Corinne Mentzelopoulos passed through the main gate of Redwood Winery.
She was accompanied by two attendants and Philippe Bascaules. The sight of her stepping out of the black sedan was no different from when I had first seen her on the terrace of Château Margaux. She was still poised and elegant, but the atmosphere was different: back then, it had been Corinne’s home ground, and this time, it was mine.
Warren and I greeted her at the entrance. Corinne offered her hand, then took a look around Redwood’s vineyard.
“It’s far more beautiful than I expected. I didn’t realize Napa had matured to this extent.”
“If you view it by Bordeaux standards, it’s still young. But being young also means there’s still plenty of potential.”
Corinne let out a small laugh. With that single laugh, the atmosphere naturally eased.
I showed her the vineyard first. Napa in May was fresh and green. The vines, dense with new shoots, stood in orderly rows, and Corinne walked among them, studying the plants carefully. They were the eyes of someone who had been looking at vineyards for decades. She stopped in front of one vine and lightly touched a leaf with her finger.
“This is strange.”
“What is?”
“The vines are growing too evenly. For them to be this uniform within the same row…”
In Bordeaux, even within the same vineyard, each vine’s condition differs slightly. Tiny differences in soil, the accumulation of that day’s wind and sunlight—each vine develops its own unique rhythm. That was what was natural.
“Ah, that’s because we adjust irrigation timing using soil moisture sensors. Each vine gets only as much as it needs, exactly when it needs it.”
“Napa really is different from Bordeaux. I knew that, but seeing it with my own eyes feels new. In Bordeaux, if it rains, the vines endure the rain; if it doesn’t, they endure that too. We consider the differences among the vines to be part of the terroir.”
“I think that’s one of Bordeaux’s strengths as well. It captures the differences nature creates just as they are. But Napa is different. Rainfall is unstable, and the summers are dry, so if we leave everything entirely to nature, the variation between vines becomes too great. Reducing that variation is the challenge here.”
Corinne nodded and looked out over the vineyard again.
“Is uniformity necessarily a good thing? Isn’t it that very unevenness that creates complexity?”
“Mm… that’s what I wrestle with every year. Making it uniform without losing complexity. I still don’t have a perfect answer. Of course, I haven’t stopped searching for that perfect answer.”
Perhaps because the answer was more honest than she expected, her eyebrows rose slightly. Then, for the first time, she gave a proper smile.
“There’s actually one more thing I absolutely wanted to see today.”
“What is it?”
“The plot where you plan to plant the Margaux clones. I wanted to see for myself where you were considering.”
I had expected her to be curious about this, of course. I nodded and led her to the northern end of Redwood’s vineyard. It was the area closest to the underground winery construction site, and if we were going to extend the geothermal loops to the root layer, the shorter the distance to the winery, the better.
“This is it. About three acres.”
Corinne looked around the plot, picked up a handful of soil, slowly smelled it, and said,
“There’s gravel mixed in.”
“The drainage is good, so the roots tend to go deep. Given the characteristics of the Margaux clones, the deeper the roots go, the better they should be able to absorb the cooling from the geothermal loops.”
Bascaules, who had been watching from beside her, gauged the plot’s boundaries with his eyes and asked,
“Would three acres produce enough fruit for a standalone vinification using only the Margaux clones?”
“Standalone vinification isn’t the goal. The Margaux clones will be blended with Redwood’s Cabernet Sauvignon. Three acres is enough.”
Corinne’s brow twitched, and she rose as she said,
“How is the quarantine for the saplings coming along? The French Ministry of Agriculture has finished preparing the documents, but USDA quarantine approval is still pending on the American side.”
“We’ve already submitted the application to the USDA through our lawyer. We’ll need to allow one to two years for quarantine, but since we couldn’t plant them before the winery is completed anyway, the timing works.”
Corinne looked over the plot once more. Three acres of empty land. Nothing had been planted there yet, but in her eyes, she seemed to be seeing something else.
“To be honest, I’m curious and afraid to see what a Margaux clone, which has never left Bordeaux for hundreds of years, will become in Napa soil.”
“In what sense are you afraid?”
“Ah… how should I put it? Once it leaves Bordeaux terroir, it may lose the identity of Margaux. Philippe was the one who worried about that at first, but truthfully, I haven’t completely shaken it off either.”
Because I could fully understand why she would feel that way, I explained calmly.
“That is the heart of this project. It’s the first experiment to determine whether Margaux’s identity comes from terroir or from genetics. Whichever it is, it will give us an answer the world has never seen before. I’m looking forward to it. It may become an entirely new grape.”
Only then did Corinne draw a faint curve at the corners of her mouth.
“When you put it that way, I think I can allow myself to look forward to it as well. Shall we go see the construction?”
“Let’s.”
The next place I showed her was the underground winery construction site, where excavation had just begun. A massive pit had been dug into the foot of the hill almost adjoining Redwood’s vineyard, and heavy machinery was clearing away the earth. It was a raw site, with nothing that could yet be called equipment.
Corinne stood at the edge of the pit and looked down.
“I didn’t realize building a winery underground would be on this scale.”
“It’s four stories deep. One level for the geothermal loop system, one level for the fermentation tanks and aging barrels, one level for the bottling line, and one cellar level exclusively for VIPs.”
“How long will it take to complete?”
“We’re estimating about two years at the earliest. Our goal is to finish it while the saplings are brought over and go through quarantine.”
Corinne looked down into the pit again. It was nothing but bare earth, but once again, her eyes seemed to see something more.
“Do you have the blueprints?”
“Of course. Let’s go inside.”
Blueprints and a 3D model were spread out on the conference room table. They were precise sectional drawings prepared by the team of Marcus Thornton at S.O.M, the world-renowned architectural firm. Each floor was color-coded, making it clear at a glance what equipment would go where. Beside them sat a scale model, with the four-level underground winery exquisitely reproduced inside a transparent acrylic case.
Corinne sat in front of the model and examined it slowly. Bascaules leaned over the drawings beside her and pointed to a particular area.
“This is the gravity-flow line.”
“That’s right. The harvested grapes enter from the uppermost level and move through each floor by gravity alone. Once fermentation is complete, the wine descends to the aging level, then descends again to the bottling level. We don’t use pumps at any point in the process.”
Corinne’s eyes gleamed as she looked up.
“There are places in Bordeaux that use gravity-flow systems too. But… I’ve never seen the entire process from harvest to bottling designed to rely solely on gravity. And on this scale, no less.”
“We designed the terrain itself that way from the beginning. Rather than building first and then installing the equipment, we designed the grapes’ movement path first, then built the structure around it.”
Bascaules, the chief technical director of Château Margaux, frowned and asked,
“Are you saying that aligning the entire flow with the slope means you reverse-calculated the terrain from the design stage?”
“That’s right.”
As Bascaules stared at the plans again in disbelief, Corinne spoke from beside him.
“What do you think people in Bordeaux would say if they saw these blueprints?”
“They’d probably say it was absurd. But they said the same thing in 1976, didn’t they?”
Corinne couldn’t help laughing. Warren watched the scene from beside us with a pleased expression. When the shocking event known as the Judgment of Paris took place in 1976, the blow felt by the French had been immense. At the time, the people of Bordeaux had considered it absurd that Napa wines could even be compared to Bordeaux wines, so when they were soundly defeated, how could one even begin to describe the shock?
We returned to the office, then moved to the terrace, where we drank tea and began talking in earnest.
Corinne was the first to broach the subject.
“You’ve heard about Screaming Eagle, I assume?”
“Yes. Director Bascaules told me over the phone.”
“It isn’t only Stan Kroenke, actually.”
With a troubled expression, she set down her teacup and continued.
“As news spread through Bordeaux that I’d come to Redwood, Latour contacted me as well. They wanted to confirm whether this was a private visit or a business visit.”
“…How did you answer?”
“I said it was a private visit. But I don’t know how long that will hold. The moment the Society is officially announced, we won’t be able to avoid backlash from the Bordeaux Alliance. Especially Baron Eric…”
Corinne trailed off. Eric de Rothschild of Lafite. After the failure of Unity, he would be the person within the Bordeaux Alliance to react most sensitively.
“The backlash was expected. What matters is the timing and manner of the announcement. I think we should seize the initiative before someone else leaks it first.”
Corinne nodded and asked,
“What method do you have in mind?”
I thought for a moment, then said,
“How about a wine auction? We put the first Heritage & Future Duo set up for public auction at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. The auction itself becomes news, and the winning bid becomes news again. We make sure the whole world knows before the Bordeaux Alliance can push back.”
She narrowed her eyes and asked,
“What if the winning bid comes in lower than expected?”
“Wouldn’t that be unlikely? If a rare old vintage from Château Margaux and Aether come out as a set, collectors won’t sit still. I think I’d want to buy it myself.”
Corinne nodded and looked at me for a moment before turning to Bascaules. Director Bascaules gave a short nod as well. Seeing that, she seemed to make up her mind and said briefly,
“Good. Let’s do that.”
Then, with a firm expression, she lifted her teacup and said,
“How should we schedule the auction?”
“I’ll make inquiries with Sotheby’s first. The goal is to hold it in New York or Hong Kong within this year. Both cities have dense concentrations of the core customer base for the Redwood-Margaux Society.”
Bascaules, who had been standing behind her, took notes and asked,
“Which Margaux old vintage are you thinking of including?”
“I think that should be Madame’s decision. I’ll prepare the Aether side.”
Corinne thought for a moment, then said,
“1996 would be good. Margaux’s 1996 vintage received 99 points from Parker. Set beside Aether’s 100 points, it will create a story.”
Warren, who had been quietly watching the whole time, chuckled lightly from beside us.
“If 99 points and 100 points appear as a set, collectors will go mad over that single point of difference. I’m already looking forward to seeing the reaction when this hits the auction floor.”
Corinne turned to Warren and said,
“Hearing you say that makes me even more certain.”
Perhaps because she was so busy, she did not linger idly to chat, and left Redwood in the late afternoon.
After taking one last look at the vineyard, Corinne spoke to me before getting into the car.
“Brian, I’ll be honest. When I first said I was coming to Redwood, several people in Bordeaux tried to stop me. They said visiting a Napa Valley winery in person was not befitting of Margaux’s dignity.”
“Haha, and how did you answer?”
She smiled lightly and said,
“I told them that if Château Margaux was the first to visit, then wasn’t that precisely Margaux’s dignity? And… I said Redwood was worth that much. I gave the answer, so I suppose you will have to provide the proof.”
“I will.”
The car door closed, and the sedan slowly left through the main gate. Warren and I returned to the terrace and stood side by side, looking out over the vineyard.
“Corinne makes decisions faster than I expected.”
“Maybe she’s in a hurry. I think she wants to make it a fait accompli before rumors spread within the Bordeaux Alliance that Margaux is breaking away.”
“What about Stan Kroenke?”
“Hmm… If he starts poking at Bordeaux, things will get troublesome. But I don’t think there’s any way to stop him anyway. While we’ve been talking with Château Margaux, he’s probably been talking with someone else. But well… we just need to finish the game first.”
Warren gave a small laugh and lifted his wineglass.
“The winning bid will be the key.”
“Yes. That number will explain everything.”
And at that same moment, in another corner of Napa Valley.
Just as Brian had expected, Stan Kroenke was in the study of Screaming Eagle Winery, holding a phone.