"I make no secret of how I came into my profession; it was by tasting old, fermented fruit, and deciding to see what I could do to make it better. What is not often said is how I knew what to look for. You see, my grandmother used to tell me tales of her mother, named Resin Hoof, who used to make such drinks as I do now. For many turns of the sun, she would travel up a mountain at the edge of the desert, and into a very tiny valley in the heat of sullen late summer. This tiny valley was home to a clever cheetah, who had made it his home when he discovered that the many fruits that grew there attracted many tasty bugs, birds, and rodents. He had but to wait for them to come eat the fruit, and he had easy meals.
"The cheetah, whom my great-grandmother had named Lazy Bones, was too full and lax when she had first found the valley to chase her off, and over the years grew affectionate towards her, but would not travel away from the valley. The fruit itself, so my grandmother said, was all things that were ripe at different times of the year, from strawberries in the spring, to the last oranges of winter, but what she was there for was the grapes. Such grapes she had never seen before, huge, fat, and heavy. They hung in great clumps, from delicate green to the darkest burgundy, and they were at the perfect point in late summer, ready for squashing and storing in the little cave the valley sported.
"What Resin Hoof did in the valley was a secret to everyone, even her own children, though most knew that she could turn the fruit in the valley into an astounding substance. She did this for most of her life. Then, one spring she knew that she had grown too old to make the journey, and she told my grandmother a little of what she had done. She spoke of how when she had first found the valley she had slept there a day and a night with naturally fermented fruit in her belly, and dreamed of a sweet voice whispering the secrets of wine to her.
"That was how I knew to make logs into vessels for the wine, how to cultivate the right types of substances to turn things properly, and how long to wait, through grandmother's stories. I spent most of my adolescent years searching for that little valley of many fruits, but I could never find it. Perhaps the cheetahs or other predators stopped living there, and the pests took away all the plants. Or perhaps it is still there, hiding my great-grandmother's last casks of wine. Any way that it is, it will be there for someone else to find, for I have left the desert, and I have no intention of going back.
"I do love my family, but here I have found more than that valley could ever provide, and the swamps and groves sing in my soul now. Perhaps someday someone from that place will come to me. And if they do, I will welcome them with stories, dancing... and wine."
