“A method like that exists? How did you come up with such an idea?”
As the former owner of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, he had, naturally, given mentoring lectures at UC Davis and maintained relationships with many professors. So he was able to hear about the latest agricultural methods, at least in theory, through various channels... and yet even he had never heard of something called Dormancy Sap Flow Control.
“Of course it wasn’t my idea. I’m just applying what was in a paper on Xylem Dynamics.”
The xylem referred to here was the vascular tissue in plants—especially woody plants—that transports water and inorganic nutrients from the roots to the stems and leaves. Dormancy Sap Flow Control began to be used in actual agriculture around the mid-2010s, when Internet of Things (IoT) technology emerged and Sap Flow Sensors, which could be inserted directly into tree trunks, became commercially available.
Then, in the late 2010s, as the climate crisis intensified and droughts grew more severe, this technology began to be actively utilized by top-tier wineries in places like Bordeaux, France—Château Latour and the like—and Napa Valley in the United States to control water stress in vines.
In any case, since it was apparently in a paper, Warren nodded.
“If that’s the case... But what exactly does it say?”
“The core of that paper is Hydraulic Resistance and osmotic condensation. People usually think plants stop functioning in winter, but underground, the roots keep storing energy in osmotic form in preparation for spring. But at that point, if the canes are long and there are many buds, that condensed energy ends up spreading thinly and widely throughout the entire vine. The pressure disperses.”
I lightly tapped the base of a cane with the pruning shears.
“But if you cut the canes extremely short and simplify the pathways, the story changes. The energy that has nowhere to go is forcibly returned toward the roots and condensed again. It’s like closing every sluice gate of a dam to raise the water level to its peak. After passing the winter that way, what do you think happens when spring comes and you open just one sluice gate?”
As if realizing something, Warren murmured in a low voice.
“...It would explode. That tremendous water pressure trapped in the roots would surge up all at once through a narrow conduit.”
“Exactly. It’s the same principle as narrowing the nozzle of a fire hose to make the stream stronger. Only that explosive pressure can push the ancient minerals and components trapped in Coombsville’s sticky clay all the way to the top of the vine in one go. The goal isn’t simply to make it sprout, but to forcibly inject the essence of the land to the tips of the vine.”
Warren nodded, then looked back and forth in silence for a long while between the short cane I had pointed to and the deep muddy soil beneath it.
“Well now... You were designing even the blood vessels of the vine, things we can’t see. Fine, let’s try it your way. I’m already getting chills thinking about what kind of monstrous shoots that compressed energy will produce in spring.”
“Then shall we start preparing the work in earnest?”
No sooner had I finished speaking than the roar of heavy diesel engines came from the end of the dirt road. Warren turned his head toward the sound, and what emerged through the fog were large excavators and custom-made trenchers rarely seen in an ordinary Napa vineyard.
“You don’t mean to say you called in all that equipment, do you?”
At Warren’s question, I checked my watch and nodded.
“Yes. Winter in Coombsville is short, after all. We have to finish the subsoiling before the ground freezes.”
Workers in work clothes disembarked from the machines in perfect order, and at their head stood Santos, the veteran heavy-equipment contractor I had arranged in advance. He approached with the work order I had sent and greeted me.
“Boss, as you requested, I brought two rippers fitted with special 1.2-meter steel rip-shanks. But are you really going to drive them down that deep? This isn’t bedrock, it’s sticky clay, so the machines might break down.”
“That’s fine, Santos. Instead, lower the speed and drive them straight down vertically. The key is not to turn over the soil, but simply to make fissures, so be careful.”
Then I held out the work schedule to Warren.
“For the next week, we’ll focus on subsoiling. In the areas where the excavators pass, we’ll immediately sow the cover crop seeds I ordered. And starting from the second week of December, we’ll begin winter pruning in earnest. Since each vine has a different hydraulic pressure, I plan to personally direct the pruning.”
Warren stared blankly at the sight of the enormous steel blades digging into Coombsville’s hard surface.
Rumble—!
With a vibration that shook the ground, the hardpan that had been compacted for decades split apart with a scream.
“You... really do work on a different scale. This isn’t farming, it’s practically civil engineering.”
“To revive dying land, surgical intervention is necessary. Once fog seeps into the fissures those machines create and water begins to flow, this land will finally begin to breathe.”
I quietly gazed at the site where dust billowed into the air. The heavy mechanical noise coming from afar sounded like music announcing the rebirth of Lapis Lazuli.
---
Night in Manhattan, New York. The Blue Room, a premium bar located on the Upper East Side, was a strictly members-only sanctuary where the true powers of the city took refuge. Mark, the bartender there, was a veteran who had guarded the bar for fifteen years while handling all manner of fine spirits from around the world.
That night, as usual, Mark was preparing to serve a glass to Edward, a regular customer and a titan of Wall Street. Edward was a fastidious old gentleman who insisted only on the finest cognacs, such as fifty-year-old single malts or Louis XIII.
“Mark, don’t you have anything special today? I’m starting to get tired of the usual.”
At Edward’s question, Mark took a crystal bottle with a deep ruby-brown hue from beneath the counter as if he had been waiting for this moment. At the center of the label was an intricately engraved gold-foil pattern, and beneath it, a name written clearly.
Ruby Quartz - Warren Winiarski
“It’s a brandy from Napa Valley. It hasn’t even been a week since its release.”
At the unfamiliar combination of words, Edward raised an eyebrow.
“Brandy from Napa? And Warren Winiarski? Isn’t he a legendary winemaker? Hmph, to think he’d squander the money he earned from wine on this sort of nonsense.”
His words were laced with mockery, but instead of answering, Mark quietly broke the seal and poured the liquor into a glass.
It happened in that instant.
The moment the bottle’s mouth opened and the liquid filled the glass, an intense fragrance burst into the air like a bolt of lightning. It was not the musty oak aroma or heavy alcoholic scent commonly found in brandy. An unbelievably vivid, radiant fruit aroma, as if an entire basket of freshly picked cherries had been crushed, began to dominate the entire bar.
The other guests chatting around the counter all turned their heads at once.
“My God, Mark. What did you just open? I can smell it all the way over here.”
“This is brandy? Isn’t it rose perfume?”
Edward, too, was visibly flustered. As if pulled by a magnet, he brought the glass to the tip of his nose. The aroma of cherries and wild berries rising from the deep ruby liquid was more overwhelming than any cognac he had drunk in the past fifty years.
When he carefully held a sip in his mouth, the harsh impact of alcohol that came from a spirit over forty percent was joined by an endlessly lingering fruit finish and a precise structure that neatly gathered his palate.
For a while, Edward could not speak and closed his eyes.
“...This is brandy?”
“I was curious myself, but Food & Wine clearly stated it. It’s a brandy made by distilling wine. However, they say it wasn’t aged in oak barrels, preserving the cherry aroma as it is. It’s an astonishing spirit.”
He set the glass down with trembling hands and looked at Mark.
“Is there any stock left besides this? If there is...”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Edward. The entire allocation for New York this month has already sold out. This bottle is the last remaining stock in our bar.”
At the bartender’s words, bewilderment appeared on Edward’s face for the first time. The fact that he, a man known as an emperor of New York, could not acquire a single bottle of liquor even with money in hand had thrown him off balance.
But this was not something happening only at the Blue Room. Rumors about Ruby Quartz spread throughout New York, and epithets such as “Warren Winiarski’s final masterpiece” and “the red jewel that toppled the authority of cognac” were enough to excite spirits aficionados.
At that very moment, while New York was intoxicated by the scent of Ruby Quartz, at Harlan Estate in Napa Valley.
William Harlan sat in his study with a cup of coffee gone cold before him, skimming through a report. In front of him, Bob Levy, his chief winemaker, sat sunk in anguish before a tasting glass of Ruby Quartz he had brought with him.
“So, what’s the situation at Jacob’s distillery?”
“As expected, they have an exclusive supply contract with Redwood. That fellow Brian is far more meticulous than we thought. Redwood capital went into everything, from the distillery’s equipment renovations to the management of the base spirit. Jacob is already, for all practical purposes, inseparable from that young Asian man.”
At his secretary’s report, a deep crease formed between William’s brows. The liquor Robert Mondavi had handed him as a gift was now shaking not only Napa Valley but the American liquor market, and he felt more than displeasure—he felt an intense desire.
William quietly stared at the Ruby Quartz in the glass.
“Warren, you cunning old bastard... First you scratched at my pride with Stag’s Leap, and now you’re making me lose sleep over brandy.”
It was jealousy. But behind that jealousy swirled an intense curiosity and desire that only a magnate could feel. He instinctively realized that Ruby Quartz was not merely a slightly novel brandy, but an enormous cash machine.
“If Jacob’s distillery is Redwood’s lifeline... is there any need to struggle to steal that contract?”
William’s eyes narrowed. Bob Levy raised his head and looked at him.
“What do you mean by that?”
“If we can’t take the vessel, we can simply buy the entire kitchen it sits in. How much is Jacob’s distillery worth?”
The secretary answered in bewilderment.
“If we consider only the value of the facilities and inventory, five million dollars would be enough. But once we factor in intangible assets such as the exclusive supply contract with Redwood and Warren’s distillation recipe, the story changes. The industry sees the potential value of that distillery at a minimum of fifteen million dollars.”
“Offer him three times the expected profit Redwood can provide. At forty-five million dollars, even that fellow Jacob won’t be able to remain unmoved. And tell him this: I, William Harlan, will visit in person. Tell him I intend to acquire the distillery itself under the Harlan name.”
It was an attack on an emperor’s scale. The calculation was to absorb Redwood’s production base itself into Harlan’s territory, thereby tying the hands and feet of Brian and Warren going forward.
William held out the glass toward Bob Levy.
“Bob, what do you think? If we get our hands on this base spirit, could we make something even greater under the Harlan name?”
Bob Levy carefully took the liquor into his mouth, then spat it out. With an expression admitting defeat, he shook his head.
“To be honest, this is practically a revolution in brandy. The preservation rate of this aroma is truly... And even if we acquire the distillery and the recipe falls into our hands, it may take time to reproduce this base spirit one hundred percent.”
“Well... If the process is that precise, the recipe alone may not be enough to reproduce it immediately...”
“But the value of this base spirit is limitless. Forty-five million dollars would by no means be an expensive price.”
At his words, William drank the cherry-scented brandy and nodded. The place that made this liquid was more than worth acquiring for forty-five million dollars.
And yet... when he visited the Golden Grain Soju House three days after making an appointment, William was not the only one there.
“William~ William Harlan. How surprising to see the great Emperor of Napa visiting this place.”
The Jewish-American man greeting William Harlan playfully was Richard Sands, chairman of Constellation Brands.
A winery collector, and the predator who had acquired “Robert Mondavi,” the pride of Napa, through a hostile takeover.
Only he could smile at William with such ease.