During his year of exploration, Patrick meets a rich cast of characters. Among them is a young local wine-maker called Virgile, who offers to initiate Patrick into the mysteries of each season's work in the fields and in the cellar. Virgile is passionately committed to perfection, though he operates on a shoestring. At the other extreme is Manu, Patrick's dipsomaniac neighbour, a die-hard traditionalist producing a private wine lake of unspeakable rouge. With Manu as his self-appointed guide, Patrick embarks on a tour of the region's wine makers, a succession of lively encounters with growers as varied as the wines themselves. Interwoven are digressions into the history of the region and its wine-making, right back to the earliest plantings by the Greeks and Romans. Meanwhile, the author struggles to deal with his dilapidated inheritance – an unfamiliar and unpredictable world where the brambles have grown as tall as the olive trees, the water supply has just dried up and there is a ferocious animal under the roof tiles.