Passing through the main gate of Castello Winery, I felt the weight of the thirty years Joseph Higgins had built up. The first thing that overwhelmed the eye was the splendid building, like a château one might see in Bordeaux, France.
By now Redwood had also expanded in scale by acquiring Silver Oak, Ironwood, Lapis Lazuli, and others, but rather than feeling like a well-designed building, it felt closer to something that had grown larger through one extension after another. This place, on the other hand, felt like a kingdom of wine.
“It has a different kind of grandeur.”
“You’ve never been to Harlan? Compared to Harlan, this place falls far short.”
At Warren’s offhand remark, I nodded. In truth, even without going as far as Harlan, Castello was a winery that fell short of Stag’s Leap as well, so it probably wasn’t all that impressive in Warren’s eyes.
“Welcome. I’m Markus, the chief winemaker. We finally meet.”
The first person to greet us as we got out of the pickup truck was Castello’s chief winemaker. His complexion was terribly haggard, as if showing the state this place was in.
To be honest, from my standpoint, I was extremely curious whether the cause of this whole Emperor fiasco had been Joseph Higgins or Markus standing before me.
“Good to meet you. I’ve always liked Castello’s wines very much. Shall we take a look at the facilities first?”
“I’ll show you around. Please follow me.”
With Joseph Higgins handing the winery over to me, the authority over the personnel here had naturally fallen into my hands as well. Naturally, if they wanted to keep working at the winery, they had to make a good impression on me, but seeing his resigned expression, it seemed he thought he would be fired.
When we entered the vast fermentation tank room, dozens of stainless steel tanks stood in neat rows. The PLC panels attached to each tank displayed the temperature digitally in real time, and the nitrogen filling system was perfectly equipped, showing clear signs of extreme attention paid to preventing oxidation.
As expected of a high-tier winery, the equipment itself was on another level.
“Our winery has been using a SCADA system since 2007. From the touch panels beside the tanks—the HMIs—we can control fermentation temperature in increments of 0.1 degrees, and monitor every tank from the central control room.”
“Oh... The facilities are truly excellent, Mr. Markus. In particular, the precision of the temperature control system seems to be among the best in Napa Valley.”
At my praise, which was not empty flattery, Markus seemed to lower his guard a little.
“We also have nitrogen generators and an automatic filling system installed to block oxygen contact. And if you look here, this is a large centrifuge. Using powerful rotational centrifugal force, it can instantly separate liquids and solids.”
One might ask, “Why would a winery have a centrifuge?” But surprisingly, it is necessary. After wine is fermented, dead yeast and grape residue settle at the bottom. So usually, one waits until they settle naturally and then goes through the racking process, drawing off only the clear liquid, but the problem is that it takes a long time.
If this large centrifuge is used here, then as soon as fermentation ends, the wine can be made very clear and moved on to the next stage, so it was a method favored by large wineries to increase production turnover.
Moreover, although it was an irregular method, it could also be used when one wanted to raise the sweetness of wine. If the centrifuge is run while the grape juice is still fermenting, the yeast converting sugar into alcohol is driven down to the bottom by centrifugal force. Since the yeast is removed, fermentation stops, and the natural grape sugars that have not yet been fully broken down remain in the wine.
Of course, this centrifuge did not have only advantages. Because it spins with such powerful force, it is often criticized for stripping away even the fine aromatic components of the wine, making the texture of the wine thinner.
For me, it was equipment that could be put to good use when producing large quantities of mid- to low-priced wine.
Then he pointed to a massive machine set in the corner.
“This is... a cryogenic vacuum concentrator.”
“A cryogenic vacuum concentrator?”
“In truth, this is also part of the reason a problem occurred with Emperor.”
As the topic we had been curious about finally came up, Warren and I listened closely.
“Let’s hear the details.”
At Warren’s urging, Markus’s face flushed red, and he carefully opened his mouth.
“The chairman said that this time, we absolutely had to make a wine that could receive the highest score. So after thinking it over, I came up with cryogenic concentration. First, this device...”
I placed my hand on the machine and cut in.
“It lowers the boiling point under vacuum and evaporates moisture even at low temperatures, correct?”
He nodded, looking slightly surprised.
“That’s right. If we heated it to force the sugar level up, the aroma would be destroyed, so we used vacuum pressure to remove moisture at temperatures close to below zero. Chairman Joseph wanted a deeper color and higher sugar concentration. Until right after the tasting, we thought we were geniuses.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
At my sincere words, Markus looked back at me. I ran my fingers over the machine’s pressure gauge and continued.
“Cryogenic vacuum concentration increases the density of sugars and tannins, but it forcibly disrupts the chemical equilibrium of the wine. The bonds between glucose and fructose become stronger, but the anthocyanins and high-molecular polyphenols that form the wine’s structure end up aggregating in an unstable state. At the tasting, that cohesive force probably held. But inside the bottle, the moment it came into slight contact with oxygen, or the moment it touched the salt in food, the molecular chains that had been forcibly held together broke apart, causing a chain collapse. That becomes the cause of the wine deteriorating at a speed closer to spoilage than aging.”
Markus listened to my explanation with a blank expression before letting out a long sigh.
“The collapse of chemical equilibrium... The chairman believed technology could defeat nature, and perhaps I wanted to believe it was possible too.”
“I’m sure you did. You must have wanted to become a winemaker who received 100 points from Robert Parker.”
As if my words had struck his weak point, he lowered his head deeply. It was true that Joseph had pressured him, but it could not be denied that Markus’s own greed had also played a part in trying to deceive people’s tongues with equipment like this.
“After looking around, Castello’s facilities really are excellent. It’s just a shame that such excellent equipment wasn’t used for a better purpose. Shall we go to the vineyard now?”
“If you go out this way and head straight, you’ll reach the To Kalon vineyard right away.”
“Thank you.”
After finishing the tour of the facilities, I headed with Warren toward the heart of Castello, the To Kalon vineyard. As we left the winery and walked into the middle of the field, I could hear the cool wind unique to Napa Valley rustling the grape leaves.
I bent my knees, crouched down, and grabbed a handful of soil from the ground. The texture of the soil crumbling between my fingers was completely different from Redwood’s.
“Warren, look at this soil.”
I brought the soil to the tip of my nose and smelled it. It was a pleasant scent, a mix of damp moss and dry flint.
“What do you think?”
Warren’s eyes were full of curiosity. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the To Kalon vineyard. He was probably curious how I would evaluate this place.
“This is different from a typical Rutherford Bench. It’s an alluvial soil layer built up from ancient river deposits, and the gravel content is incredibly high. The drainage must be excellent, of course... and the mineral components mixed into the soil must draw the grapevine roots deep down.”
As I touched the soil, I realized why To Kalon was called beautiful land.
“The magnesium and potassium levels are probably slightly higher than ordinary Napa soil. Cabernet Sauvignon grown in land like this develops a distinctive mint aroma and dusty tannins. Thinking about it again, it’s such a shame. To think they put the gift this great soil gave them into a concentrator.”
Warren, who had been listening quietly, picked a cluster of grapes beside him and burst one of the berries. The To Kalon grapes were bearing fruit close to perfection.
“Look at the grape berries. The color is deep, and the resistance in the skin is excellent. Even though Joseph made such a fuss, this land did its job. Brian, what are you planning to do with the grapes from this vineyard? Are you going to send them straight into Aether’s second brand?”
At Warren’s question, I stood up and looked across the vast expanse of vineyard.
“No. I’m not sure yet. Since Aether turned out so well, Astra Veil has been overshadowed a bit... but with these grapes, I feel like Astra Veil could have a completely different feel starting from the 2009 vintage. Or I might release an entirely new wine in addition to that...”
“Selection and focus aren’t bad either. But I am curious what kind of wine you’d make with pure To Kalon grapes.”
“Haha, my head might explode.”
“Don’t worry. I racked my brains like that when I was young too, and yet here I am, still hale and hearty.”
“That’s true.”
Nodding, I made up my mind.
“For now, I’ll split this year’s harvest and ferment it two ways: Castello’s method, and my method. Then during the oak barrel aging stage, I’ll watch how the base wine evolves and decide.”
“Oh-ho, so you’re saying you have to listen to what kind of wine this land asks the master to make?”
“Well, you could put it that way.”
Warren chuckled and struck my shoulder.
“You really are a frightening winemaker. You buy a seventeen-million-dollar vineyard, and the first thing you want to do is talk to the grapes.”
I had clearly said I would look at the condition and decide, not that I would talk to them, but I kept quiet.
Just then, my cell phone rang noisily in my pocket. The name on the screen was Leo. He was the friend who had officially become Redwood’s intern winemaker this time. So far, he had been listening fairly well, so Warren was putting effort into raising him.
“Yeah, Leo. What is it? I’m checking the harvest site.”
“Boss, Mr. Christopher White of White & Company is here.”
He had clearly come because of Aether’s distribution contract. Even without that, ever since Robert Parker’s score had been released, calls had been flooding into the winery and my phone as if they were about to burst.
Even though we had told them there was a distribution company with priority rights, larger wine distributors were all rushing in, wanting to be allocated even a little wine, and some of them were even distributors from Europe.
“Treat him well while he waits.”
“Understood.”
With that, I left this enormous winery behind and approached the car to head back to Redwood. But then, kicking up clouds of dust, a rental car came barreling through Castello’s main gate.
The person who opened the car door and got out was Matthew Higgins. He saw Warren and me and froze in place, flustered. Just then, Markus, the chief winemaker, came out from inside, and his voice rang out.
“Young Master Matthew!”
“Markus! What is going on? My father...”
As it turned out, it seemed Joseph had only now informed his son that the winery had been sold. I had assumed that, since their father-son relationship was close, he would naturally have told him in advance, so it was surprising that he had not.
With a miserable expression, Markus said to Matthew,
“The chairman has disposed of both the winery and the farm. Officially, the owner of this place is now Mr. Brian Choi here, the owner of Redwood Winery.”
Matthew, looking devastated, glanced back and forth between me and Markus. Seeing that, Markus spoke in a somewhat impassioned voice.
“The chairman knew. He knew that you hadn’t really gone to find an investor, Young Master. He knew you had left simply to avoid this crisis. If you had been here, perhaps he would not have disposed of the winery so easily.”
At those words, Matthew collapsed to the ground on the spot. Then, with hollow eyes, he looked back and forth between the enormous winery building and the vineyards he had enjoyed
in turn. The price of his escape was far more brutal than he had expected.
“No... That can’t be. There’s no way my father would do this!”
Shaking my head, I spoke to Matthew, who was sitting there on the ground.
“The thirty thousand or so bottles of wine in the storage are all Mr. Joseph’s, so you should sort them out properly at an appropriate time. They should bring in quite a lot of money.”
“It’s not about the money!”
As Matthew shouted, Warren stepped forward with a pitying expression.
“Of course not. To a farmer, the land is what matters most. That’s why when you use land as collateral for business, you have to stake everything on it. You behaved more like a gambler than a farmer, so the result turned out that way as well. Think carefully. About whether what you were trying to do was truly farming or not.”
Seeing Matthew’s empty eyes, I led Warren into the car. The shock must be great right now, but since I had given Joseph a considerable profit, I figured he would soon regain his old personality. Of course, from now on, he wouldn’t be able to act like one of Napa Valley’s power players the way he used to.