The morning in Napa Valley after the storm had swept through was so still it almost felt spiteful. The sky, which until yesterday had roared as though it would devour the world, had cleared as if nothing had happened, and transparent sunlight poured down over the soaked earth. But the state of the vineyard revealed beneath that peaceful light was惨惨.
“...Master, I’m glad you’re safe.”
Warren Winiarski, who had driven up through the mud-choked entry road, got out of his car and greeted me. He looked me over—dressed not in my usual comfortable clothes, but in an old field jacket and hunter boots that came up to my knees—and his expression turned regretful.
“You must have been worried, right? Yesterday, things were so urgent that I ended up shouting at you not to come.”
When I smiled awkwardly, Warren gripped my hand tightly. I could feel the calluses in his palm, and the firmness of all the years behind them.
“No, you did well. Even if I had come, I would only have gotten in the way. Instead, I didn’t sleep a wink all night. I looked into it, and they say it was chaos over at Stag’s Leap too—the drainage channels burst.”
We began walking in silence along the slope of Redwood. Traces of the struggle we had fought yesterday remained vivid everywhere.
The sight was dreadful. The vineyard rows that had once been meticulously groomed were gouged out in places, and massive rocks washed down from the mountain lay scattered near the mouths of the drainage channels. Bundles of straw and sandbags were half-buried in the mud, transformed into rags, and several vines in the steepest section had finally failed to withstand the pressure of the landslide, lying on their sides with their roots exposed.
“...About thirty vines were lost in Section C alone. The roots are damaged, so I think we’ll have to replant them.”
When I pointed to the fallen vines with a heavy heart, Warren stopped and stared at them as though bending down to examine them.
“Have you estimated the damage?”
“Based on a rough calculation, across the entire estate, just the restoration costs will come to about 1.5 million dollars. That’s the cost of refilling the lost topsoil and completely overhauling the damaged drainage system. If we include sapling losses and labor, it’ll easily exceed 2 million dollars.”
A loss of 2 million dollars at the beginning of 2010. It was no small amount. But Warren’s expression was unexpectedly calm. With the tip of his boot, he tapped the hard bedrock layer revealed beneath the soil that had been washed away.
“Two million dollars... Expensive tuition. But Master, you gained something money can’t buy. Do you see those rocks exposed over there?”
Where his gaze landed was the limestone bedrock, its pale innards laid bare where the earth had been swept away.
“Academically speaking, topsoil loss is a disaster. The surface soil rich in organic matter is gone. Since the nitrogen and phosphates have all been washed away, we’ll need to increase fertilizer input during next year’s growing season.”
When I voiced my concerns from an academic standpoint, Warren smiled softly and shook his head.
“Theoretically, yes. But look at it through a farmer’s eyes. Napa’s chronic problem is that the vines are too lazy. There are too many nutrients in the topsoil, so the roots don’t even think about going deep. But this downpour swept all that lazy soil away. Now the vines will have no choice but to drive their roots into the cracks of that hard bedrock if they want to live.”
Warren bent down and picked up a handful of the soil that had been washed down. The damp earth was sticky like clay, but it was full of fine gravel and fragments of broken rock carried down from the mountain.
“Thanks to you protecting the drainage channels, the vines didn’t die—they were only stimulated. This is a stimulus no artificial irrigation system could ever provide. The 2010 vintage... Perhaps it’ll produce the strongest wine in Napa’s history. That minerality drawn directly from roots gripping the bedrock itself will show an elegance on a different level from last year’s Aether.”
Listening to him, I realized I had been approaching this too formally. And then I recalled what Leo had reported from Lapis Lazuli yesterday.
“Now that you mention it, Coombsville was similar. I was worried about flooding because of the basin terrain, but instead, a thin layer of fine volcanic ash deposits from the mountains had covered the vineyard. In a paper I read back in school, there was a record of a wine’s aroma profile changing completely after the trace element composition of the soil shifted following a massive flood. This situation is exactly like that.”
“That’s right. What we lost was 2 million dollars and hard labor, but what we gained is a restructuring of the soil that will sustain us for the next fifty years. The earth washed its own body clean and put on new clothes.”
I nodded and reorganized my thoughts. And when I looked at it from a different perspective, I realized the downpour had actually become an opportunity.
“You’re right. First of all, the fact that the aquifer has been completely recharged is good news.”
“Exactly.”
In a dry region like California, record winter rainfall allows moisture to be stored deep underground. This recharged groundwater helps vines endure the drought of midsummer, allowing uniform ripening without stress. Since water stress intentionally applied to concentrate grapes is different from stress caused by drought, this was quite meaningful.
“Also, the leaching of salts should be significant.”
“That too.”
When drought continues, salts accumulate on the soil surface and hinder root activity. Heavy rain in such a situation washes away those accumulated salts and optimizes the soil’s pH balance. In other words, it is a soil reset.
On top of that, as Warren had said, fresh volcanic ash and mineral-rich sediment washed down from the upper mountain range had covered the vineyard topsoil, adding complexity to the soil. In that sense, this downpour could not be called entirely bad.
As I nodded, I suddenly stopped. The phrase Warren had used—restructuring the soil—began swirling through my mind like a colossal tidal wave. Should I be satisfied with the reset nature had given me? Or should I draw the essence of the future I knew onto this blank canvas?
“...Hm? What is it?”
Seeing me staring blankly at the vineyard, Warren called out in puzzlement. Instead of answering, I began running across the mud in my boots.
“Warren! Just a moment! I’ve got something to think about. I’ll organize it in the office and tell you!”
I heard Warren’s startled voice behind me, but I had no time to look back. I rushed into the office, locked the door, and spread several large sheets of paper over the desk. Data on the pinnacle of agriculture and terroir modification engineering that I had known before my regression came pouring out of my mind.
‘Redwood’s fifteen acres... Money is covered by Silver Oak’s grapes. If not now, Redwood will be difficult.’
I picked up a pen and began dividing the sections. From that moment on, I clung to the designs without eating or sleeping. I called specialty aggregate companies in San Francisco, microbiology labs, and heavy equipment teams nonstop.
The next morning, when I came out of the office rubbing my bloodshot eyes, Warren, who had arrived early, was waiting anxiously for me on the terrace. I led him back up to the upper part of the vineyard.
“Master, you look terrible. What on earth have you been planning?”
With trembling hands, I unfolded the blueprint.
“I was grieving over the topsoil being stripped away by this storm, but as you said, Warren, I’ve decided to take it as an opportunity for a new beginning.”
“An opportunity for a new beginning?”
“I’m going to completely redesign Redwood’s fifteen acres into a multi-layer terroir like Silver Oak.”
At the unheard-of notion, Warren’s eyebrows twitched. I pointed to the cross-section on the blueprint and continued explaining.
“It’s actually not anything incredibly grand. If the existing soil was ordinary Napa Valley soil mixed with the biochar fertilizer I designed, what I’m trying to do now is artificially design soil strata over the bedrock exposed by this storm.”
“The same method you used at Silver Oak?”
“That’s right. In Silver Oak’s case, I planned to recreate To Kalon’s terroir by placing appropriately sized gravel in the lower layer. But this time is a little different. At the 1.5-meter lower layer, we’ll still lay crushed limestone and granite gravel to maximize drainage and supply minerals, but in the middle layer, I plan to add volcanic ash and clay to help concentrate minerals. Then, because I’ll add a biochar composite fertilizer to the upper layer, there will be slight differences from Silver Oak.”
“Oh-ho... You mean the vine roots will experience different nutrients and water stress each time they pass through a layer? If so, acidity, body, and minerality will be stacked in perfect layers within a single bottle of wine.”
It was no different from recreating in just a few months a sedimentation process that would naturally take tens of thousands of years.
“That’s right.”
“But if that was all, you wouldn’t have spent an entire day tearing your hair out over it.”
“Of course not. Have you ever heard of a golf course ‘SubAir’ system?”
Warren’s brow narrowed.
“A golf course SubAir system? No...”
“Prestigious golf courses connect huge blowers to underground drainage pipes. When it rains, they suck out water like a vacuum cleaner, and ordinarily, they forcibly push fresh air into the roots. I’m going to recreate that in the vineyard.”
Listening, Warren’s mouth fell open.
“In a vineyard? How?”
“We’ll bury special perforated pipes 1.5 meters underground. Under normal conditions, they’ll directly supply oxygen to the roots, and during droughts, they’ll supply moisture. If a downpour like yesterday’s comes and causes flooding, they’ll immediately drain the water, creating smart soil. With that, the vine roots won’t suffocate and can always be kept in optimal condition. On top of that, I’ll be able to digitally control the moisture content of the terroir.”
“Ha ha... That truly is something.”
It was difficult for him to imagine, but he did not doubt whether it was possible. He had already seen it, after all—ordinary Napa Valley soil transformed into golden land comparable to To Kalon.
“And that’s not the end.”
“That’s not the end?”
“No! I’m going to implement the soil of the Amazon here.”
Warren blinked, then muttered weakly.
“It’s getting hard even to be surprised now. What does that mean this time?”
“In the Amazon, among the barren red-yellow soils, there is fertile land called Terra Preta de Índio. This fertile land exists in an absurd environment, yet maintains its fertility for thousands of years. It’s complicated to explain, but to put it simply, the soil itself is like a kind of living battery. I’ve reconstructed that in the form of agricultural engineering.”
“So, nutrients are generated infinitely?”
“You can understand it that way. So this time, in Redwood’s eroded soil strata, I’m going to layer in high-temperature-treated biochar, nano-pulverized bone meal, and porous ceramic. If we do that, even when it rains, the nutrients won’t wash away but will be locked inside the pores of the charcoal.”
At this point, all Warren could do was nod.
“I don’t know what it is, but it sounds extremely impressive. I suppose I’ll need to study quite a lot to understand it?”
“Mm... Probably?”
The distinctive thing discovered in the Amazon’s Terra Preta was that it contained broken pottery fragments and fish bones. First, animal bone powder supplies slow-release phosphates that dissolve gradually. If biochar is the vessel that holds nutrients, then bone meal can be called a battery that slowly emits nutrients over decades.
Furthermore, those broken pottery shards form tiny air pockets in the soil, helping the roots breathe, and they preserve heat, serving as heat storage that maintains geothermal warmth in winter. Understanding even that alone would require a full day of study.
The part that would require the most study was the mechanism of permanent fertility: Cation Exchange Capacity, or CEC. Ordinary soil loses its ability to retain nutrients over time, but the Terra Preta method permanently increases the soil’s CEC. Only by understanding that would he be able to accurately grasp what I intended to do.
Warren nodded, his eyes shining.
“So I have something new to learn. That’s good too. Ah! Yes. Since it happens to be winter, I’ll have to look through some papers at UC Davis for a while!”
After saying that, Warren hurried away. Even at over seventy years old, his passion for knowledge seemed no less than that of any young person.