It began, as these things often do, entirely by accident.
Barrockstadt was a town of strange harmonies. A train station that didn't see trains. A university that studied the forgotten. And a conservatory whose greenhouse bloomed with plants from corners of the world that existed only in faded maps and the eccentric minds of botanists.
The stationmaster, a man with a mustache that wiggled when he spoke too fast, had grown used to the calm—he preferred it, in fact. His station, full of rusty automaton parts and the occasional owl, gave him just enough to do to avoid full retirement, and just little enough to daydream about things he'd never do.
One of those daydreams had involved a vineyard. Not a large one, of course, just a quaint garden plot behind the station house where he might tinker with fermentation the way others tinkered with model trains.
But the soil in Barrockstadt was terrible. The wind from the lake carried too much salt, and the birds were too clever. His grapes in a small corner of the large greenhouse section of the station failed spectacularly—every time.
One fateful afternoon, while delivering a package of botanical slides from the university to the station archives (really just a shelf behind the ticket booth), he overheard a very curious argument between the rectors.
"Pons has left the incubator on again!"
"And the fermentation chamber is bubbling, for goodness' sake!"
"I told you not to touch that Amerzonian Sauvignon sample."
The stationmaster's ears perked up. He poked his head in with all the subtlety of a brass automaton.
"Fermentation, you say?"
The oldest rector adjusted his spectacles. "Purely for science, of course."
"Of course," the stationmaster replied with a knowing nod.
The Amerzonian Sauvignon had been planted decades ago as part of Professor Pons' exploratory cross-breeding program. A vine with tendrils like clock springs and berries the color of sunset. Supposedly brought back by a half-mad explorer who had once claimed to see mammoths in the north.
It turned out the berries, once carefully prepared (and not consumed raw unless you wanted to see visions of talking steamboats), fermented into something altogether magical. Fruity, complex, with a deep violet hue that shimmered oddly under lantern light.
The stationmaster and the rectors struck an agreement in the hush of night: Professor Pons, too absorbed in his latest research into the Youkol people of the Siberian region of Russia, wouldn't notice if his lab's equipment was "borrowed" periodically.
One by one, barrels began to fill. The process was slow, erratic—temperamental as a Barrockstadt goose—but the results were extraordinary. The wine they created was christened Barrockstadt Red. Sold quietly, only to select visitors and eccentric patrons of the university, it gained a reputation among connoisseurs as a mythical vintage from a town that didn't officially exist on most maps.
Professor Pons did eventually notice the missing beakers.
"Strange," he muttered, scribbling notes. "The Sauvignon culture appears to have developed an oenological intelligence... How fascinating!"
He was, mercifully, too distracted by the mammoth skeleton in the lobby of the university's main building, which trumpeted in the key of B flat when certain air conditioning currents passed it, to investigate further. Though he did suspect something and let it slide.
As the years passed, Barrockstadt Red became both secret pride and whispered legend. And when a certain American notary named Kate Walker arrived one day, the stationmaster was just sober enough to hint that perhaps—just perhaps—this sleepy university town had a little more going on behind the ivy-covered walls.
But only if you knew where to look. And how to keep a secret.