in my own hand, in a book I do not remember buying. Each label has a name in the corner. Several of the names are my own. I do not know whether I have forgiven anyone. I have decided to find out.