Dudududu...
On the morning of January 4, before the calm of the New Year had even fully faded, the vineyards of Redwood Winery—which should have been quiet and desolate—were being occupied by heavy machinery.
“What is all this?”
Startled, Leo gaped and turned to look at me. I had given Warren a rough explanation of how Redwood’s vineyards would change, but Leo, still an intern winemaker, had not yet heard the news, so it was only natural that he was bewildered.
“We’re going to change the vineyard.”
“Change it?”
“We’re going to create the environment again from the ground up.”
“If it’s because some of the topsoil was washed away by the heavy rain... Still, a considerable amount of topsoil remains. Wouldn’t it be possible to maintain the soil fertility?”
His question was valid, so I nodded and answered.
“You’re right. That’s true, but grapes are sensitive. Even if the topsoil remains, that subtle difference will make last year’s vintage and this year’s vintage very different.”
“That may be true, but...”
“Why? Does it feel like a waste of the vineyard?”
“Does... does that mean you’re going to replace all the vines? I heard that all the grapes at Silver Oak are being replanted from seedlings too.”
“That’s right.”
“Then wouldn’t that be too much of a waste?”
“It’s a valid point, but there’s a reason I’m doing this. First of all, what’s the reason old vines produce higher-quality grapes than newly grown vines?”
At such a basic question, the answer reflexively popped out of Leo.
“The reason old vines are exceptional is because their roots have escaped the fickle environment of the surface and reached deep underground bedrock layers. The grapes borne by old trees with roots sunk deep into the earth possess a flavor of time that young vines cannot match, in both concentration and complexity.”
“That’s right. Ordinary young vines feed only on the nutrients in the surface soil, so they don’t send their roots deep. But the ‘multi-layer terroir’ I’m designing this time is intended to shorten the decades-long process by which old vines establish their roots.”
“Pardon? What do you mean by that?”
I grinned and patted Leo on the shoulder.
“You’ll find out when the time comes.”
As Leo stood there blankly, Warren, who had been watching the two of us the whole time, spoke.
“It’s not time yet. Hurry along and start cleaning.”
“Huh? Yes!”
After Leo scurried off to the aging room, Warren stepped forward and gazed at the spectacle before us. Outside the winery, three thirty-ton-class excavators urgently brought in from San Francisco and more than twenty dump trucks were lined up, filling the road leading into the vineyard.
“Master’s method is actually an extremely risky one.”
“I know.”
“Shortening the time frame sounds theoretically plausible, but people will wonder whether it’s possible in practice. Since you’ve already proven it at Silver Oak, all I can do this time is look forward to seeing how it changes.”
Shortening the time frame, to put it simply, meant that if the strata were designed vertically down to a depth of two meters, the roots of young seedlings would plunge straight downward toward the nutrients dispersed layer by layer below.
Of course, there was one additional task I had not told Warren about. The artificial transplantation of a microbiome.
Another secret of old vines is the unique microbial ecosystem formed around their roots over decades, which adds complex flavors to the grapes. Silver Oak’s soil had this added as well, but the reason I did not tell Warren was not simply because I did not want him to know—it was because it would be difficult to explain.
I would have to mass-proliferate specific bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi that maximize flavors such as chocolate, graphite, and violet aromas, then introduce them into the soil. If he asked how I knew that, I would have no proper answer.
Warren was not always at Redwood Winery, so I planned to quietly establish it beneath the strata when he was absent. If I did that, it was certain that these microorganisms, living in symbiosis with the roots, would strengthen the vines’ immunity and dramatically increase the absorption rate of certain minerals, creating an unrivaled aroma.
“I’m looking forward to it too. And while the value of old vines is remarkable, they do have one drawback. Yield.”
“Ah... That’s true. But until now, very few people have pointed to the low yield of old vines as a drawback.”
As Warren said, because old vines produce grapes of overwhelming quality, there were almost no wineries that took issue with their low yield. If anything, they were already so concerned with grape quality that they controlled yields deliberately.
But if seedlings were planted and grown in the soil I designed, the explosive energy and yield of their prime would be added to the quality of the grapes. I believed I could have both quantity and quality.
At that moment, the civil engineering company manager who would be overseeing the construction approached.
“How should we proceed?”
“Remove everything down to a depth of two meters. Exactly in the areas I told you. Not a single inch of deviation.”
“Hmm... Understood. It won’t be too difficult.”
Following my instructions, the heavy excavator buckets began tearing into Redwood’s vineyard. The soil where decades-old vines had once been planted disappeared into a massive pit.
And the rumor spread across Napa Valley in an instant.
On the terrace of a small nearby café, Oakville Grocery, which overlooked the entrance to Redwood Winery, Napa’s big names—who would normally have been peacefully enjoying their morning coffee—were unusually restless today, all watching one place. Their gazes were fixed on Redwood’s fifteen-acre vineyard, where the roar of heavy equipment sounded and black clouds of dust rose.
“That is madness. It’s not just a mistake—it’s a crime!”
Tom, who had cultivated Cabernet near Inglenook for many years, slapped the table and raised his voice. In front of him sat an espresso that had already gone cold.
“How can they tear apart such a precious old-vine block with an excavator? Did they even learn what terroir is? That land is finished now. They’re throwing a microbial ecosystem forged over tens of thousands of years into the trash in a matter of hours!”
“I agree, Tom. An outsider who came from who knows where has finally shattered Napa’s pride.”
Martin, another owner who ran a boutique winery near Mount Veeder, chimed in cynically. With his arms crossed, he stared at the cloud of dust.
“There’s a limit to deep tilling. From what I hear, they’re digging nearly two meters down. That doesn’t sound like they’re planting grapes, but like they’re digging an underground bunker, doesn’t it? As you all know, fifty centimeters beneath the surface, the microbial balance is completely different. If they mix the strata up like that, the nitrification of the soil will stop entirely. They’re making poisoned earth.”
At Martin’s logical criticism, the surrounding owners nodded. To them, people who had worked the soil in Napa for decades, Brian’s actions were close to scientific suicide.
Another grower, who had been reading the local newspaper at the next table, added a comment.
“On top of that, it makes no economic sense. Civil engineering work on that scale will easily cost tens of thousands of dollars per acre, and even if they replant seedlings after all that, it will take at least thirty years to match the depth of the old vines we have. What will they do about the opportunity cost over those thirty years? It’s only a matter of time before the continuity of the Redwood brand is severed. Until then, Redwood will become the laughingstock of Napa.”
Amid the jeers and denunciations, a man quietly emptying his cup at one corner of the table opened his mouth. It was Joseph Haggins, the very man who had handed Brian the Castello vineyard of To Kalon, Napa’s sacred ground.
“Don’t be so certain, everyone.”
At Joseph’s low voice, the commotion around the table subsided. People assumed that Joseph must have been suffering inwardly after handing his land over to Brian, so they paid close attention to his reaction.
“Joseph, you saw it too. That’s not restoration. It’s destruction. If that Castello you cherished so much falls into that fellow’s hands, it might end up the same way.”
Even at Tom’s provocation, Joseph did not waver. He carefully observed the movements of the heavy machinery precisely building up the strata in the distant Redwood vineyard.
“That remains to be seen. Would he turn a vineyard upside down without any thought? Since Warren Winiarski joined Redwood, they’ve already produced two cult wines and received two Best of Show awards. They also received a 100-point certification from Robert Parker. A winemaker like that is removing all the soil from a vineyard just because it was swept by runoff? I’m not sure. Whether he’s truly doing it without thought, I mean.”
“Then he’s personally designing the terroir. Do you think that makes any sense? How would he know what kind of grapes will come out? What if the structure of the existing wine collapses?”
Tom argued again. His theory was that a vineyard’s soil structure was a complex drainage system created by nature, and that artificial interference would immediately cause chaos in acidity and mineral absorption.
“I wouldn’t know. Like you said, Redwood’s quality may be completely ruined by unpredictable grapes... But in any case, those fifteen acres of vineyard Redwood has are no longer its main asset. They have To Kalon now.”
At Joseph’s somewhat hollow words, everyone fell silent. There was no one who did not know who that To Kalon vineyard had belonged to. The fact that for Brian, who had obtained the finest site in Napa Valley, a fifteen-acre experiment might be a gamble he could afford to lose, only made them feel more bitter.
“Still, it’s fortunate you’ll continue receiving the profits from the grapes produced at Castello.”
At Tom’s consolation, Joseph nodded lightly.
“That’s right. My shoulders feel much lighter now. If I find some room later, I think I might be able to start another challenge. When I watch what Brian is doing, there are times when I find myself wanting to try something beyond the common sense I thought I knew.”
“If that’s the case, it would be a blessing for Napa Valley. If Castello’s wine were to continue somewhere else, that is.”
Before long, people’s attention shifted to Joseph’s next move. The results of the incomprehensible winery construction would appear, at the earliest, five or six years later, so for now, all they could do was lightly condemn Redwood’s rash construction and move on.
Two days after the groundwork began,
“Boss! Wait a moment! You need to come over here and take a look!”
The operator of Machine No. 1, who had been digging down into the lower section of Section B, waved his hand in apparent alarm. I had been looking around the construction site, and when I saw that the operator’s face had stiffened completely, I was startled and immediately jumped down into the pit. But what was caught on the end of the excavator bucket was something with a texture utterly different from any Napa soil I had ever seen.
“Is it bedrock?”
“No, it’s too heavy to call bedrock... It’s more like hardened cement.”
I took off my glove and touched the soil myself. It was cold, heavy, and sticky. When I pressed it firmly with my finger, a dark gray cross-section with a bluish tinge was revealed. Without hesitation, I brought the lump of soil to my mouth and tasted it.
A powerful minerality similar to the taste of iron, and salinity so strong it made my tongue sting.
‘This is... an ancient seabed sediment layer!’
The essence of minerals deposited tens of thousands of years ago, when Napa Valley had been a sea, had been sealed away by volcanic activity—only to be caught now on the end of my excavator.
From above the pit, Warren looked down with concern and asked,
“Master? What is it?”
I lifted my head, looked up, and smiled brightly.
“It’s an ancient sediment layer!”
“What? You mean marine clay?”
“Yes! The marine clay from the Los Carneros region has appeared here!”
Carneros, at the southern end of Napa Valley, is a representative area where ancient seabed layers lie very shallow beneath the surface. The reason wines from that region possess their distinctive salty minerality is precisely because of this marine sedimentary soil—and it had been buried deep beneath Redwood.
Marine sedimentary layers generally hold water well while also possessing a unique drainage capacity, allowing them to impart an extremely subtle water stress when grapevine roots reach deep. In addition, calcium, magnesium, and trace salinity from the sea give wine a crystal-like acidity and a long mineral finish, which is also one of the characteristics found in the finest Bordeaux wines.
At the unexpected result, Warren’s mouth fell open.
“What luck...”
“I’ll modify the design while preserving this as it is! If we run the drainage pipes just above this layer, we can make the grapevine roots directly feel the coolness of this ancient mineral layer!”
“Yes, that makes sense. My word... It was a good thing we turned the vineyard over.”
“Exactly. I never imagined that downpour, the one that made my heart tremble back then, would turn out to be a gift.”
Calming my trembling heart, I watched as roughly 7,100 square meters of land were overturned by heavy machinery.