The air in the office grew taut, as if it might explode at any moment from the harsh breaths Joseph Higgins was letting out. Just as Joseph’s cornered face flushed red and blue with rage, Armando, who had been quietly watching from the side, stepped forward.
“Uncle, I don’t think there’s any helping this issue... Wouldn’t it be more important to get the vineyard back to normal first?”
At the sudden interruption, Joseph’s sharp gaze pinned Armando down.
“What did you say?”
“As far as I know, a lot of vineyards suffered damage from this heat wave, and I heard the Castelo vineyard did too, so things must be even harder... What would you think about letting me collect the sunburned grapes from the vineyard instead?”
“You want to take the grapes burned by the heat wave?”
“Yes!”
Joseph studied Armando closely, then asked,
“Are you trying to become Katz?”
Joseph had grasped Armando’s intent from the mere fact that he wanted the heat-burned grapes. The Katz he referred to was Albert Katz, the founder of Katz Farm, a man who had established a factory in Sonoma County specializing solely in vinegar.
He had secured top-grade grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel that famous Napa Valley wineries had been about to discard due to climate issues or substandard quality, then used the Orléans method to make the finest vinegar—vinegars so sought after that Michelin chefs came looking for them.
“What do you mean, I want to become Katz? I’m already on Katz’s level.”
Armando shrugged. Only then did Joseph look him over again and ask,
“Are you perhaps... from Laguna Creek...?”
“That’s right. I’m Armando Cortes, currently selling ‘Redwood Reserve Vinegar’ at Laguna Creek.”
When he stood with a confident expression and extended his hand, this time Joseph took Armando’s hand.
“This year’s heat wave must be a great stroke of luck for you.”
“Rather than luck, I’d appreciate it if you thought of it as a young man simply trying his hardest to make a living.”
“So how much are you saying you’ll buy them for?”
“Come on, are you really going to sell grapes that are basically finished as wine grapes for money?”
Matthew Higgins, who was standing beside him, visibly flinched. Joseph glared at his son as if he might kill him, then growled at Armando again.
“Even if they can’t be made into wine, they’re To Kalon grapes. I’d sooner spread them over the fields as fertilizer than hand them over for free to be made into something like vinegar. That would be a disgrace to our family!”
“If you leave those grapes as they are, fruit flies will swarm, and mold will spread across the entire vineyard. Just the cost of hiring workers to pick them all and dispose of them will run into tens of thousands of dollars. And I’m saying I’ll purchase the entire lot.”
“Hmph! Do you think I don’t know that? But if word gets around that To Kalon grapes went out for free, who will see value in our wine? You still don’t understand the value of To Kalon.”
Only then did Armando realize the conversation would not go easily, and as his face twisted, I stepped in.
“Why don’t you just buy them at a little over the market price?”
At my suggestion, Armando looked wronged.
“Not even at market price, but above it?”
“They’re To Kalon grapes.”
I said it calmly, but my eyes shot Armando an intense look telling him not to miss this chance. I couldn’t stand to watch him lose To Kalon grapes over pointless pride.
In the end, Armando said to Joseph,
“I’ll offer twenty percent above the market price per ton. How’s that?”
The market price for wine grapes was roughly 4,500 to 4,700 dollars per ton. Add twenty percent to that, and it could come to as much as 5,500 dollars. It seemed expensive, but To Kalon grapes started at a minimum of 10,000 dollars and could go as high as 15,000. On top of that, To Kalon grapes were not something one could easily obtain just because one had money. There were few To Kalon vineyards that did not make wine.
“...Let’s do that.”
Though his expression showed he was far from pleased, Joseph eventually nodded. It was for the practical reason that it was better to secure even a few hundred thousand dollars than throw everything away. Because of the son hanging his head low, he had to pay at least the immediate interest, and since he was short on cash, he had no choice but to accept Armando’s offer.
“About how much do you think there will be?” “The problematic grapes should be around fifty tons.” “Then... it’ll be a little under three hundred thousand dollars.”
“Have your team do the harvesting as well. We’ll focus on sorting out only the grapes without problems.”
“Yes, that works. I’ll cover all the transportation costs too. All you need to do is open the vineyard for us, sir. You get rid of the rotting grapes and take cash in hand. Killing two birds with one stone.”
It was an attitude that clearly showed he intended to save as much on labor costs as possible. Though they had suffered considerable damage from the heat wave, it was still worthy of recognition that they meant to salvage as many normal grapes as they could and make wine.
Scratch, scratch.
The signature of Joseph Higgins, a titan of Napa, was left at the bottom of the contract. It was the moment the most humiliating contract in the Higgins family’s history was concluded—a contract that would send To Kalon grapes into vinegar tanks because of the trouble his son had caused.
“Let’s go, Matthew. If I stay here any longer, my lifespan will be shortened.”
Joseph, who had come intending to turn the situation around if he saw even the slightest opening, ultimately managed only to add a clearance-sale revenue approaching three hundred thousand dollars before leaving the office. Matthew, watching Brian’s and Armando’s reactions, hurriedly followed after his father. The moment the sound of the door closing rang out, Armando lifted the contract high and cheered.
“Hahaha! I secured fifty tons of To Kalon grapes!”
“What were you hesitating over earlier? Did you really think those prideful people would just give you the grapes for free?”
“Sienna’s dad said he’d give them to me for free.”
“Ha, I don’t even want to respond to that. Hurry up and go.”
I kicked out Armando, who kept trying to prattle on about his love story with Sienna, then put on my coat and headed behind the winery. My destination was the eighteen-acre plot that had been reduced to nothing but ashes by the wildfire three years ago.
After riding my bicycle for about twenty minutes and entering the vineyard, I found old Warren already there, bent at the waist as he examined the bases of the vines.
“It’s good for you to move your body, but don’t stay crouched like that for too long. It’s bad for you.”
Hearing my voice, Warren lifted his head.
“I heard Joseph came by?”
“How did you know?”
“I was on my way to the winery when I saw Joseph storming up with that fool of a son, so I just came here instead. I figured Master would handle it well enough.”
“You did the right thing. We have the debt assignment agreement brought from Wells Fargo, so there’s nothing he can do.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk... That’s why, even if you intend to pass things down to your child, you mustn’t entrust everything to them too hastily... Joseph trusted his son too much. He did seem intelligent, though.”
“Matthew definitely did have good grades. He was my senior in school, and from what I heard, he ranked near the top in every subject.”
“Looking at that, grades and real-world practice don’t necessarily correspond. What matters is how well one applies theory in practice, but there are still many people who don’t understand that. Even in that respect, Master is remarkable. In all my life, you are the first person I’ve seen apply theory to practice so precisely and confidently.”
“......”
Praise always makes my face grow hot. So I had no proper response, but Warren continued speaking regardless.
“And why do you know so much about finance on top of that? What happened at Wells Fargo reminded me of the financial experts who used to help me. Did you take separate finance classes at UC Davis?”
“...I studied on my own. If you want to run a large winery, finance is essential as a manager, isn’t it?”
“Normally, it’s far more efficient to pay money and hire an expert with that time, but Master makes both possible, so you go far beyond my common sense. It makes me wonder if I’ve wasted my life until now.”
“Why would you say something like that?”
With a bitter smile, he looked down at the base of the vine again, then slowly straightened.
“Anyway, it seems the time has finally come. The Brix has already passed 26. But strangely, the acidity hasn’t collapsed. How were numbers like this possible in that heat wave?”
In his eyes were awe and intense curiosity. I stood beside Warren and gently lifted one grape leaf. The underside of the leaf still held cool moisture.
“Sir, do you remember what I said when I first bought this land? That I would carve the land to suit the wine I wanted to obtain.”
“Of course I remember. Until then, I thought terroir was the realm of God. I believed it wasn’t something that could change just because humans altered the soil a little. But after seeing Master’s words and actions back then, wasn’t that why I joined Redwood?”
Smiling, I swept my foot back and forth, brushing away the soil beneath it. Just below the surface, a cross-section appeared, revealing layers of coarse gravel and fine sand unlike ordinary Napa soil.
“The ideal Cabernet Sauvignon I designed had a clear direction. It had to carry Napa’s distinctive jam-like, rich fruit aroma, but at its core, it needed the firm, robust structure of a wine from Bordeaux’s Left Bank. And above all, the most important thing was that even while the alcohol level hovered around fifteen percent, a sharp acidity that pricked the tip of the tongue had to remain alive.”
The Left Bank, which includes the Médoc and Graves regions centered around the Gironde River, is a paradise for Cabernet Sauvignon.
Warren nodded with interest, and I continued explaining.
“To achieve that, I completely redesigned this land’s drainage system. The layers of gravel piled down to three meters underground give the vines scarcity. Since water has no chance to pool, the roots have no choice but to dig deep into the bedrock layer to survive, and in that process, they absorb the complex minerals of the depths rather than the nutrients near the surface. The structure I want comes from there.”
“You want something that is To Kalon, yet goes beyond it?”
“You could say that. The essence of To Kalon is that it has nutrient-rich alluvial fan soil flowing down from the Mayacamas Mountains. That’s why To Kalon wines feel velvety, soft, and abundant. The fruit aromas are flamboyant as well... But the problem is that a wine with weak structure and only softness starts declining in taste after just ten years.”
“If anyone other than Master had said that, I would have flattened their nose.”
“Hahaha! That’s right. If all Napa wines were like that, how could they have won the thirty-year aging battle at the Judgment of Paris reenactment tasting? I have no intention of diminishing the greatness of Stag’s Leap in the slightest. Just think of it as me considering all the strengths and weaknesses of the average Napa and Bordeaux.”
Warren narrowed his eyes and asked back,
“May I understand that as combining the strengths of Napa and Bordeaux?”
“That’s right. Napa always has abundant fruit aromas thanks to its overwhelming amount of sunlight, but because it lacks structure, there is great variation between individual wines when it comes to long-term aging. Some are still delicious after thirty years, but some turn into vinegar after ten. Just as Stag’s Leap wine maintained its strong fruit aroma even after thirty years, while other wines did not.”
“I acknowledge that. There’s no need to single out Stag’s Leap and praise it alone. Only by accepting reality as it is can one improve.”
“Haha, exactly. And Bordeaux’s Left Bank has robust structure, but the climate is so unpredictable that quality varies greatly by vintage. There are too many failed years—in short, luck plays too big a role.”
“That, too, I have no choice but to acknowledge.”
“This is how I saw the French wines losing at the Judgment of Paris reenactment tasting. Bordeaux lost because it lost the aroma of fruit, not because Napa was perfect.”
“Hmm...”
Warren nodded, and I continued.
“I don’t want a wine that happens to be delicious thirty years later by luck. I want a wine mathematically calculated to win even fifty years later without fail. I added Bordeaux’s firm gravel layer to Napa’s abundant fruit because I wanted not an accidental victory like in a reenactment tasting, but a certain victory. The soil here at Silver Oak was made with that intention.”
Arms crossed, Warren slowly looked over the Silver Oak vineyard once more, his expression filled with admiration.
“This really is no different from cheating...”
223. Silver Oak’s Grapes (4)
The yard of Armando’s vinegar factory in Laguna Creek had been filled since early morning with the engine roar of enormous trucks. To Kalon grapes from Joseph Haggins’s Castello Farm—the so-called grapes on the verge of being discarded—were pouring in.
What mattered here was that Castello’s grapes were not the only ones flooding into Laguna Creek. Harrington’s grapes, of course, along with discarded grapes from the surrounding farms, had already been turned into juice and placed in stainless-steel tanks.
But to Armando, the To Kalon grapes held a different meaning from the grapes that had come from the other farms.
“Speed is what matters, speed! Castello grapes go this way!”
Armando shouted at the top of his lungs as he directed the site. His usual sly, easygoing demeanor was nowhere to be seen; his eyes were filled with nothing but passion. Beside him, Sienna, the heir to the Harrington family, watched this remarkable scene with interest, her arms crossed.
“Armando, this is really something. You weren’t satisfied with just Harrington’s grapes, so you bought up every kind of grape you could get your hands on, and now it’s Castello’s grapes?”
“To Kalon grapes came out at clearance prices. How could I not buy them? Sure, it cost a bit to invest, but just wait. Next year, things are going to go absolutely wild.”
The grapes passed through the crusher and were sucked into a massive fermentation tank. Clutching the thick manual Brian had handed him, Armando stared intently at the temperature gauge attached to the side of the tank.
“Run the cooling jacket at full capacity! Chill it down like you’re dumping ice water into it right now!”
At Armando’s shout, an employee hurriedly turned the valve. Subzero coolant poured into the pipes wrapped around the tank. Frost began to form instantly over the surface of the tank, and the grape juice thrashing within lost its vigor as if entering hibernation.
“Armando, isn’t that too cold? At this rate, all the grapes will freeze.”
Sienna approached and asked worriedly. But Armando did not stop.
“No, not yet. We have to push them harder until they feel like they’re about to die. That way, the aroma particles that were asleep will shrink up tight and get trapped inside the liquid. Mm… that’s what he said had to happen.”
His words sounded somewhat lacking in confidence, but he soon fixed his gaze on the thermometer again. Then, when the needle of the thermometer hit bottom, Armando shouted as if flipping up a power breaker.
“Good, now the opposite! Open the steam valve! Heat it up until it’s ready to boil right this instant!”
This time, crimson steam traveled through the pipes and wrapped around the tank. From the tank, which had been like a block of ice only moments before, steam rose with a shrieking hiss.
“And now, activate the fountain-type oxygen supply device!”
From the bottom of the tank, high-pressure oxygen surged upward in fine bubbles.
“Is… is this really the right way to do it?”
Sienna’s eyes wavered. And Armando’s eyes wavered just the same.
“I-It should be?”
“Huh?”
“He said if this process drags on instead of happening all at once like this, the aroma will fly off and the grapes will just taste boiled!”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m… probably sure?”
Brian had definitely told him. Difficult as it would be, preventing the aroma from volatilizing, destroying the cell walls, and using oxygen as a catalyst all had to occur in a chain reaction within a single brief instant.
Even amid his anxiety, Armando swallowed hard and muttered.
“Brian said it’s the same principle as what happens inside a car engine, where fuel is injected, compressed, and ignited by a spark, causing an explosion in an instant.”
At that moment, the grape juice churned like boiling lava, and in that instant, the air inside the factory changed all at once.
“......!”
Sienna unconsciously stepped backward. What pierced the tip of her nose was not the sour reek of vinegar. It was a dense, radiant storm of fragrance, as if thousands of black roses had been crushed all at once and boiled in a blazing cauldron.
“What is this? Armando, this smell…”
“It’s here. Esters! The aromas hidden deep inside the grape skins couldn’t withstand this temperature difference and burst out!”
Sweeping back his sweat-soaked hair, Armando gave a mad smile. He opened the tank’s sample valve and drew liquid into a small glass.
“Brian was right…”
The liquid in the glass was as dark as black ink, and above it, violet foam shimmered like jewels.
---
One dawn, with only two days left until October, the entrance to the Silver Oak Farm grounds, where a cool mist lay low, was bright as midday under the intense white glare of searchlights.
I breathed in the cool dawn air of late September and checked my wristwatch. The temperature was 10 degrees Celsius, 50°F. It was the optimal temperature at which the acidity inside the grapes would be preserved most stably and microbial activity would be suppressed. Behind me, thirty sturdy Hispanic laborers stood waiting with yellow harvesting crates in hand.
I spoke to them in a fairly loud voice.
“You’re all still half-asleep and out of it, aren’t you? Let’s endure it for just a few days. In return, I’ll pay you more than the usual night-shift rate. But since I’m paying you more, you need to be careful. When you cut the grape clusters with shears, never leave the stems long. When you place them in the crates, do not stack them more than two layers high. The moment the grapes on the bottom burst, that entire crate will be discarded. Understood?”
If these were just table grapes meant to be eaten fresh, only the burst cluster would lose its market value, but wine was different. Especially when it came to the highest-grade wine grapes grown here at Silver Oak.
Grape skins carry countless wild yeasts and bacteria that live in the vineyard, and the moment a grape bursts and juice flows out, those wild microorganisms immediately begin fermentation. As a result, before the grapes even enter the winery tanks, an unwanted, unclean fermentation begins out in the field, causing off-odors like vinegar or wet cardboard to mix into the wine.
Perhaps they thought my demands were excessive, because a few dissatisfied voices passed among the workers. On ordinary farms, speed was life, but I was demanding flawlessness over speed, so it was understandable that complaints would arise. But perhaps because I was paying them well, when I stared directly at those voicing dissatisfaction, they soon closed their mouths.
Even if it was a bit hard, they had already gotten up early and come all the way here. They could not simply go back empty-handed.
Just then, from far off among the grapevines, the light of a flashlight swayed as it approached. It was Warren, dressed in worn work clothes. He had already been circling the vineyard for an hour, making a final inspection of the grapes.
“Master, we’re ready. It’s time.”
Warren’s voice was more excited than usual. I entered the first block, “Section A-1,” together with him.
Warren, who had been leading the way somewhat hesitantly, bent at the waist and carefully supported a low-hanging cluster of grapes. Under the searchlight, the Cabernet Sauvignon gleamed with a luster so deep purple it was nearly black.
“Look at the texture of this skin.”
With an admiring expression, Warren lightly pressed a grape with his rough finger. If it had been an ordinary Napa grape, it would have yielded softly,
but Silver Oak’s grape resisted tautly, like an elastic rubber ball. Warren used his own specialized shears to cut one grape in half.
“My God… look at this. The skin must be twice as thick as an ordinary grape’s. And yet the seed is perfectly dark brown.”
“Yes. It means the tannins are fully ripe.”
“Exactly. Usually in Napa, when the skin thickens this much, the seeds are often still green… Capturing these two contradictory states at the same time was intentional too, wasn’t it?”
Warren asked with bright, sparkling eyes. Though he looked like an old man on the outside, inside him, the passion of his student days still seemed to remain intact.
“That’s right. This is the effect of the improved soil. During the day, the gravel on the surface reflects heat and bakes the skins, raising the temperature, but at night, the cold energy underground condenses the grapes. To avoid burning itself to death, the vine strengthened its skins, and for the sake of propagation, it hurried the ripening of its seeds.”
“As expected… it was intentional.”
Warren nodded and, with trembling hands, put that half grape into his mouth and slowly chewed. A moment later, his eyes widened in surprise.
“My… the acidity feels like it’s striking the sides of my tongue. Even with such high sugar content, the acidity can remain this sharply alive… It’s like chewing a lemon sprinkled with sugar. This too is because water doesn’t pool here, so the grapes replaced moisture with minerals, and the acidity overpowered the sweetness and pierced through it.”
Warren carefully placed the cluster he had picked into one of the crates the workers were harvesting into and spoke.
“To be honest, from the moment Master said you were going to build a To Kalon vineyard, I was half astonished and half curious. I didn’t have anything like one hundred percent absolute faith. Even so, I was drawn to your tenacity and your theory. Even if you failed, I wouldn’t have laughed at you in the slightest. If anything, I would have thrown myself into trying to perfect it further. But… this leaves nothing for me to touch.”
In Warren’s words were deep awe, along with the faint sense of emptiness only an artisan who had devoted his entire life to his craft could feel. It was understandable. I had solved the secrets of terroir, which he had spent his whole life studying, in just a few years as if they were mathematical formulas.
I kept my mouth shut for a moment and gazed beyond the dark vineyard. The sound of the thirty laborers cutting with their shears sliced through the still dawn air.
“Not yet.”
“Hm? What do you mean, not yet?”
“We’re still far off. We have a long way to go…”
“What are you talking about? I’ve never seen a balance of acidity and sugar like this anywhere in Napa Valley. Haven’t you already reached the answer you designed?”
I shook my head. Then I ran my hand over the rough bark at the base of a grapevine.
“I don’t think so. The gravel layer and drainage system we spent three years building only created an environment where the vines could bear the best grapes. But this isn’t everything grapes need.”
“.....?”
“From now on, I’m going to accumulate microbial data on this land every year. Which yeasts survive most strongly in this gravel field, how the polyphenol levels in the grape skins react each time the temperature changes by one degree… Based on that data, we have to make fine adjustments every year. And not just here. At Ironwood Farm, I intend to try controlling even the presence or absence of Botrytis, the Noble Rot fungus, by adjusting the time when dew forms.”
I lightly placed a hand on Warren’s shoulder as he stood there with his mouth open in surprise.
“Sir, I’m going to turn this place, Silver Oak, into an evolving organism. When your decades of experience and intuition combine with my data, only then will we create not a masterpiece God made by mistake, but a myth completed intentionally by human hands. We still have a long way to go. Which means you don’t have time to rest.”
Warren let out a low “heh heh” laugh. He bent down again and began inspecting the condition of the grapes on another vine. The exhaustion he had shown moments ago was nowhere to be seen.
“You really are a terrible man. It sounds as if you’re telling me to bury the rest of my life in this gravel field.”
“I’m not asking you to bury it. I’m asking you to leave it in history.”
“That’s the same thing. But fine! The fact that I still have work to do and things to learn is enough to excite me. My word… you’re going to try controlling noble rot too? If anyone else had said that, I’d have thought they were a madman. Truly fascinating.”
With gleaming eyes, he ran his hand over a vine, then slowly moved toward the place where the laborers were harvesting grapes.
Normally, if mold grows on crops, it is called rot and must be thrown away. But under specific conditions, when this fungus appears on grapes, it produces the most expensive and sweetest wines in the world. This is the Botrytis fungus, known in the world of wine as noble rot.
The problem is that the conditions for this fungus to occur are so difficult that people say it is only possible with heaven’s help. That was why Warren had been so surprised when I said I would control it.
In any case, perhaps Warren had regained his energy, because he went over to where the workers were harvesting grapes and began nagging them.
“Careful, and careful again!”
“Not a single grape is to be damaged!”
Thus, amid the pitch-black darkness and the glare of artificial searchlights, the grape harvest continued until eight in the morning. Once the sun rose and the temperature climbed, the acidity of the grapes would fall and acetic acid bacteria would become active, so work did not continue beyond that point.
“Everyone worked hard today. Let’s keep it up for just two more days!”
I smiled as I encouraged the laborers, who had earned quite a generous day’s pay today. Just looking at the plump clusters of grapes, packed tight with firm berries, made me feel as though my heart had grown rich.
224 Castello Emperor (1)
The harvest trucks that had set out from Silver Oak came to a stop in front of Redwood Winery. From the crates of grapes that had come through the cold dawn air, a sweet grape fragrance spread in every direction.
And waiting there, her hair tied tightly back and dressed in comfortable clothes, was Chloe, whose beauty was as refreshing as that sweet grape scent.
“Wow... Is it because this is the first harvest from a place that took forever to level? Even the color feels different.”
She was not exactly an expert when it came to grapes, but she was quite experienced in farming, and perhaps because she had heard so much about grapes from me, she could tell that something was different just by looking at the clusters.
“Right? You could say they’re a grade higher than Redwood’s grapes.”
“Better than Redwood, which you could call the main base... That feels kind of strange.”
“They all belong to Redwood now anyway. The vineyard names are just a little different.”
“Would grapes of this level be about the same as that famous To Kalon fruit?”
“Hmm... probably?”
At my explanation, Warren, who had been passing by, casually stepped over and threw in a comment.
“If you put it that way, it makes them sound inferior to To Kalon. You should consider them at least above that.”
Warren winked at Chloe, then directed the workers to unload the boxes. Chloe, startled, clasped her hands together and said,
“Wow! Then that’s incredible! Astra Vale alone received such high praise, so if you make wine with these...”
“We’ll have to see whether it comes out the way I’ve envisioned. Good grapes make good wine, but the core of a blended wine is how harmoniously everything comes together.”
“I’m looking forward to it...”
The process of removing stems from the grape clusters was handled to some extent by machine, but the final inspection absolutely had to pass through human hands. And this was not Chloe’s first time doing destemming. Just as I helped her with her cherry and pear orchards, she too helped out on our farm every year.
“Should we include a little bit of stem and some dried leaves this time?”
“No. This time we have to take them all out.”
“Huh? It’s different this time?”
This method, called whole-cluster fermentation, had until now mainly been used when making Pinot Noir, which was inherently lacking in structure. And because Chloe had worked with me not only on Redwood’s Cabernet Sauvignon but also on Pinot Noir, she knew that destemming was part of the foundational work of making wine.
“You know why we do whole-cluster fermentation, right?”
“I do. It’s to give the wine complexity, like herbal notes, spiciness, and forest-like aromas.”
“Exactly. That’s why I included just a tiny amount when making Echelon too. But this Cabernet has thick skins to begin with, so if we include stems and leaves here, the tannins will become excessive and the wine will turn too rigid and rough.”
“Ahh, I see.”
Chloe stood right beside me and began picking out pieces of stem with quick, deft motions. Perhaps because of the skills she had honed at the pear orchard, her hands were no ordinary hands. For a while, we moved our hands over the flowing mound of grapes without saying a word. Only the low rumble of the conveyor belt and the soft thud, thud of grapes dropping into the tank filled the winery.
“... Wow, but these grapes really are beautiful. They’re like jewels.”
“Right? They’re gorgeous.”
“But I heard Armando came by? They said he might make some incredibly high-end vinegar thanks to you.”
“You heard that from Jacob?”
“Yeah. I heard they even talked about expanding the facilities?”
“It makes sense. Rather than making mediocre wine, it might be better for him to go all in on the premium vinegar he’s making now.”
“And while he’s at it, is he going to marry Sienna?”
I immediately frowned.
“Marriage? Good grief... Armando’s getting way ahead of himself.”
“But from what Jacob said, he’s practically glued to the vinegar factory every day. What if they really do end up getting married? Sienna might suddenly end up making vinegar too, you know?”
Chloe’s expression as she asked with wide eyes was somehow meaningful. It felt as though her gaze carried the words, “What about us...?”
“Ahem... But Sienna would never make vinegar. She’s the heir to Harrington Winery. She wouldn’t give that up, and she couldn’t give it up either. Vinegar isn’t something simple enough to make on the side while also making wine. And Sienna must know full well that Armando’s vinegar won’t taste the way he wants unless he uses the vinegar mother I made for him, so would she really invest in large-scale facilities just to make vinegar?”
“Now that I think about it, you’re right. Since they can’t share the same equipment, if she wanted to make vinegar, she’d have to spend at least hundreds of thousands of dollars bringing in separate equipment. Armando can do it because he’s completely given up on wine and is making only vinegar.”
“More than that, I just find it strange that Sienna is really hanging around Armando even though she’s not going to make vinegar. I don’t get it...”
Seeing me shake my head, Chloe grinned.
“If you like someone, that can happen. And if you like them even more, you might even get married quickly.”
“That’s... true.”
As I nodded, Warren, who had approached at some point, looked at the scene with satisfaction and threw in a remark.
“It’s nice to see. Earlier, I noticed the Redwood staff listened to Chloe very well.”
At those words, Chloe lowered her head as if embarrassed, and I cleared my throat, then walked over toward the work of placing a grape crate that had just been filled onto the crane.
“All right, slowly... slowly...”
Following my instructions, the crane lifted the grape crates to the intake opening located at the highest point of the winery. From the design stage, Redwood Winery had been equipped with a Gravity Flow system for this very moment.
The usual method, which forced grapes in with the powerful pressure of a pump, crushed the grape seeds, releasing harsh tannins and oxidizing the juice. Gravity flow, however, allowed the berries to fall and break naturally under their own weight. It was a process that reduced the stress placed on the grapes to zero.
“Ohh, even the juice itself is different. Look at that free-run juice.”
Warren exclaimed in admiration as he stared at the transparent pipe at the bottom of the stainless tank beneath the intake opening.
In winemaking, juice is classified into two types. One is the liquid that flows out naturally under the weight of the grapes without being artificially pressed, called free-run juice. After all the free-run juice has been collected, the remaining grape skins and pulp are pressed down by machine, and the juice extracted that way is called press juice.
“You’re right. It’s definitely different.”
The free-run juice was not so much purple as it was a deep violet close to a black abyss. Normally, free-run juice tended to be lighter in color because it had not been pressed, so there was a reason Warren was impressed just by its color.
That liquid, with a viscosity far richer than the juice of ordinary Cabernet Sauvignon, flowed heavily through the transparent pipe of the tank.
“This color, this concentration... The anthocyanin level is far beyond Napa’s average. This liquid proves just how mercilessly that gravel field you designed baked those grape skins.”
I felt the same as Warren. The vague expectation that this would be different from existing Cabernet Sauvignon was turning into certainty the moment I saw the juice.
---
Meanwhile, at that same time, the atmosphere at Castello Winery was extremely heavy.
“What do you think, Marcus?”
Joseph Higgins asked with his arms crossed. Before him stood Castello’s chief winemaker and veteran from Bordeaux, Marcus Del Gado, swirling a sample glass freshly drawn from an oak barrel.
Marcus carefully smelled the aroma and took a sip. After a moment, he nodded as if satisfied.
“It’s excellent, sir. Although there was a little rain during the harvest season, thanks to To Kalon’s drainage, the concentration of the fruit is still alive. The texture of the tannins is as smooth as velvet as well. As usual, this is a vintage that should easily receive somewhere between 95 and 97 points.”
Ordinarily, that answer would have brought a smile to Joseph’s lips. A level that never fell out of the top one percent among all wines in Napa Valley. That was the standing of Castello Higgins. But today, Joseph’s reaction was cold.
“97 points... Ordinarily, that would have been enough. But not now.”
Even with that score, they had never been acknowledged as the best wine in Napa Valley. Now that wine consumption had sharply contracted due to the subprime crisis, if they were not evaluated as the very best, repaying the enormous sum of seventeen million dollars would be difficult.
Matthew Higgins, who had been listening quietly at the side, cautiously opened his mouth.
“Father, last year’s vintage has already been blended and is in the aging stage. It’s dangerous to tamper with it further now.”
“Dangerous? After creating the risk of handing our land over to that Oriental brat by sitting on your hands, you can still say that?”
Knowing his own original sin, Matthew hunched his shoulders and shut his mouth. Joseph then leaned toward Marcus.
“Marcus, we need to change Castello’s style a little. Rather than the elegance we have now, we need a more overwhelming power. Whether you push the oak character to the extreme or select only the finest barrels to make a separate special edition, use whatever means necessary. What we need is either the absolute throne of San Francisco or a 100-point wine.”
Marcus’s brow furrowed. Turning a 97-point wine into a 100-point wine was not the realm of effort, but the realm of God—or of artificial manipulation.
“Is it impossible?”
“No. It isn’t impossible.”
Marcus quietly shook his head and fell silent for a moment, organizing his thoughts. Joseph’s demand was reckless, but at the same time, it was the demand of an obsessive perfectionist. He was not asking for some low-level technique like mixing in sugar or powder.
What was needed now was the most precise and dangerous redesign, staked on the pride of one of Napa Valley’s top five.
“Sir, artificial additives will only ruin our wine. However... it is not scientifically impossible.”
At Marcus’s eventual words, Joseph’s eyes flashed.
“Tell me.”
“Among the two hundred oak barrels currently aging, I will separate only the top five percent of barrels with the most perfect anthocyanin concentration and degree of tannin polymerization. It is the extreme of what is known as lot selection. And with those wines, we can attempt cryoconcentration.”
Matthew, who had been listening from the side, widened his eyes.
“Isn’t that a method used to concentrate flavor in white wines or sweet wines?”
“The principle is the same. At subzero temperatures, only the water is slightly frozen and removed. By doing so, the alcohol content, the tannins, and To Kalon’s distinctive fruit aroma will be concentrated exponentially. We increase the density physically, without chemical alteration. However, the quantity will be reduced by half.”
Hearing that, the corners of Joseph’s mouth trembled faintly. Having the quantity reduced by half meant the profits would be cut in half as well, but in exchange, the value of a single bottle could soar sky-high.
In the world of wine, if this succeeded, it would by no means be a losing bargain. No, depending on the result, it could even bring in tremendous profit.
“If we do that, can we reach 100 points?”
“Theoretically, yes. It would be like forcibly injecting Bordeaux’s density into Napa’s softness. Critics will be captivated by that overwhelming concentration. But the risk is great. If we fail at the delicate temperature control during the concentration process, the wine’s structure could collapse completely, and the rate of oxidation could accelerate beyond control.”
Joseph rose from his seat and placed a hand against the cool wall of the underground cellar. A grace period of three years and this year’s disastrous reality. He now stood at a crossroads: protect a safe 95 points and lose the vineyard, or advance toward becoming a legendary winery.
“Proceed. Cost and quantity don’t matter. We will mobilize every bit of technology we possess and prepare the Castello Emperor Edition. Do not consider failure.”
At the order that was finally given, Marcus nodded with a stiff expression. Joseph was a cool-headed businessman. He was not trying to ruin the wine out of emotion; he was trying to confront the danger before him by mobilizing the most modern and sophisticated engineering methods available.
225 Castello Emperor (2)
The interior of the enormous Redwood winery was a space that always filled Chloe with curiosity. Perhaps that was why, even though it was not her first time seeing the huge stainless-steel tanks, she still marveled at them.
“Wow... Every time I see this, it makes our cherry farm and pear farm feel like nothing.”
Chloe carefully ran her hand along the wall of a tank in admiration, and I answered with a smile.
“It’s just because the scale is big. The essence is the same. Farms make fruit grow from the soil, and this is where that fruit is matured. In the end, I’m no different from a farmer.”
“I know that, but... hm? The smell is kind of strange. It’s really fragrant, but at the same time it stings my nose a little and feels sharp?”
Just as she said, the inside of the winery was filled with the aroma of freshly crushed grapes. It was different in character from the sweet scent of an ordinary fruit shop.
“It’s the smell of grapes.”
“I thought grape aroma would only be sweet, but crushed grapes smell a little different, huh?”
“Yeah. Cabernet Sauvignon has a distinctive component called pyrazine. It’s also called methoxypyrazine, and when it’s just been crushed, it gives off that sharp flavor of freshly cut grass, green chili, or pepper. The riper the grapes are, the more that aroma turns into chocolate or dark fruit notes, but from the freshly burst skins, you can still feel that original, keen energy.”
“Oh.”
“And once the grapes are crushed and put into the tank, the yeast starts working within a very short time and produces carbon dioxide. So among the sweet scent of freshly pressed grape juice, the carbon dioxide rises with a little fizzing bite, and when that sensation stimulates the nasal cavity, winemakers sometimes describe it as sharp, just like you did.”
“So I described it accurately?”
“That’s right. I told you, you definitely have talent.”
Warren, who had been watching this from the side, only grinned, and I pretended not to notice as I kept giving Chloe a thumbs-up and praising her.
Then, dressed in dustproof suits, we approached a huge tank equipped with a digital thermometer and a sugar meter. I climbed the stairs along the tank wall and opened the manhole at the top, and the aroma of grapes that had begun fermenting surged up at once.
When I looked down into the tank, grape skins and seeds were floating on top of the clear juice like a giant island. The so-called cap had formed. It was the result of the carbon dioxide produced as fermentation began pushing the grape skins upward.
“You’re not doing a mechanical pump-over?”
Warren asked, sounding puzzled. Usually, in modern wineries, they used a method of pumping up the juice at the bottom of the tank and sprinkling it over the layer of grape skins on top. It was efficient and did not take much effort.
Looking down, I said,
“These grapes have extremely dense cell walls. If we hit the skins with the strong water pressure from the pump, I think even the coarse seed tannins we don’t want could be extracted... Especially since the physical shock caused by the impeller spinning inside the pump might break apart the aroma particles. So this time, why don’t we try the most primitive and classical method?”
“A classical method? You mean punch-down?”
“Yes.”
Punch-down, called pigeage in French, was the task of a person directly holding a T-shaped tool and pushing the floating layer of grape skins down. Warren demonstrated first. Even at his age, his arm was still packed with firm muscle; when he pressed down hard with the tool, the solid layer of skins sank with a pffft! like a gasp of gas.
“Look, Miss Chloe. A machine only pushes with uniform pressure, but a human hand can feel resistance. You have to press while feeling with your palm how firm the skins are and where the juice temperature is higher. You might call it a kind of communion.”
Chloe also took hold of the tool beside me and added her strength.
“Wow, it’s way heavier than I thought! It feels like the grapes are alive.”
“They are alive, in a sense. Right now, inside here, trillions of yeast are devouring sugar and producing alcohol and heat. If you don’t mix this heat in at the right time, the yeast will burn to death in the heat it created itself.”
We took turns continuing the punch-down. Beads of sweat formed on Chloe’s forehead. It was a job a machine could have finished in one minute, but the three of us clung to it and filled a full hour. But through that process, we were able to read the condition of the grapes with our whole bodies.
“Warren, can you feel it? The force of the skins resisting is no joke. The elasticity is insane.”
“I know. Usually, third-year vines don’t have much strength, so they tend to cave in easily, but these fellows are as firm as trees decades old. Because of that gravel layer you laid down, it’s like the grape skins are wearing armor.”
After finishing the work, I took a sample of the extracted juice and placed it on the refractometer.
“26.5 Brix. The sugar level is explosive, but the pH is still holding at 3.4.”
“So the acidity hasn’t collapsed. This is really... a number that feels like cheating, isn’t it? In Napa Valley, for high sugar and high acidity like this to coexist, unless it’s a vintage God made by mistake...”
Warren looked incredulous, then soon smiled brightly. I, too, took Chloe’s gloved hand, which was stained purple. Though she must have been tired, Chloe smiled brightly and leaned her head against my shoulder.
“Ah! I’m hungry... Brian, I think I just burned tens of thousands of calories.”
“Hahaha! All right. Let’s eat something good.”
“What are you buying me?”
“Something super delicious!”
Warren waited in the winery, free of machinery noise, for the meal my mother had made, and I took Chloe’s hand and headed downtown.
---
At the same time, the underground cellar of Castello Haggins was filled with a completely different kind of noise from Redwood. A low, humming vibration and the shrill mechanical sound of a vacuum pump flowed along the antique stone walls.
“Installation is complete, sir.”
Chief winemaker Marcus pointed to an enormous stainless-steel apparatus tangled with complicated piping. A cryogenic vacuum concentrator, worth 400,000 dollars even used, had an appearance more suited to a pharmaceutical factory or advanced food research laboratory than a traditional Napa Valley winery.
Joseph Haggins stared at that cold metal body with his hands clasped behind his back.
“So this is the magic wand that’s going to turn my To Kalon into a 100-point wine?”
“Rather than magic, it is thorough physical law. We will feed in the top five percent of lots you selected, sir, a total of ten oak barrels’ worth.”
At Marcus’s instruction, Matthew operated the valve. The carefully selected highest-grade wines were sucked through the pipes into the concentrator. Joseph stared hard at the graph displayed on the monitor.
“Set temperature to minus five degrees. Maintain vacuum level.”
Marcus’s voice, giving the instructions cautiously, was quite solemn. He was now breaking a taboo of the winemaking philosophy he had upheld his entire life. The process of freezing the water molecules inside wine and forcibly extracting them. The liquid’s volume would decrease, but the components remaining within it would become concentrated to an almost deformed degree.
When they put in the sample wine and started the machine, a reaction began immediately.
“Wow! Father, look. The sugar and tannin levels are shooting up in real time. This... this is going to become a truly monstrous wine.”
Matthew pointed at the monitor in an excited voice. The curve of the graph was rising almost vertically. In Joseph’s eyes as well, rapture and anxiety crossed at the same time.
“Marcus, what about the balance?”
“We cannot know yet. Wine that has had its moisture forcibly taken away becomes extremely unstable. After concentration is finished, it must go back into oak barrels and find stability again. If we fail to control the temperature by even 0.1 degrees during this process, the wine’s molecular structure will twist beyond recovery. It will literally become spoiled juice.”
Joseph placed a hand on the surface of the concentrator. A cold chill traveled through his palm.
“If only this succeeds, I can recover those damned bonds, too. We have to make it succeed no matter what.”
He was confident. That Robert Parker, after tasting this year’s Castello Emperor, would have no choice but to give it 100 points. But behind that confidence lay a bitter self-denial. To Joseph Haggins, wine had originally been the art of waiting. Yet what stood before his eyes now was not art created by time, but cold stainless-steel piping.
“Marcus, begin the connection.”
At Joseph’s command, Marcus moved with heavy steps. Among the hundreds of oak barrels lined up along one side of the underground cellar, the targets were the ten barrels marked with stars in red chalk. The employees opened the bungs at the tops of the oak barrels and carefully pushed food-grade silicone hoses inside.
The other ends of those hoses were connected to the intake valve of the enormous vacuum concentrator.
Whiiing—
When the pump started operating, Castello’s highest-grade wine, which had been maturing quietly inside the oak barrels for twenty months, was sucked up through the transparent tubes.
It was a grotesque sight, as if the bloodline of a noble house were being drawn out and transfused into the heart of a machine.
“Father, it has entered Tank No. 1.”
On the monitor Matthew pointed to, complicated flow meters and pressure readings were changing in real time. The wine that entered the concentrator was sprayed in the form of a thin film and met with a cryogenic cooling plate, and at that moment, only the water content within the wine turned into fine ice crystals and was filtered out, while only the remaining essence gathered again in the vacuum chamber.
Joseph, who had already heard all of this in detail from Marcus, watched slowly and murmured in a low voice.
“When people talk about wine, most of them talk about terroir. But true terroir comes from the will of the master who rules that land. Just as one irrigates when drought comes, and creates shade when a heat wave comes... if you think about it, this machine too is merely a modern weather that I have chosen. Do you understand, Matthew?”
It was like a hypnosis Joseph was placing on himself. He was wrapping the guilt of manipulating wine in the word control.
“Yes, I understand.”
At this point, Marcus carefully interrupted.
“Sir, this is where it becomes important. Alcohol and tannins that have forcibly lost moisture become aggressive. It is a change that originally should have occurred slowly over five years inside oak barrels, but we are forcing it through in only a few hours. This is... no different from turning a child who has not even been born into an adult.”
“Isn’t that why I need an expert like you?”
At those words, which left him with nothing to say, Marcus gave a bitter smile as well.
“That is true.”
“Let’s think of it positively. It isn’t turning a child into an adult, but reorganizing an ordinary human into an elite. It is the work of building a strong framework, adding muscle, and clothing it in an overwhelming authority that no one can reject. The difference between 97 points and 100 points isn’t simply the number 3. From that point on, it is no longer a matter of preference; reverence is born. Marcus, I want people, the moment they drink this wine, to be unable to dare evaluate its taste and to kneel.”
Joseph’s twisted philosophy spread through the cool air of the cellar.
The concentration process was scheduled to continue throughout the night. When the wine drawn from the ten oak barrels passed through the machine and returned to empty oak barrels, its volume would be reduced by exactly half. But its concentration would far surpass the critical threshold of ordinary wine.
“Check the voltage. Make sure the cooling plate temperature is fixed at minus 5.2 degrees.”
At Marcus’s instruction, an employee came and stood by, and Joseph pulled over a chair and sat in front of the concentrator. He seemed determined not to leave this cellar tonight.
The humming mechanical noise was gradually gnawing away at the tradition Castello Haggins had built up over decades. Joseph believed he was drawing closer to victory each time the numbers on the monitor rose, but Marcus, though he did not dare voice it, was filling with anxiety inside.
It was surely because, while it was perfect in theory, it was something they had never done before.
‘There’s no way it’s wrong. The theory is perfect.’
Marcus was just as desperate as Joseph Haggins, who sought to escape the farm’s crisis by receiving the highest score. After all, it would mean that his own name would be added to that great list of winemakers who had received a score of 100 points from Robert Parker.
En Primeur (1)