The penthouse banquet hall of a high-rise residence at the southern end of Central Park. Beneath the crystal chandeliers, champagne glasses moved ceaselessly back and forth, reflecting the lights and casting off a beautiful glow.
The banquet hall seemed like a parallel world where the gloomy economic indicators of 2008 did not exist. Lehman Brothers on Wall Street was teetering, and the entire world was groaning under the subprime mortgage crisis, but the topics of conversation among those gathered in this penthouse were somewhat removed from the concerns of the world.
“Victor, happy birthday. By the way, I hear there’s a rumor you sold off land near Moscow this time. Are you securing cash? Or are you thinking of shopping for a building in New York?”
Marcus Wainwright, holding a champagne glass, asked Victor. As the senior managing director of Blackstone Global Macro Fund, he maintained a close friendship with Victor, the Russian magnate. Victor leisurely swirled his glass and answered.
“I always have enough cash. But with the crisis terrifying Wall Street, won’t another opportunity come? I’m merely preparing my weapons for when that time arrives.”
“You would have become plenty rich even if you’d done hedge fund work like me.”
“Hahaha! It’s not as if I’m stupid.”
Then Victor’s gaze naturally turned toward Stan Kroenke, who stood beside him.
Everyone present here was the sort no one would dare call lacking, people whose assets amounted to at least hundreds of millions of dollars, but compared to Stan Kroenke, it was true they all fell a little short. Even Victor himself...
It could not be helped. Stan Kroenke had succeeded as a real estate magnate in his own right, but his wife was Ann Walton, the niece of Walmart founder Sam Walton. He was a titan among titans, with assets amounting to tens of trillions.
Even if one added up the price of every vineyard in Napa Valley, it could not compare to the Kroenke family’s pure cash mobilization power and their shares in Walmart, so even Victor could not recklessly boast of his wealth before him.
“Stan, I heard this cold snap in California was quite severe. How is your Screaming Eagle?”
Stan answered indifferently.
“Unlike the other wineries, ours is holding steady. Shall I say we were blessed by the heavens?”
“Oh, that’s fortunate.”
He said it as if he were truly glad, but Stan did not miss the flicker of disappointment passing through his eyes. He continued, partly to tease Victor.
“That’s just the kind of land Oakville is. It’s land that makes one wonder whether God created it for making wine. So it could survive even a terrible disaster like this, I mean. Of course, it’s also true that Screaming Eagle’s technology played a part.”
His words were not wrong. Oakville, where To-Kalon was located, sat in a part of Napa Valley that was slightly elevated and had good air circulation. Severe frost damage below minus four degrees Celsius mainly occurred when cold air settled in frost pockets in lower areas, and because Screaming Eagle’s vineyards avoided that worst sort of terrain, the damage was able to remain minimal.
On top of that, Screaming Eagle had the financial power to fully operate the enormous wind machines and sophisticated temperature-sensing system it had installed, and because it kept the best management personnel on standby around the clock to respond immediately to even minute changes in temperature, it had been able to overcome the frost damage through rapid action from the beginning.
“I’m truly envious. Our winery, well, we might as well consider there to be no vintage this year.”
The winery owners gathered nearby nodded or cast envious looks. From real estate tycoons who owned thousands of acres of land in Napa Valley to European nobles who owned châteaux in Bordeaux, France...
To them, frost damage was not the suffering of farmers but merely a marketing tool that would increase the rarity of the wines they owned.
“From what I hear, Sonoma was devastated. Farms around Kenwood and St. Helena are apparently considering declaring they’ll give up on this year’s vintage. Victor, how’s that vineyard you had your eye on recently?”
Someone in the crowd tossed out a barbed joke. Thin smiles spread among those who despised Victor as a nouveau riche who knew nothing about wine. Victor stared silently into the wine in his glass, then, with the smile of a victor on his lips, looked at Andrei.
“You all worry so much about me. But don’t. When others called it a disaster, I discovered a pearl within it. It seems the time has come to show you that pearl.”
He clapped twice, called someone over, and made a prearranged gesture. Everyone’s eyes gleamed with anticipation when they saw it.
In truth, though they had spoken as if they were mocking Victor, everyone here was secretly looking forward to it. They had heard the rumor that Victor had brought the winemaker of Astra Veil, the wine that had shaken their hearts.
---
Guided by Andrei, I stepped into the banquet hall. The navy bespoke suit Victor had gifted me fit my body so perfectly that it was impressive, but precisely because of that, it also felt burdensome.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen! Your attention, please! Tonight’s wine comes from the creator of Astra Veil, Brian Choi.”
Victor’s voice rang magnificently through the banquet hall. Everyone’s gaze fixed on me at once. Victor strode over, gripped my shoulder so tightly it felt as though he might crush it, and led me to the center of the stage.
“Look at this young man! An Asian... and he looks terribly young. Yet when I tasted the wine this young man made, I offered him a blank check without even asking the price, and people looked at me as if I’d gone mad. But my eye was not wrong! Look at the value of Astra Veil now! It would not be an exaggeration to call it the finest wine of Napa Valley in 2007.”
The magnates gathered here all looked at me with greedy eyes. As if I were some kind of object. I thought that at some point I would have to make it clear to them that I had no intention of selling the winery or receiving investment, but after the long, long speech finally ended...
“Tonight, I wish to share with all of you gathered here the most precious gift of my life. A new legend of California, one you could pile up money in the market and still not even catch a glimpse of.”
Victor’s voice was filled with the arrogance of a victor. I quietly rose from my seat and received a top-of-the-line Riedel decanter from the sommelier. I slowly poured the wine that had been breathing in advance, letting it flow along the inner wall of the decanter.
Even before the wine touched the bottom of the decanter, the air around the table changed in an instant. A rich, ripe fruit aroma had subtly taken hold of the banquet hall. At first, the concentrated aroma of freshly picked black cherries and ripe plums pricked the tip of the nose, and then the delicate scent of violets and the complexity of wild herbs rose in layers.
“...!”
They were people who already knew the fragrance of Astra Veil, and yet once again, the people in the banquet hall drew in their breath as if overwhelmed. I poured the wine first into Victor’s glass, then stood before Stan Kroenke’s. He still wore an indifferent expression, but he could not take his eyes off the bright crimson liquid flowing into the glass.
“This is Astra Veil 2007. It contains the most perfect year nature has given us. Please enjoy.”
My voice was calm. After that, I poured wine into everyone’s glasses, and though a full case of wine was emptied, Victor, who intended to show off his generosity on a grand scale at this party, did not seem to consider it a waste in the slightest.
“Don’t hesitate, everyone. Drink up. It won’t be easy to enjoy Astra Veil to your hearts’ content.”
At Victor’s hearty words, Stan Kroenke was the first to raise his glass. He examined the wine’s color, slowly swirled the glass to gather the aroma, and then let it flow into his mouth. The smooth, velvet-like tannins that could be called the pinnacle of 2007 California Cabernet Sauvignon wrapped around his tongue.
“......”
His pupils trembled faintly. A moment of silence. He set the glass down lightly and said nothing, but in Victor Karlov’s heart, an electrifying sense of victory blossomed.
That was because Stan’s merciless tongue, if it found even the slightest point not to its liking, would immediately and without hesitation tear it down, humiliating the other party.
And that man had closed his mouth? At the very least, it meant this was a wine comparable to Screaming Eagle.
“Hahaha! Come now, drink up.”
Victor’s face, filled with confidence and victory, grew even more ecstatic, and the atmosphere became lively. Exclamations erupted throughout the banquet hall, and the haughty magnates of New York clinked glasses with one another while chanting the name Astra Veil.
They were completely captivated by Astra Veil’s unique identity, wholly different from the Château Latour or Screaming Eagle they normally drank. Its structure, as soft as silk yet strong enough to straighten the spine, and its endlessly lingering finish were more than enough to move those who prided themselves on knowing wine better than anyone.
Victor smiled at me with an expression as if he owned the entire world.
“Haha...”
Since he was that pleased, I gave him an awkward smile as well. But as yet another round of Victor’s boasting and tedious stories continued, I quietly slipped out of the banquet hall and stepped onto the terrace.
“Whoa, the height...”
Since it would not do to be exposed directly to the wind at the top of a skyscraper, and since it could also be dangerous, the terrace was enclosed by glass walls, but even so, my legs trembled. I glanced down, and it was so impossibly high that if someone fell from here, it seemed there would be nothing left of their form.
“It feels suffocating, doesn’t it?”
At the sudden voice, I turned around and saw Katerina standing there with a wineglass in hand.
“I don’t know about suffocating, but I think acrophobia might set in.”
She tilted her head.
“Usually, young, proud winemakers don’t particularly like my father showing them off like luxury goods, but you’re holding up surprisingly well. Do you like events like this?”
“Rather than saying I like them, he’s our customer, so I’m trying to treat him as well as I can.”
“A customer?”
“He’s a big customer who bought a full hundred cases. Coming over and decanting wine is nothing, really... Besides, I promised. But there’s something I’m curious about.”
She responded with a prim expression.
“What is it?”
“Why is Mr. Victor so conscious of Mr. Stan Kroenke?”
Katerina paused for an instant, then took a sip of the Astra Veil I had poured for her before opening her mouth.
“My father has spent his whole life wanting to shed the label of nouveau riche. There’s only one thing an oligarch from Russia, someone who amassed enormous wealth by receiving or monopolizing Russia’s state assets at bargain prices after the collapse of the Soviet Union, cannot buy with money. And that is an aesthetic eye and cultivation. It was a few years ago. When my father invested an astronomical sum in Château Belle Époque in Bordeaux, France, Stan Kroenke, the man in there, mocked him in private like this. ‘Your bold investment may be worthy of recognition, but to understand the aesthetics within it, it would take at least three generations.’”
An emotion that might have been pity or disgust passed through her eyes.
“Whoa. That was harsh.”
No wonder Victor had been grinding his teeth.
“The problem was, just as Stan Kroenke said, that winery collapsed amid harsh criticism, and my father became a laughingstock in New York society. That was when it began—my father’s mad obsession with wine. If it meant proving that his eye was not wrong, my father would be ready to buy even your soul. The show happening in there right now is, in truth, for Kroenke to see.”
“Oh, I see.”
“So don’t think about getting swept up in my father’s show.”
For some reason, she seemed thoroughly sulky toward her father. But I had no interest in the fact that she was sulking at Victor.
Rather, I had become interested in Victor.
“About that...”
“Yes?”
“Could you tell me more about Château Belle Époque, the one that supposedly crashed and burned?”