Blackberry Wine

The novel alternates between two timelines: the childhood of Jay Mackintosh in 1970s northern England and his present-day life as a middle-aged writer who impulsively relocates to rural France. Woven through both is the influence of Joe Cox, an elderly ex-miner whose homemade wines, herbal charms, and folk wisdom shape Jay in ways he only gradually understands.

Jay is a 37-year-old writer living in London with his partner, Kerry O'Neill, a television journalist. Fourteen years earlier, he published Jackapple Joe, a celebrated novel that won the Prix Goncourt, a prestigious French literary award, and was translated into 20 languages. Since then he has produced nothing of comparable quality, instead writing pulp science-fiction under a pseudonym. Kerry fell in love with Jay because of Jackapple Joe but has grown frustrated by his passivity and emotional distance. In his cellar sit six bottles of homemade wine called the Specials, retrieved from Pog Hill Lane. Jay tries to ignore their restless presence.

One spring evening, Jay opens a bottle labeled "Jackapple '75," a homemade wine brewed from exotic pink potatoes called jackapples. The wine tastes terrible, but its scent overwhelms him, transporting him back to the allotment where Joe once worked. Left alone after Kerry refuses to try it, Jay drains the glass and recognizes the sensation flooding through him as joy. The next morning, a brochure arrives featuring Château Foudouin, a farmhouse in Lansquenet-sous-Tannes that resembles the château Joe always dreamed of buying.

The narrative shifts to the summer of 1975, when Jay, nearly 13 and reeling from his parents' divorce, is sent to his distant grandparents in Kirby Monckton, a declining coal-mining town. Consumed by rage, he cycles along the canal at Nether Edge, where three local boys led by a menacing teenager named Zeth rob him and destroy his radio. That same day, Jay stops at Pog Hill Lane and watches Joe Cox, an elderly man, cutting jackapples to make wine. Joe invites him in and hands him a red flannel charm bag filled with herbs, claiming it will help with his bully problem.

Back in London, Jay impulsively purchases Château Foudouin. He tells Kerry he is leaving for France, insisting that if he waits even one night, the feeling will be lost. Bewildered and angry, she watches his taxi pull away.

The 1975 narrative continues as Jay tests Joe's charm and finds it works: Hiding in the canal bed with the charm clenched in his fist, he goes completely unnoticed by Zeth's gang standing above him. Jay begins visiting Joe regularly. Joe reveals a massive seed collection, thousands of species painstakingly gathered, and shares his dream of buying a château in Bordeaux. Jay asks to come along, and Joe promises they will go together.

Jay arrives at Château Foudouin at dusk to find it derelict. He breaks in and opens a bottle of Joe's Elderflower '76 wine. As he drinks, Joe appears, looking solid but faintly translucent. Moments later, Marise d'Api, who works the neighboring vineyard, appears at the window with a shotgun, insisting the house is private property. Jay explains he bought the farm, but she departs coldly. He later learns his higher offer displaced a longstanding arrangement Marise had with the property's owner, explaining her hostility. Joe continues to appear, offering gardening advice and cryptic encouragement, and Jay begins writing a new novel for the first time in years.

The 1976 and 1977 Pog Hill chapters show Jay returning for successive summers. Joe's situation grows precarious as the railway closes and his street faces demolition. Joe teaches Jay to garden, identify herbs, and read the land's rhythms. A fierce, red-haired traveler girl named Gilly becomes Jay's closest companion, and together they wage guerrilla campaigns against local gangs, reclaiming territory through traps, slingshots, and daring.

In Lansquenet, Jay befriends Joséphine at the café and other villagers. At a dinner party, guests gossip about Marise, calling her La Païenne (the godless woman) and revealing her husband Tony died by gunshot. Jay sends 150 pages to his literary agent, Nick Horneli, who responds with enormous excitement. Mireille Faizande, Marise's formidable mother-in-law, visits Jay and insists Marise drove Tony to suicide.

Jay encounters Rosa, Marise's young daughter, by the river and finds her strikingly reminiscent of Gilly. He slowly earns Marise's trust. After a reckless incident with a wasps' nest that lands Jay in Marise's kitchen, Rosa speaks aloud, revealing she can hear. Marise has been faking the child's deafness as a defense against Mireille's attempts to claim her.

The 1977 narrative builds to a devastating conclusion. Gilly announces she is leaving, and their last meeting ends in a bitter, unresolved argument. Zeth's gang catches Jay and beats him despite his talisman; something deeper than his body is broken: his faith in magic. Jay leaves Kirby Monckton without saying goodbye to Joe or Gilly. Months later, he runs away from school to Pog Hill, only to find the house boarded up and Joe gone. Inside, he discovers old National Geographic magazines corresponding to every travel story Joe ever told. Joe was never a world traveler but a lifelong miner who built his adventures from magazine articles. Jay finds an envelope addressed to him containing only a packet of seeds labeled "Specials." Enraged, he scatters them into the railway cutting.

A late-novel flashback reveals how Jay acquired the six bottles: Visiting Pog Hill with Kerry years later, he finds Joe's street demolished and replaced by retirement flats. He salvages the bottles from the landfill in the railway cutting.

Back in Lansquenet, Marise confides her full story over a bottle of Joe's damson wine. Before meeting Tony, she was stalked by a man named Patrice. Tony killed Patrice and buried the body on the estate, then shot himself when Marise tried to leave. Mireille used her knowledge of the buried body to blackmail Marise into staying, threatening to frame her for the killing and take Rosa.

Joe's ghost delivers a final message through Rosa, telling Jay to remember the Specials, then vanishes permanently. A packet of seeds arrives from Kirby Monckton in Joe's handwriting, containing his entire seed collection with a letter instructing Jay to plant them. Jay also finds Joe's obituary among clippings sent by his agent: Joseph Edwin Cox died on September 15, 1999, at the retirement home built on Pog Hill Lane's site.

Kerry arrives in Lansquenet to pitch a television program about the village. While Jay is out, she takes Rosa to Mireille, who discovers her granddaughter can speak. Marise, unaware of the media threat, shares her hopes of buying the farm when her lease expires. In the predawn hours, Jay plants seedlings grown from the Specials at every road junction while removing every signpost, hiding Lansquenet just as Joe once hid Pog Hill Lane. When Kerry's film crew gets lost and never finds the village, Jay burns his only manuscript copy and the publishing contracts, choosing his new life over the career that would destroy it.

Jay takes the last remaining Special, Blackberry '75, to Marise as a peace offering, and she accepts it with a smile. A postscript, presented as newspaper excerpts, reveals that Mireille has died, freeing Marise from blackmail. Marise purchases her farm. Jay, now living at "Château Cox," has cultivated Tuberosa rosifea and other rare species from Joe's seed collection, becoming a farmer who shares his varieties with neighboring growers. He has fulfilled Joe's dream by becoming his successor: a custodian of rare seeds, a practitioner of everyday magic, and a man who has finally learned to fight for what matters.