I returned home, printed out the label image Rachel had sent me, and showed it to Dad and Mom.
“What do you think? Take a look.”
“Oh my~ It looks so convincing.”
“Hmm... It does seem pretty good...”
Grape vines, deep purple clusters of grapes, and the words Redwood Reserve Vinegar engraved in a neat serif font. Beneath it, the phrase “Premium Handcrafted Grape Vinegar,” printed as if softly blurred, gave off a subtle air of luxury.
“Now we have to match the bottles, caps, and labels. Let’s go.”
“Let’s do that.”
We headed straight into town. The bottle factory we arrived at after driving quite a while from downtown Napa looked like an old warehouse that had been remodeled, but once we stepped inside, gleaming stainless-steel equipment and packaging lines were arranged in neat rows. The factory manager took out several sample bottles and showed them to us.
“Seven-hundred-fifty-milliliter Bordeaux, five-hundred-milliliter slim, and this is a three-hundred-seventy-five-milliliter flint. For vinegar, five hundred milliliters is usually the safest choice.”
“This is the one.”
I picked up the slim 500ml bottle. In my mind, I could picture the purple vinegar that would be inside the clear glass.
Dad asked bluntly.
“What’s the unit price per bottle?”
“Can you do more than five thousand?”
“To start, twenty thousand.”
When he heard a quantity larger than expected, his eyes widened. Then he showed us the unit price on the order sheet and said,
“In that case, sixty cents. Including caps and shrink film.”
Dad, who had been listening, frowned at once.
“That’s too expensive.”
“It has to be sixty cents.”
“It’s our first deal with you, but if you treat us well, we may keep ordering from you in the future... Please give us a better price.”
At Dad’s troubled request, the factory manager told us to wait a moment, then disappeared for quite a while before coming back out with a bitter smile, as if he had no choice.
“I’ll do it for fifty-five cents. I can’t go any lower.”
“Understood. It can’t be helped. Then let’s sign at fifty-five cents.”
Dad nodded and signed the contract. The first order was for 20,000 bottles. We carefully checked the label specifications, the placement, and the print quantity.
That evening, the winery was bustling. The vinegar that had finished aging in the fermentation tanks was filtered and transferred through stainless-steel lines into the bottles. Father stood beside the bottling process, watching and repeatedly pressing the shutter on his camera.
Dad had been studying whenever he had time by watching the videos and photos he had saved so far, constantly trying so he would be able to do it on his own even when I wasn’t there later.
“Your mother would faint if she saw this. She’ll have a hard time believing all of this came from our farm.”
“Then we just have to make her believe it. Ah, I should contact Mr. John.”
“John? You mean the former farm owner?”
“Yes. He agreed to handle the grape distribution for us for two years.”
“Ah, right.”
He probably didn’t know we were making vinegar with grapes that lacked marketability. So if we wanted to, we could secretly deliver it while cutting him out, but I didn’t think that way.
Promises had to be kept, and besides, my parents and I already had too much to do for us to handle distribution as well.
A few days later, early in the morning, Mr. John Anderson arrived at the farm. The first thing he did was smell the sour grape aroma filling the winery, and he was greatly surprised.
“What is this? You made vinegar in the winery?”
It had been a while since I last saw him, and he had put on a little more weight compared to when he sold the farm. I could imagine what kind of mental suffering he must have gone through when the farm had been failing. Now he seemed a little better, and his expression looked much improved.
“Yes. It tastes good too.”
“I was wondering why you called me...”
His pupils trembled at the grape scent that filled the winery. He had thought this was a failed farm, one with no hope, so the fact that something had been made from those grapes with poor marketability had shocked him.
“Would you like to try some?”
“Sure.”
I poured a little from the stainless-steel tank on the spot and handed it to him. He smelled it first, then brought it to his lips.
“Mm...”
After closing his eyes for a moment and fully savoring the flavor of the vinegar, he looked at me with astonished eyes.
“Did your father make this?”
“I made it.”
“You? This?”
“Yes.”
“You handled all of this equipment yourself?”
“Of course.”
He clearly thought it was impossible. If this process had been that easy, why would he have given up the farm?
He had certainly suffered great hardship because of the disasters that had struck over the past few years, but what hurt even more was that he had failed to produce proper wine. If he had succeeded even once, there would have been no reason to give up a farm as valuable as gold.
And yet, an Asian who hadn’t even entered college had produced vinegar this excellent, even if it wasn’t wine. That was what astonished him.
“So how much are you planning to sell this for?”
“We intend to supply this to you at seven dollars a bottle, Mr. John.”
“Seven dollars to me?”
“Yes. After that, we won’t care how much you charge.”
“Did you get your father’s permission?”
As I shrugged, Dad opened the winery door and appeared.
“Mr. John, you’re here. The timing was just when I happened to be washing up...”
After shaking hands with Dad, John looked back and forth between me and the vinegar before asking,
“Did your son really make this?”
“That’s right. He’s an amazing kid, isn’t he?”
“Well... I’d heard Asians had a lot of geniuses in accounting and medicine... Is farming like that too?”
Dad simply laughed awkwardly at the praise for his son, and I didn’t bother reacting either. I focused on getting ready to leave right away, loading the vinegar into the car and taking the component analysis reports we had already prepared. And all the other documents too...
“Let’s go. We need to leave quickly.”
“Let’s do that.”
With a complicated expression, Mr. John Anderson followed us down from the farm and got into the car. It was obvious what he was thinking. He was probably regretting whether he had given up the farm too early.
“How many bottles have you made?”
As expected, he was already tapping a calculator in his head.
“For now, we have about ten thousand liters in the tanks.”
“Twenty thousand bottles?”
“Yes.”
If we sold all 20,000 bottles at seven dollars each, that would be $140,000, roughly 200 million won. He had sold the farm for $800,000, and in reality, the money this Asian immigrant had spent was only about $40,000. But in less than a year, he was going to bring in $140,000?
His face suddenly twisted, as if his stomach was burning enough to bring up bile. But he soon fixed his expression and said,
“I’ll do my best to sell it.”
“Thank you.”
He had avoided pressure from investors by selling the farm, but he surely still needed a source of money, so he would definitely have to make a profit from this. The harder he sold, the better the vinegar made on the farm would sell, so my parents and I had no reason to complain.
“But where are we going first?”
“Carson, California. Bristol Farms headquarters.”
I answered as I got into the vehicle, and John Anderson stopped dead.
“You’re saying we’re going from here to Carson? You do know it’s a four-hour drive, right?”
“That’s why we’re leaving in the morning.”
“There’s no reason to go that far just to sell vinegar.”
He was completely right. No matter how high the retail price was, vinegar would almost certainly sell for around twelve or thirteen dollars at most. There was no reason to go all the way there to sell it. Even so, there was a reason I insisted on going to Bristol Farms headquarters. They were a grocery chain that operated about ten stores in California and dealt in the finest ingredients.
If we made a good impression there, it wouldn’t be impossible to get our vinegar and wine into the Bristol Farms inside Macy’s at South Coast Plaza.
“We’re not going to make just this vinegar and stop. We’ll be selling the wine we produce next year there too, so it’d be good to get acquainted with the MD at Bristol Farms in advance. The same goes for you, Mr. John.”
I was telling him it would be good for him too, since he would be in charge of distribution for the next two years, but John Anderson looked as if he had a lot on his mind. Still, he soon got into the car, fastened his seat belt, and said,
“Let’s go for now.”
Since Dad and I had already firmly prepared ourselves, we ate a hearty breakfast and set off for Carson. Along the way, we briefly stopped at a supermarket for John, but we didn’t delay for long.
With three hundred bottles of vinegar loaded in the back of the truck, we drove for more than four hours and finally arrived at Bristol Farms headquarters. Meeting the MD in charge of the food department there wasn’t difficult. That was partly because we had already secured a meeting by email before setting off, but surprisingly, he was someone who knew John Anderson.
“Who is this? Isn’t that Mark?”
“Good to see you, John. Have you been well?”
“You know, don’t you? What kind of shape I’m in. This here is Mark Davis. I’ve known him since my father used to make and supply wine. And this is Woody Choi. He’s the owner of the farm.”
“Nice to meet you. Still, it’s good to see you after so long. Have a seat. But you’re selling vinegar, not wine?”
John Anderson had only learned about it that morning, but he had received a great deal of instruction from me on the way, so he was able to explain very familiarly.
“Let’s put the explanation aside for now and taste it first.”
At the doubtful look Mark showed upon seeing an Asian father and son, John immediately opened a sample bottle without further ado. Mark picked up the bottle with a half-skeptical expression and carefully examined the label.
“Redwood Reserve Vinegar...”
The vinegar poured into the glass caught the light, and its purple hue glowed softly like amethyst. Mark brought it to the tip of his nose and smelled it, and in that instant, his eyes changed. He carefully held a sip in his mouth, then looked at us with a slightly surprised expression.
“Did you make this, Mr. John?”
“No. I’m the one representing the distribution for the people who made it.”
“Ah... astonishing. The aroma of the vinegar is one thing, but such a deep finish with such a strong lingering aftertaste... I would say it truly deserves to be called aged vinegar.”
“It’s a flavor that needs no explanation, isn’t it?”
“Honestly... I have no choice but to acknowledge it. The documents I requested?”
I immediately handed over the necessary documents, including the component analysis report and the farm contract. He carefully checked the paperwork, copied it right away, and returned it to me.
“What supply price have you set?”
I turned my gaze to John. John immediately looked at Mark and said firmly,
“We’ll do nine dollars.”
Since we were handing it over to John at seven dollars a bottle, that meant he would make two dollars. Mark’s face immediately twisted.
“Nine dollars? Hmm... That’s too steep.”
“It absolutely isn’t. For an aged vinegar with such a rich grape aroma, couldn’t you easily sell it for more than thirteen dollars?”
“The brand is weak.”
“I know. But I don’t think it would be impossible to sell if you put your mind to it. If consumers taste it through a promotional event, it’ll sell like hotcakes.”
“Hmm...”
He crossed his arms and thought for a long while, then stared intently at the label on the vinegar bottle and asked,
“Are the aroma and taste consistent?”
Dad answered.
“Of course. No matter which bottle you open, you’ll get the same taste.”
“How much production volume is there?”
“Twenty thousand bottles in total, but we brought three hundred today.”
“Whew... All right. Then we’ll sign a contract for three hundred bottles and request more as we see how they sell.”
“Good decision.”
John immediately shook hands with Mark and finished the related paperwork in no time. Then we moved the three hundred bottles of vinegar packed in boxes and left, heading home. By the time we arrived, it was already a darkening evening.
“I’ll come back tomorrow.”
When he had first come and seen the winery, John’s face had been dark, but now it shone with hope.
“He’s excited.”
“I guess it’s because he can see hope now.”
“I suppose so. Dad understands how he feels.”
“Anyway, we earned money with our own hands for the first time. Two thousand one hundred dollars. It’s modest for a contract payment, but still, our first deal wasn’t bad, right?”
“Of course~”
Seeing Dad’s brightly smiling face, I realized John wasn’t the only one filled with hope.
The next day, John appeared in the morning with a pickup truck, loaded one hundred bottles, and left. It was to promote it to every store near Napa. This was exactly why we had placed a distributor in between. We needed someone who would go around personally in our place to promote and sell it. There was a reason huge wine farms used distribution companies.
And that very day,
“Hahaha, I’ve already signed contracts for two thousand bottles! If you hand over the goods, they’ll pay immediately!”
The phone call from John made my parents and me excited. Two thousand bottles in a single day... But that wasn’t the end of it. Around evening, John’s excited voice struck the phone.
“Bristol Farms contacted me. They said all three hundred bottles sold out. Hahaha! They asked for five thousand more right away!”
After taking the call, Dad turned to Mom and me and said,
“At this rate, we’re going to be rich!”