“Brian, hurry up and come here.”
I was at the Silver Oak site, talking with the workers about the reconstruction, when Dad’s call made me pull a troubled face.
“I’m in the middle of talking with the construction crew right now… I’ll come after I’m done. It’s not super urgent, is it? Did something happen with the tanks?”
“No, it’s not that… It’s just, an email came in…”
“Then it’s not urgent, right?”
“Right. It’s surprising, not urgent.”
“Okay. Then I’ll come once I’m finished here.”
“R-right…”
After hanging up, I raised my voice toward the workers.
“If you’d done it the way I told you before, the results wouldn’t have come out like this.”
As I pointed to the results of the infiltrometer test and the soil we had pulled up from the subsoil, the workers looked at a loss.
“We did the work exactly as you told us.”
“Look. There’s far too little gravel compared to the other areas. The drainage rate isn’t even five centimeters an hour. If it’s like this, the roots will spread too finely.”
“……”
“And on top of that, the balance of sugar, acidity, and tannins will suffer… In any case, you’ll need to redo this work.”
The person in charge from the company that had carried out the construction looked dissatisfied, but he had no grounds to refute my firm criticism.
“From where to where do we need to redo it?”
“From the red line I marked over there to this side, roughly thirty yards or so. Please make sure it’s done properly this time.”
Since the trees all had to be moved before the work could be done, even a mere thirty yards wasn’t an easy job. On top of that, it was redoing flawed construction, and when we had contracted the subsoil work last year, they had promised to redo any insufficient areas, so there would be no additional construction costs.
The fact that I had paid generously for the initial construction was also why I had been able to make such a contract.
“Please do it right this time.”
I had a rough idea why they had made this mistake. It was probably because the gravel had cost more than they’d expected.
To create soil resembling To-Kalon’s, you couldn’t use just any gravel. It had to be rounded, smooth river gravel. Only then would the drainage be good, and the roots be able to spread between the stones without being damaged.
If construction crushed stone or gravel too large—over forty millimeters—was used, the roots could be injured, or the pore structure could become irregular, greatly reducing water retention. And if alkaline stones such as limestone were mixed in, the pH could rise and cause problems.
That was why, before construction began, I had carefully checked even the gravel myself and had culled a lot of what the company had prepared at the time. So by the time the work was nearing completion, they had probably run short of gravel and done it like this.
After that, I called over one of the workers and instructed him to keep a close watch on the progress of the construction from the side. Then I headed to Redwood Winery. It wasn’t far, so by bicycle it took less than twenty minutes.
“What’s going on?”
When I entered the winery office, Dad immediately pointed to the computer monitor.
“Go take a look first. An email came in.”
“What kind of email is it…”
I sat down in Dad’s chair and read it.
“Huh?”
When I tilted my head, Dad raised his voice as if to say, See?
“Right? Do you think this is real?”
“But Dad, are you this excited because you really want this?”
“Come on, no. But look. It’s not just anywhere—it’s Stag’s Leap. I’m excited because they’re acknowledging us like this.”
As expected, Dad wasn’t the kind of person who blindly chased greed.
“Send them a ‘no thanks.’ Whether it’s a ten-year installment plan or whatever, I’m not interested.”
I wanted to be recognized for what I had built with my own hands and accumulate wealth through that. If I had simply wanted to become rich, I would have started with stocks using my knowledge from before my regression. Taking over assets someone else had built and becoming rich that way wasn’t in my plans, and more than anything, it wasn’t fun.
“Really? I still thought you’d be interested. Why? Do you think it’ll be hard to pay the acquisition funds over ten years?”
“No. Stag’s Leap has its own revenue, so how hard could that be? If anything, it’s better.”
I hadn’t originally thought about it, but around this time, I remembered that several large wineries had been sold. One was Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, and another was Duckhorn Wine Company. I clearly remembered Stag’s Leap being sold for just under two hundred million dollars.
The reason I remembered this was that Stag’s Leap’s course had been quite different from that of other wineries.
Usually, when wineries grew, like Duckhorn, they pursued both wealth formation and securing investment funds through a combination of investment for expansion and, in part, an exit. But Stag’s Leap had purely sold off all the winery shares held by its founder to outsiders rather than to family.
The reason was never made known, but I remembered finding it interesting when I read in an article that no one in the family inherited Stag’s Leap’s wines. That was why I knew this.
“But why would they offer it to us on such good terms?”
I shrugged.
“Who knows. I’m a little curious about that too. Maybe they don’t want to deal with the side they’re negotiating with now? The founder must be holding almost all the shares anyway…”
“But it really is amazing. It says they’re negotiating at one hundred eighty million dollars right now. Do you think we can become like that too?”
“Of course. That’s why I’m working so hard to prepare the land.”
“Hahaha, that’s right, that’s right. Considering what kind of wine my son makes… If you release a cult wine this time that surpasses Aeschlon, everyone will be shocked.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Well, it feels good, but tell them I hope the sale goes well.”
I got up from my seat and headed for the aging room. Then, realizing something strange, I muttered.
“But if they poke around here and there like this, the sale price will drop… Why are they testing the waters by email like this? That’s odd…”
Surely, a winery that large wouldn’t send an email to just one small place like Redwood Winery in Napa.
---
“They refused?”
“Yes…”
Hudson, who was in charge of operations, wasn’t sure whether he should be pleased or offended as he reported to Warren with a strange feeling. Warren, however, seemed to have expected it to some extent, and showed no particular reaction beyond a slight furrow of his brow.
“The reason?”
“Well… it simply said they hoped we would achieve a good result in this sale, but in the end, the point was that they refused.”
“So they refused without mentioning any particular reason?”
“I thought you might be curious, so I printed the email here.”
The reason Hudson hadn’t handed it over right away was because the reply was truly only two lines long. Warren took the sheet of paper from his employee, most of it white blank space, and read it.
“Thank you for your proposal. We wish to inform you that our company has no plans to be involved in this matter, but we sincerely hope your sale process concludes smoothly… Simple enough.”
“Yes.”
“Damn it…”
“Sir?”
“Nothing. You may go.”
At that moment, the study door opened, and his two sons came in.
“Father, you saw the email, right?”
Andrew and Jonathan, entering with bright expressions, shouted almost at the same time.
“You saw the email refusing, right?”
“We haven’t changed the contract schedule. We’ll proceed as planned.”
Warren silently looked at his two sons, then spoke.
“You two, from the way you behave, seem to think this winery belongs to you.”
Both sons flinched, and among them, Jonathan spoke with his face slightly flushed.
“You’ve been talking about selling the winery since ten years ago. If you change your mind now, we’re the ones who’ll be more taken aback.”
“If I sell it to Redwood, does that mean I’m not selling it?”
“Father!”
“Why do you think I’ve been saying I’d sell it for the past ten years? Neither of you has any interest in wine, and neither of you wants to continue it. If I don’t sell it, am I supposed to cling to it until I die? If I die, do you think you’ll be able to sell this for its proper value?”
“……”
At Warren’s words, the two sons were struck dumb.
“The winery isn’t going anywhere even if I don’t sell it immediately, so how do you think I feel watching you fret so anxiously over Michelle Wine and Marchesi Antinori?”
“That’s because… if the sale deadline gets pushed back, everything will fall apart.”
At his second son’s shrinking words, Warren frowned, then soon spoke with a calm expression.
“Fine. Proceed with the contract schedule as planned.”
At Warren’s answer, the two sons’ faces lit up.
“Understood!”
“You made the right decision! We’ll go tell them right away—”
Just as the two sons were about to leave in excitement,
“However…!”
“Yes?”
The two sons stopped and turned around, and Warren continued.
“I’m going to change the terms of the deal.”
“What…?”
“I’ll request that the Non-Compete Clause preventing me from working in another part of the wine industry after the sale be removed.”
Andrew and Jonathan were greatly shocked.
“Father!”
“What are you talking about?”
When a premium winery of this caliber was sold, a non-compete clause was almost always included. Especially for someone like Warren Winiarski, who was practically the brand itself, he was the most sensitive risk from the buyer’s perspective, so the conditions were usually made even stricter.
If he sold the winery and immediately started another wine business, it would be a significant loss for the buyer. So saying he wanted that clause removed was, in effect, no different from saying he would not sell.
“Instead, I’ll add a condition that allows me to work not as an executive, but as a winemaker. Tell them I’ll proceed with the deal if they accept that.”
“You know that’s an absurd condition! They’ll never accept it!”
“Then I won’t sell. Let’s see you sell it later after I’m dead.”
At their father’s firm answer, the two sons realized they couldn’t persuade him. At least when he was stubborn about something related to wine, no one could stop him.
Moreover, they knew that his desire to continue working as a winemaker was his own decision about the rest of his life, and that they had no right to interfere with that.
“Hoo… For now, all right.”
He wasn’t saying he would start a wine company, only that he would work as a winemaker, so the two sons recognized that their father had compromised to some degree and withdrew for the time being.
After the two sons left, Warren asked Hudson, who had been watching restlessly.
“Do you think I went too far?”
Hudson gave a bitter smile.
“No, not at all. But I am curious. A winemaker… I can’t even imagine you working anywhere other than Stag’s Leap.”
“The same goes for me.”
“Have you decided where you’ll go?”
“No. Nothing at all.”
“Then you’ll simply become a freelance winemaker? The other side will probably impose restrictions one by one, even on blending that resembles the wines you’ve released before. Will you be all right with that?”
At his worried question, Warren instead smiled broadly.
“What’s the problem with that? If I wanted to make the same thing as before, why would I have said I wanted to be a winemaker? I’m doing this because I want to try making something different. Tell them to add all the restrictions they want. I don’t care.”
Whether the acquiring side accepted or not, Warren now felt much more at ease. No, now he even felt a little relieved.
“That damned San Jose building… Let’s see how well that goes.”
He had never even seen the building they were more obsessed with than the winery, but he truly hated the sight of it.