Ask Ingrid how she found her way to Antica Terra, and she’ll give you a one-word answer.

Craigslist.

She wasn’t looking for us, or for wine. She was just looking for a job. Any job.

We were a two-person team, and we were in the weeds, so we posted an ad that read like a plea and hoped that someone would save us.

In walked Ingrid.            In the highest heeled patent-leather shoes, a beige suit, and a fog of French perfume, she didn’t so much as ask us for a job but claimed it.¹ We laughed through the entire interview and left having no idea if she could do what we needed – but we knew, right away, that we needed to be around her every day.

Just to be safe, and because we were pretending we were people who knew what we were doing, we asked Ingrid and another, more typically qualified candidate, to compete in an Admin Olympics. We really did. We brought them in, one by one, and sat them at a computer with a long list of detailed instructions and tasks. Three sections, twenty minutes on the stopwatch for each. We wrote, …finish as many of the steps as possible within the allotted time. If you do not know how to complete a task, you may write “I don’t know” beside the number. The other candidate took her time, silently and cautiously triple checking her work, looking up when we called time! with a benign smile.

Ingrid, however, attacked. In a clatter of gold bangles and clack of white-tipped manicure, she destroyed the list, slapped her hand on the desk like a gameshow contestant and hollered done! with at least ten minutes to spare (leaving zero I don’t knows behind.)  Little Miss Careful beat Ingrid in accuracy – handily – but we hired Ingrid anyway, on spirit alone.

Ten years later, that same spirit is as much – scratch that, more –  a part of what this little business has become than any of the wines we’ve ever made. Great wine abounds; someone like Ingrid? Please. Ingrid has held every position, trained every new hire, tries her best to keep the rest of us, somehow, impossibly, in line. And while none of us have ever been able to keep up with her, we have never stopped trying.

You may not know her kids’ birthdays, the temperature of her steak or how many baguettes she eats in a year², but she knows all of this about every one of you. She knows when you got married and what you drank at your wedding. She remembers when she met you, when your kids graduated high school, the day you entered remission.

I may have been here first but she’s the real boss³ and this place will never be the same without her. We have never understood how France let her get away, and we certainly can’t blame her for heading home, but Montpellier seems impossibly far from Dundee. I’ve already decided that even when she moves to France in June⁴, I’m still going to list her name on every emergency contact form, as I have, without even asking, for ten years, because I figure, even if she was on the moon, she would still know exactly what to do.

I am a better parent for getting to raise my children beside her, a better winemaker because I’m terrified of disappointing her, and a better person for the privilege of calling her friend. We have already decided that anyone who tries to call someone The New Ingrid will be in big trouble. There is only one. But it goes without saying that anyone who walks in the door behind her is going to have some very big, very high-heeled shoes to fill.

You know the number. Give her a call. Ask her about the wines or your allocation or whether she has a guest room for you in the south of France (she doesn’t, we’ve all asked.) But don’t miss your chance to connect. She likes the rest of us well enough and I haven’t disappointed her yet with the wines, but you are the only reason she’s worked here for ten years. Truly. There’s nothing else in the world that would keep her this far away from a proper baguette.

~Maggie

 

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^{1 Ask her about her “Black Belt” in Tae Kwon Do}

^{2 We added them up once – enough to circumnavigate the planet. Ok, not at the equator, but not that far off.}

^{3 Ask her why Mimi calls her the H.B.I.C}

^{4 If you have a business with an office in France, you’d better hire her before someone else does. And if you don’t have one, you’d better open an office, pronto.}