On the road back to Napa Valley, leaving Sacramento’s splendid convention center behind, Leo sat in the newly replaced company pickup truck, staring fixedly out the window at the vineyards the entire way. On his lap, instead of the thesis materials he had presented earlier, lay a worn leather bag.
“Are you nervous?”
When I asked, Leo, seated beside me, gave an awkward smile and shook his head.
“No. Rather than nervous, I’m excited. I still can’t believe I’ll be working under Mr. Warren, a legendary figure in Napa, and Senior Brian.”
“The old man said you seemed to be from Italy. Is that right?”
“Huh? Yes, that’s right. How did you know? Mr. Warren really is sharp.”
Leo nodded in admiration. Pride and loneliness strangely mingled in his voice.
“I come from Abruzzo, Italy. My family has made wine for generations. My father naturally wanted me to stay at the family winery and carry on the tradition. But I… as embarrassing as it is to admit, I practically ran away to Napa.”
“Hm? Why would you go that far? If you studied in Italy, the home of wine, wouldn’t it be much easier to build your career?”
At my question, Leo gripped the leather bag on his lap tightly.
“Italian winemaking is great. I think so too. But it is also excessively closed off. When I began my research on amphorae, the elders in my family scolded me, saying I lacked sense. They told me it was the way our ancestors had done it for hundreds of years, so I should stop talking back and learn it with my body. But I wanted to know. Why tannins soften inside an amphora, why only earthenware made from certain soils produces such flamboyant aromas… Those were only part of my curiosity, and wine itself is full of things to wonder about. I wanted to dig into them one by one.”
Leo continued, looking out at the endless vineyards of Napa beyond the window.
“In Italy, no one listened to my formulas or graphs. To them, wine was a sacred inheritance, not an object of analysis. But America was different. It had UC Davis, the place that analyzes wine with the coldest head in the world, and above all, there was Warren Winiarski.”
At those words, Warren, who had been sitting leisurely in the back seat, spoke.
“This fellow knows how to make a man feel good.”
“Haha, I mean it one hundred percent. I remember my father often mentioning American wine with indignation when I was young. Later, I learned that long before I was even born, some upstart American winery whose name I didn’t know had broken France’s pride. That was when I made up my mind. I would go not to Europe, trapped in prejudice, but to the land where that revolutionary overturned legends with nothing but skill and logic.”
“Mm…”
As I nodded while driving, Leo looked at me and continued.
“The same goes for Senior Brian. Redwood’s wines felt a little different from Napa’s traditional style. Their first wine, Ceracia, wasn’t even a grape wine, yet it wasn’t the usual dessert-style sweet wine, which surprised me.”
“You’ve tried Ceracia too?”
“Of course. Actually, personally, I prefer the refreshing Ceracia, full of cherry aroma, over the heavy and intense Aeschlon. Please just think of it as my taste.”
“Oh… that’s unusual.”
For ordinary people, something like that would be nothing, but for someone aspiring to become a winemaker, preferring Ceracia made from cherries over a heavy Cabernet-based wine was certainly unusual.
“Cherries are far more difficult to control in terms of acidity than grapes, and I fell in love with the technical skill that handled that so elegantly. In any case, when I was a student, I took a deep interest in Redwood’s unique perspective and direction for development. On top of that, when I heard that Mr. Warren, whom I respect, was joining Redwood, from that moment on, my goal of employment has never once changed from Redwood to anywhere else.”
After hearing him speak, I got the impression that Leo was someone who had lived while thinking quite deeply in ordinary life. In particular, the way he thought about wine felt well suited to Redwood.
“The old man is far more demanding than you might expect. The image of the revolutionary you just mentioned might shatter the moment we arrive at the winery.”
At my half-joking warning, Leo smiled as brightly as a boy.
“That’s fine. Ever since I was young, I’ve seen well enough how an intern winemaker starts out at a winery.”
Seeing that his basic mentality seemed solid, I smiled as I met Warren’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
By the time we arrived at Redwood Winery, the sun was already sinking beyond the vineyards. Bathed in the sunset, the winery building looked incomparably more rugged than the glass walls of the convention center.
“I’ve come here a few times for practical training through school, but coming here as an employee makes it feel somehow new.”
“I’m glad if it looks good to you.”
Compared to established large wineries like Mondavi, Harlan Estate, and Screaming Eagle, Redwood Winery was certainly less flashy in appearance. Because I had been so intent on expanding the facilities and buildings rather than the winery’s exterior, I hadn’t given much thought to how it looked.
Even so, Leo smiled brightly as he looked at the somewhat rugged exterior of Redwood Winery.
“Now, this is our headquarters.”
I guided him inside the winery. But when Leo saw the stainless steel tanks inside, the look in his eyes changed completely.
“Wait, these devices on the tanks…”
He blinked as he looked at the temperature sensors, dissolved oxygen (DO) sensors, CO sensors used during fermentation, and other devices attached to the sides of the stainless steel tanks.
“You’ll learn about those later.”
“Ah, I see.”
His face was already excited, as if he could hardly wait. But I had no intention of teaching him a significant portion of the winery’s knowledge yet. At least after he received Warren’s harsh instruction, and once I was certain he could be trusted, I planned to slowly start teaching him Redwood’s knowledge.
“Then shall we start with the contract?”
“Yes!”
I filled out the employment contract, confidentiality agreement, safety training consent form, visa sponsorship documents, and other paperwork with Leo. The moment that was finished, as if he had been waiting, Warren’s voice rang through the office.
“Now it’s time to work!”
Startled, Leo hurried outside. Warren was already waiting for him, wearing faded work clothes and rubber boots. In his hands were a rough brush and a high-pressure hose.
“Introductions can come later. Leo, toss your luggage in the corner of that office. There’s something you need to do right now.”
“Right now? The sun’s gone down.”
“Wine doesn’t stop fermenting just because the sun goes down.”
Warren gestured with his chin toward a used five-thousand-liter stainless steel tank. It had been cleaned after last year’s fermentation ended, but since it had sat empty for a long time, a pale layer of dust had settled inside.
“It’s a used tank we newly brought in. The outside has been wiped down, but you’ll have to check the inside yourself. If even a single grain of tartar remains, the acidity of the wine that goes into that tank will fall apart. Get in there and scrape it all out.”
What Warren handed Leo was a stiff blue work suit, a chlorine solution for disinfection, and a flashlight.
“Understood.”
Leo changed clothes without the slightest hesitation, and Warren added,
“Other wineries say they clean with machines, but the faint smell of rot caught in the recessed welded parts of old tanks can only be smelled and dealt with directly by a person. A machine can’t know the feel of tartar under the fingertips either. For a winemaker, this kind of process is essential.”
“I think so too.”
“Good. Go and learn with your body just how clean the inside of a tank needs to be. If even one percent of the smell remains… if this were the eighties, I probably would have made you skip dinner. But that won’t happen now. However, my evaluation of you in my heart will be shaved down.”
“… That is no problem at all.”
Having firmly steeled himself, Leo took off his glasses, put them in his pocket, and put on the gas mask provided. Then, after circulating the air inside with a high-pressure blower, he carefully crawled into the tank.
For more than an entire hour after that, Leo cleaned the inside of the tank, while Warren climbed up onto the tank and occasionally looked inside from beside the hatch to check the interior. This was partly to inspect the state of the cleaning, but also to make sure Leo didn’t develop any health issues.
The inside of the winery was filled with the sound of water blasting from the high-pressure hose and the sharp friction of the metal brush scraping against the stainless steel walls. I merely organized temperature charts outside, glancing toward the tank from time to time.
“Isn’t that a little too intense right from the start, old man?”
When I asked casually, Warren, sitting on the edge of the hatch, lit his pipe and replied.
“What is? He’s doing well. And wine isn’t made with the head. It’s made with the soles of your feet and the palms of your hands. A fellow who can’t endure that brutal labor inside a tank won’t have the patience to find the cause when the wine goes bad later.”
A short while later, the tank hatch opened and Leo crawled out.
He looked miserable. The stiff work clothes were soaked with water and sweat, clinging tightly to his body, and his brown hair was disheveled and stuck to his forehead. But strangely, his eyes were shining more vividly than before.
“Mr. Warren… I’m done.”
Warren sat there indifferently and shone his flashlight into the tank.
“Let’s see.”
Then he personally thrust his upper body into the tank and ran his fingers over the welded areas and the gaps around the drain valve one by one. Then he pressed his nose close and inhaled deeply.
“… Hm.”
His expression still looked blunt, but from the very faint twitch at the corners of his mouth, I could tell he was satisfied.
“You scraped out all the tartar. But the disinfection behind the valve is lacking. Do it again tomorrow morning.”
“Yes! Understood!”
Leo’s answer rang against the winery ceiling. Without any sign of exhaustion, he looked down at his hands. Even as he saw that his knuckles had turned red and swollen from the rough brushing, the smile did not disappear from his face.
---
July 2009. As always at this time of year, Tokyo’s air was horribly humid and hot. On the other hand, inside the flagship store of Enoteca, Japan’s largest wine shop, cool air-conditioning and the influx of customers were fending off the heat.
Among them, Mr. Tanaka, in his late twenties, was wandering through the store while carefully holding a magazine-sized volume of manga in one hand. What he held was The Drops of God, which had recently shaken not only all of Japan but all of Asia.
“Welcome, sir. Is there a château you’re looking for?”
When a neatly suited employee approached him, Mr. Tanaka bashfully opened the manga to a page and showed it to him.
“Ah, I wanted to look at the Bordeaux wine that was a candidate for the ‘Second Apostle’ in here.”
Mr. Tanaka, who had only just begun taking an interest in wine, didn’t know about other wines for now; he was interested in the wines from The Drops of God.
“Is there a particular wine you’re looking for?”
“Here… Do you have this Château Mont-Pérat? In the manga, it said it was a wine where you could hear the music of Queen, so I really wanted to try it.”
Mr. Tanaka’s eyes, having only just become curious about wine, sparkled with expectation. But the expression on the sommelier who approached was clearly troubled.
“Ah, sir. I’m terribly sorry, but… the last of our Mont-Pérat stock sold out last week. Ever since it was featured in the magazine, every shop in Tokyo has been experiencing shortages.”
“Ah… really? Then what about this Château Palmer? Would you have this?”
Mr. Tanaka asked as he turned to the next page. The sommelier carefully pointed to the price tag.
“We do have Palmer in stock, but depending on the vintage, it ranges from forty thousand to sixty thousand yen per bottle. It may be a little burdensome for an entry-level wine.”
Mr. Tanaka’s shoulders visibly slumped. He had been captivated by the glamorous descriptions in the manga and had come in after making up his mind, but the world of wine in reality was either sold out or consisted of expensive goods costing half his monthly salary. Just then, the sommelier spoke gently and guided him to the display on the opposite side.
“Sir, have you happened to read the columns or supplementary pages at the back of the manga? The place the authors have recently been watching most closely as a candidate location for the ‘Apostles’ is America’s Napa Valley.”
The place where the employee stopped was gathered with labels that were somewhat distinctive and eye-catching.
“French wines have had their prices rise too much because of the value of their names. But take a look at these wines from Redwood Estate. They have far sturdier structure than Mont-Pérat while also possessing the elegance of a grand cru like Palmer.”
Mr. Tanaka’s gaze settled on Ceracia and Aeschlon. The bottles filled with deep ruby liquid gave him an inexplicable sense of trust.
“Can you hear music from this too?”
At Mr. Tanaka’s odd question, the employee answered wittily.
“The winemaker named Brian who made this wine is the direct disciple of Napa legend Warren Winiarski. Local critics have said, ‘In this wine, one can feel the melody of an orderly orchestra’… It’s certainly nice to try the wines that appear in the manga, but how about first experiencing a truly skilled wine that is currently rising as the hottest name?”
“Then… which one of these should I…?”
“I recommend Aeschlon. It’s relatively affordable and is a Bordeaux-style Cabernet-based blended wine. Would you like to try it?”
Mr. Tanaka looked at the wine the employee offered him and, as if entranced, reached out for it.