The four of them sat around the kitchen table eating the grilled cervelat wrapped in split bread rolls. "These are amazing, Tante," David mumbled, raising a finger until he finished chewing and swallowed. "Pardon me for talking with my mouth full, but this is just too delicious to have waited to compliment."

"Try a dab of this on it." Bethia slid the small dish toward him. "Only a small bit; the mustard is quite intense, but you'll find it expands the flavours."

He took the tiny spoon from the dish and shook a speckled golden dollop from it onto the end of his cervelat. His eyes widened, almost round, as he took a bite and slowly savoured it.

Bethia's smile grew as she watched his enjoyment. "Better?"

"It was unbelievably good before ... This is far beyond that." He looked at the roll in his hand and continued, "Conrad took me to an Austrian restaurant in Banff – one of his fellow guides had opened it to supplement his income in the off-season. We had something similar to this. He called them Bratwurst Brötchen on the menu, but the regulars called them BBs."

He looked again at the cervelat. "The shape is similar, but these are so much more delicious." He shook a larger dollop of mustard onto the sausage and prepared to take a bigger bite. "I'm so glad my jaw is working better."

"You warm my heart with your enjoyment."

"I've not before had such a complexity of flavours. And the mustard – it's so far from what we have in Canada. Is this local?"

"It's made very close to here." Bethia's face beamed with a smile as she pointed across the kitchen. "This is the one I blend to accent the cervelat. I use the ends of our wines to make the vinegars, and one of our cattle producers has a field of mustard. I love playing with flavours, playing with all things sensuous."

She sat back and looked at him, moving her eyes slowly to minutely examine his face, then ran them down his neck, across his broad shoulders and down his chest, continuing beyond where he disappeared below the tabletop. "I love the sensuous."

She shook her head, paused a few seconds and then turned to Rachel and Maria. "But let's hear about your trip to Gottenheim and about your visit to the nursing school."

Rachel began by talking about finding their way along the web of roads. "We decided that Maria should drive so I could concentrate on the map and the navigation. I had some recollections of the area from years before."

Maria continued. "Mama's instructions were excellent. I was always ready for turns well in advance, and we were never surprised. The only surprise was how quickly the three hours passed. Our throats grew sore from shouting conversation over the roar of the engine and the whine of the cogs and things ... whatever's down there making that whine. The buffeting of the wind across our ears and through the cab and the flapping side curtains added to the noise."

Rachel added, "After the first while of shouted conversation, we sat quietly smiling and enjoying the power and independence. Except for my few navigational instructions, we spent the remainder of the trip speaking wordlessly, soul to soul. We arrived with faces sore from the constant smiling."

"I dropped Mama at the house and continued into Freiburg. It wasn't long before I realised that the roads I had walked so often were too narrow for the lorry, so I had to find another way. One bend was so sharp I couldn't turn. It reminded me of David's ..." Maria paused a second. "... David's warning before we left."

David smiled at her. "Yes, lorries can sometimes be hard in small spaces, catching us by surprise."

Her face grew a huge smile, dimpling her cheeks deeply. She looked at David and then at Bethia. "This is like our faces the whole drive. We couldn't stop smiling. The lorry is so wonderful."

"So, you had to reverse out from the tight corner?"

"Yes, it wasn't too far, thankfully. I had two friendly women who directed me as I backed and pointed me to a broader street that led to the hospital."

Maria continued the story – meeting with the student administrator and then with her favourite instructor. "Doctor Nausdorf told me I had missed only a small amount and that everything is in the textbook. He then took the time to show me the things to concentrate on for the exams."

"And what about your essays?" David asked. "How many? What topics?"

"Only two, both a minimum of five thousand words. We have to choose two topics from a list of three: The Emergency Treatment of Injuries, Special Considerations in the Care of Elderly Patients, and a topic of our choice related to Anatomy. I've already decided."

"Let me guess," Bethia said with a grin. "You're not going to write about elderly patients."

"You're much too alive to need my care yet, Tante. It seems as though the other two topics were conceived for me."

After lunch, they began unloading the lorry. "We used clothing and linens to wrap and cushion the small pieces of furniture and wrap the good silver and porcelain," Maria said. "We must be careful unloading as there are many things wrapped inside."

"Underneath at the front is the wine. We took the best of it – over fifteen hundred bottles, carried a basket at a time into the night," Rachel said. "Each one I remembered growing and bottling."

"It must be difficult leaving those ten years behind," Bethia said. "Leaving behind the hope, the dreams ... The memories."

Rachel sat on the bottom stone step. Dropped her shoulders and breathed a loud sigh. She looked around eye to eye, hers remaining dry. "We're here. We're safe. We're loved. What more is there? Everything will blossom from here. Let's not look back. Let's concentrate on here and onward."

Bethia stayed in the lorry, loading bottles into baskets and moving them to the door while the others ferried them down the steps and piled them against the rear wall of the cellar. "We'll organise them later," Maria said. "Let's just get them into a cooler and more stable temperature."

It was late afternoon, almost evening, by the time they had finished the last of the unloading. "I think we deserve a look at the insides of some of the bottles," Maria said as they plodded back into the kitchen. "The ones in the cooler in the shop should be chilled by now."

"Let's relax a few minutes first," Rachel said. "Freshen up, drink some water and cool down. The wines are much too fine to use as thirst quenchers."

"I'm astounded," Rachel said twenty minutes later as she swirled the glass. "This Riesling is so much better in the big glass than it is in the little ones we use."

"They're Burgundy glasses, Sweetheart. They've been designed to show off big wines, and this Riesling is certainly big. How did you make it so concentrated, so complex? The Rieslings that I've had have been much simpler and lighter than this ... and sweeter. This is wonderfully crisp. How did you make it?"

"My passion is working the vineyards," Rachel said, giving the glass another gentle swirl and a nose. "I love wine that results from tight pruning. The same amount of quality coming up from the soil through the roots can be shared by many bunches or by only a few. The degree of pruning determines whether the vines give large quantity or high quality. They can't give both, so I choose to prune for quality."

"That's what Aaron chose," Bethia said. "Severe pruning, small crops, high quality. He ran the vineyards; I ran the cellar. We both did both, but we knew who the artist was in each place. My passion is the winemaking."

"That's what Dada and I loved – the winemaking and the cellar work. Mama and my brothers grew great grapes that made it so easy for us to make great wine."

"But the intensity?" Bethia asked, "The depth of flavour, the complexity; how did you achieve that?"

"Mama gave us perfectly balanced grapes to work with, and Dada fermented them in the same way he and his family had done in Unterhallau with Weißburgunder. Probably similar to what you do here with yours. He didn't know he was going against the traditional German methods, so he made great wine while our neighbours made light, sweet, uninteresting wines."

David picked up the bottle and studied the label:

Meierstuhl 1913er Kaiserstuhl Riesling
E. und R. Meier, Gottenheim, Baden

"This is the identical wine I poured for you that night in the gasthaus," Maria said. "That seems so long ago now – I can't believe it's barely more than a fortnight."

"I can't believe this is the same wine you served me that night. The smell is so much more powerful, more complex and exciting than I remember. The flavours I can't comment on; the wounds in my mouth were still closing and –"

Bethia interrupted, "Here, pour a bit into this traditional German glass and compare the two."

"An astounding difference," he said as he swirled and nosed each glass in turn. "The big glass shows a complex aroma of flowers, chipped flint, a light smokiness and some baking spices, layers and layers. The small glass only hints at these."

He passed the glass back to Bethia, who nosed it and handed it to Rachel. "The same wine, different tools," she said as she passed it on to Maria.

"I can't wait to taste the Gewürztraminer in the larger glass," Maria said.

"This is the one we had in the mountains," David said, looking at the label:

1911er Kaiserstuhl Gewürztraminer 
Kabinettwein Bestes Fass
E. und R. Meier, Gottenheim, Baden

They remained silent as the Gewürztraminer was poured, and their silence continued as they swirled and nosed the wine, smiling at each other. They sipped and savoured and nodded with broad smiles.

Bethia was the first to speak, "This is outstanding. I've never had such a fine example. What a huge bouquet. Layers of spices and ripe fruits, yet so clean and crisp on the palate. Superb balance and structure."

She looked slowly around as a smile filled her face. "I think we're going to have fun making wine together – and cervelat and Klettgauschinken."