Jacob, who had practically half-run from the farm entrance, waved at me as I stepped out of the winery.
“Brian!”
“Yeah…”
“The world is going crazy right now! All our classmates can talk about is Redwood!”
True to the excitable Jacob’s words, all of Napa Valley was currently fixated on the brand called Redwood. It was only natural that the UC Davis students were in an uproar—Warren Winiarski, the virtual elder statesman of Napa Valley, had not only joined the company but had also released a cult wine priced at $450 per bottle in less than a year.
“Yeah…”
“What’s with that reaction? You don’t look happy at all.”
“I am happy… I just already yelled my fill of hurrahs on the tasting day, that’s all.”
“Goodness… Such a lukewarm reaction…”
Jacob shook his head vigorously, then rubbed his palms together.
“So the brandy I’m learning to make today—was it really invented by Mr. Warren Winiarski?”
Standing at a hundred and ninety centimeters with a massive, lumbering frame, he couldn’t hide his excitement. Though he looked like a brigand, there was something endearing about him.
“That’s what I’m telling you. How’s business?”
“Don’t even ask. Since September, the harvest has had me swamped. Harvesting, matching incoming orders… The workers raised hell demanding higher wages, so we couldn’t even operate for days.”
“Was it just a wage hike, or did nearby wineries poach your labor?”
“Both. The big farm in the next town over offered higher hourly wages, and the kids went crazy for it. A small-scale distillery like mine can’t compete. But with so many orders, I had to raise wages and keep them working. A boss who surrendered to his workers… That’s me.”
Jacob answered, his shoulders slumping.
“But it’s not a major loss, right?”
“No, since we have plenty of orders… Still, it doesn’t feel great feeling like I surrendered to the workers.”
“Sigh, it can’t be helped. Let’s try to make it back with this high-end brandy.”
“I’m truly moved that a major shareholder with a thirty percent stake is paving the way like this.”
With that, I headed into the winery and introduced Jacob to Warren. The moment Jacob spotted Warren Winiarski, his eyes went wide and he bowed at a perfect ninety degrees.
“Sir! Allow me to greet you once more! I am Jacob, from Sacramento!”
Warren looked Jacob up and down over the glasses perched on the tip of his nose. His gaze was as critical as if he were checking the sugar content of a grape cluster.
“So, you’re the one who says he’ll inherit my secret weapon?”
“Yes, sir! Please teach me anything! I’ll work myself to the bone!”
“Hmph. Bury your bones in the cemetery. Here, keep your head on straight. Distilled spirits are a hundred times more sensitive than wine.”
Jacob swallowed dryly at Warren’s prickly greeting. I gave him a push from behind and led him straight into the aging room, toward the laboratory housing the custom-built distillation equipment. Enough with the sentimental reunion.
“Jacob, I saw Golden Grain House’s quarterly sales report. Your vodka and soju lines are stable, but the low average unit price means your operating profit margin is stagnating. It just so happened that the elder developed a new brandy production method, and I thought it could be a good fit for your distillery.”
I spoke as I started up the equipment. Seeing the seriousness in my eyes, Jacob quickly straightened his posture.
“I know. That’s why I’m desperate.”
At that moment, Warren began his full-fledged lecture, adjusting a valve.
“Listen well. Brandy is the art of concentrating the soul of wine. But most brandies are boiled over open flame. When that happens, the delicate aroma of the grape—its very soul—is burned to death by the heat.”
He pointed to the vacuum gauge on the monitor.
“The key is pressure. I’ve dropped the system pressure to below 80 Torr. Creating this vacuum means the alcohol begins to boil at around 35 degrees Celsius. Distillation occurring at a temperature lower than body heat.”
“Thirty-five degrees? Alcohol separates at that temperature?”
Jacob asked in shock, and Warren flipped through the data sheet with a deadpan expression.
“Yes. Only by maintaining this temperature can the volatile ester compounds derived from the grape skins settle between the alcohol molecules without being destroyed. Don’t rely on intuition. The moment you miss the specific threshold where the aromatic components separate, what you’re making won’t be a luxury brandy—just high-proof industrial alcohol.”
Warren carefully took the transparent liquid in a vial and brought it to Jacob’s nose.
“Smell this.”
Jacob inhaled cautiously. In an instant, his pupils dilated.
“Wow… This… It’s not just a fruit scent. It’s like cherry blossoms are blooming, yet the finish is sharp and clean… Wow…!”
“That is the essence of low-temperature distillation. A fragrance only possible because we have completely blocked oxidative reactions caused by heat.”
Warren had Jacob operate the valves himself, teaching him the detailed cuts of distillation. The timing of removing the heads and collecting the hearts, and the artisan’s intuition for filtering out the impurities left in the tails. Jacob took notes on Warren’s seasoned advice and cross-referenced them with the figures on my monitor.
“Brian, you’re incredible. You captured in data how the aroma changes drastically with a single degree of difference.”
“Agriculture is the science of statistics and probability. Leaving things to chance is what gamblers do. We create reproducible miracles.”
The lesson continued for several hours. Jacob sweated profusely, not missing a single movement of Warren’s hands. To him, this technology was the key to transforming Golden Grain House from an ordinary soju factory into America’s finest premium distillery.
Warren carefully poured the liquid from the vial into a tasting glass. Inside swirled a brilliant brown liquid, unlike the cloudy amber of ordinary brandy—transparent yet suffused with a deep ruby glow.
“Wow, the color is a work of art. But how does it have a brown tint straight from distillation? Doesn’t it have to go into oak barrels to turn brown?”
Warren smirked at Jacob’s question.
“If we were going to use oak barrels, why would I have bothered with low-temperature distillation to preserve the cherry aroma? The strong vanilla, smoky, and leather notes from the oak would obliterate the delicate cherry fragrance anyway.”
“Now that you mention it, of course. To preserve that amazing cherry scent, it mustn’t go through oak barrels. But then how did this color come about without oak?”
I answered in Warren’s stead.
“It’s a low-temperature pigment extraction technique. After distillation, we separately isolate the anthocyanins and key flavor compounds from the leftover cherry skins, then recombine them with the cleanest base spirit in the optimal ratio.”
“Ah…”
Warren cackled and swirled the glass.
“Son, brown brandy smelling of wood chips is a dime a dozen. But this is the very soul of the cherry, bottled. Drink. It will redefine everything you thought you knew about brandy.”
Jacob brought the glass to his lips. After the burning impact of the over-forty-percent alcohol seared down his throat, a floral fragrance—like swallowing an entire cherry orchard—filled his nose, replacing the stuffy thickness of oak.
“My god… This is revolutionary. The color is so deep, yet the taste is unimaginably fresh! What’s its name?”
At Jacob’s question, Warren and I looked at each other.
“Why are you looking at me?”
“I thought you would have already come up with a name, sir.”
“We weren’t planning to sell it here, so I hadn’t thought of one beforehand. And I wasn’t sure if that rascal would even listen to me.”
Jacob jumped at Warren’s accusatory finger.
“What do you mean? Of course I’ll follow.”
“Anyway, I haven’t thought of one. Have you?”
“Well… I have one?”
“What is it?”
“Ruby Quartz.”
“Oho… Ruby Quartz, you say…”
Pleased, Warren stroked his chin and nodded, and Jacob smiled as well.
“It’s not bad? It’s simple, yet captures the deep yet vibrant brown feeling of a cherry.”
I added to Warren,
“We haven’t thought about the bottle yet, but I plan to put the phrase [Crafted by Warren Winiarski] on the label to show that this is a brandy made by you, sir.”
“Good, good.”
He nodded even more satisfactorily.
The protagonist of the Judgment of Paris, Warren Winiarski—having his name engraved not on wine but on a spirit—was no different from dropping a nuclear bomb on the industry.
How would the market receive it?
Warren, already anticipating that fanatical reaction, wore an expression of great expectation.
---
The Mondavi mansion in Oakville—a symbol of Napa Valley—was submerged in an uncharacteristically heavy silence. Robert Mondavi, leaning on his wheelchair as he gazed out at the vineyards, slowly turned his head. It was the end of 2007. The body of the empire-builder had declined, but his eyes still shone as fiercely as ever.
Standing before him, his children waited nervously. Michael, the eldest son who led the Michael Mondavi Family Estate; Timothy of Continuum Estate; and even his daughter Marcia… The powers that be of Napa had gathered at the patriarch’s call.
At the center of the table sat a bottle of Astra Veil—the hottest wine in Napa Valley these days.
Robert, now with little strength left, raised a trembling hand to the glass and nosed it. Then he let the liquid rest in his mouth, very slowly. His children held their breath, expecting their father to chastise the impudence of this rootless, fledgling winery. But the voice that broke the silence ruthlessly trampled their expectations.
“So Warren said he was going to learn, and now I see why. While we have remained stagnant, a new wave is about to lead Napa.”
Michael couldn’t hide his bewilderment at the unexpected praise.
“Father, what do you mean? Isn’t that an exaggeration, no matter how you look at it?”
But Robert shot his eldest son an icy glare.
“You still hide behind the Mondavi name, selling the past. The wines of Napa Valley were developing continuously, yet at some point they stagnated. And while you rest on your laurels, this young friend from the East has already surpassed you.”
Robert continued, coughing heavily.
“Pay attention to this San Francisco competition. It may be the place where the kingdom you built collapses.”
While the children exchanged bewildered glances, their granddaughter Emily Mondavi, who had been watching quietly from a corner, stepped forward. She was said to take after her grandfather’s passion and sharp tongue the most. Robert handed her the glass, murmuring in a low voice.
“Emily, do you see it? The ambition contained in this wine?”
Emily silently took the glass. Then, following her grandfather’s gaze, she held the Astra Veil up to the light.
In fact, many scions of Napa Valley’s major families had experienced Astra Veil, and Emily was among them. For her, the fact that a wine capable of becoming a new benchmark for Napa Valley—beyond the shock of Quiet Hill—had emerged from Redwood was something she found almost frightening.
“Grandfather is right. This isn’t simply a delicious wine.”
She knew even without her grandfather’s explanation. What the man named Brian Choe had cast into Napa Valley was not a simple letter of challenge, but the blueprint for a new era.
“Study and analyze. Figure out how such a cab emerged from Redwood’s terroir. If you fail to discover that, Continuum’s wines will never be able to improve.”
Mondavi’s words struck at the most fundamental issue of Astra Veil’s creation. Everyone was focused only on Astra Veil’s unique blending, not on the quality of the Cabernet Sauvignon that formed its very core.
“I will.”
Emily, who resembled her grandfather the most, nodded with a determined expression. She thought that the directive, imbued with the wisdom of a grandfather who did not have much time left, might be the clue that could allow Continuum to leap to the next level.