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The Vintner's LuckThe Vintner's Luck is a romantic fantasy novel by New Zealand author Elizabeth Knox, first published in 1998. It was her fourth full-length novel, and her first book published outside New Zealand. The novel charts the relationship between a French winemaker (the vintner of the title), Sobran Jodeau, and an angel, Xas, who first visits Jodeau on a midsummer's eve in 1808, when he is 18 years old, and again each year on the same day. The novel won several prestigious awards including the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards and the inaugural Tasmania Pacific Region Prize for best novel. It was adapted into a feature film in 2009, released as The Vintner's Luck internationally and A Heavenly Vintage in the United States.

Plot
Pinot noir grapes � the variety of Sobran and C�leste's nuptial wine, which Sobran shared with Xas at their second meeting
The novel chronicles the life of a peasant winemaker, Sobran Jodeau, and his long and enduring relationship with the angel Xas over 55 years. It opens with 18-year-old Jodeau, drunk and unhappy in love, on the ridge of the sloping hills of his family's vineyard in Burgundy. Jodeau stumbles upon what he initially thinks is a statue, but which turns out to be the angel Xas. Xas is described as physically beautiful, and appearing as a young man with white wings and whiter skin, smelling of snow. Jodeau believes that Xas is his guardian angel, and Xas promises to toast his marriage the following year.

Xas thereafter visits Jodeau in the same place, once a year, with each annual visit constituting a chapter of the book, and their relationship develops. Each chapter title bears the year and the name of a different stage in the wine-making process. The first chapter is titled "1808 Vin Bourru (new wine)". The second chapter, "1809 Vin de coucher (nuptial wine)", records Jodeau's marriage to C�leste against parental opposition, and the birth of their daughter. As time goes on, Jodeau joins the French army and travels to Moscow with his best friend Baptiste Kalmann as part of the Napoleonic Wars, inherits the family vineyards after his father's death and becomes prosperous. At each annual visit he and Xas discuss Jodeau's life and family, and events in the village (including the murder of two local girls), and Xas gives Jodeau brief details about the afterlife and of his relationship with God and Lucifer; he appears to embody a mysterious treaty between the two.

Over time, Jodeau falls in love with Xas, but after learning that Xas is a fallen angel, feels conflicted. He develops a closer relationship with Aurora de Valday, the widowed niece of a local nobleman, and she learns of his relationship with Xas. One visit Xas is wounded by Lucifer, and "given" to Jodeau.

The final meeting between Jodeau and Xas is in the chapter "1863 Vinifie (to turn into wine)". An epilogue, from the perspective of the immortal Xas, is set in 1997.

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