The GC-MS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry) results arrived on the afternoon of Tuesday in the third week of June.
The FedEx package from UC Davis had arrived. There were two thick envelopes: one was a follow-up report on the first soil analysis, and the other was the newly received GC-MS analysis results for the grape tissue.
When Marcus entered the conference room holding the envelopes, his expression already said everything. Even he, usually so composed, had a faint tremor in the hand with which he set the envelopes down on the table.
“Have you opened them?”
“…I have. I thought you should see them yourself, sir, so I didn’t look through the results in detail, but just from the first page…”
As his words trailed off, Warren, who was beside him, raised an eyebrow.
“What kind of results are they?”
Instead of answering, Marcus took the report out of the envelope and spread it on the table. It was a thick report of about sixty pages, and on the first page, the analysis summary had been organized into a table.
I slowly scanned the first page. There was certainly a reason Marcus had been surprised.
“Sir, look at this.”
Warren adjusted his glasses and leaned toward the report. After peering at the table for a moment, he pursed his lips.
“Hmm? C13-norisoprenoids, monoterpene glycosides, and thiol precursors… What exactly are these?”
For Warren, who was not a scholar, it was only natural that these terms were unfamiliar. In truth, the same went for Marcus. He would only have heard of thiol precursors in Sauvignon Blanc research; he probably had never seen them in Cabernet.
“That’s right. All three families were detected. And all three are overwhelmingly above the average for ordinary Cabernet…”
I turned to the second page of the report. A large graph was drawn there.
“First, C13-norisoprenoids. The key among them is the β-damascenone precursor. It was detected at 2.3 times the average for ordinary Napa Cabernet.”
“What kind of aroma is that?”
“It’s the deep, sweet juice that clings to the blade when you cut a perfectly ripe plum in half, and dried rose petals. Those two aromas come out at once.”
At those words, Warren looked slightly startled.
“That’s an aroma you only occasionally find in old vintages of Bordeaux First Growths.”
“Exactly. Incredible, isn’t it?”
“What else?”
“Next is monoterpene glycosides—linalool and geraniol precursors.”
“And what kind of aroma is that?”
“The scent you get when you bring your nose close to orange blossoms right as they bloom, and bergamot. Citrus, but not light citrus—citrus with a bit of weight to it.”
“That comes out in Cabernet?”
Warren’s voice rose slightly, as if he could not believe it. And understandably so. Monoterpenes were aromas one usually expected from white wines like Gewürztraminer or Muscat. It was extremely rare for a heavy red like Cabernet Sauvignon to show rich monoterpenes.
“Normally, they’re barely detected at all. But in Block C, they were clearly picked up. Seven times the average… It’s an almost abnormal figure.”
“How can that be…”
“And last, thiol precursors. Cysteine-bound.”
I pointed to the last bar on the graph with my finger. It was overwhelmingly longer than the other two bars.
“4.8 times the average for ordinary Cabernet. This is the true identity of Block C.”
“4.8 times? What kind of aroma is that?”
“It’s that spicy scent that pricks the tip of your nose when you’ve just cracked whole peppercorns, and that something that lingers slightly savory at the end when you bite into a black plum. And the strange mineral scent that comes when you strike two pieces of flint hard together. All three come out at once.”
By this point, Warren looked dumbfounded.
“Pepper, savoriness, and flint?”
“Yes.”
“In the same glass?”
“Yes.”
Warren was silent for a long while. Then he slowly leaned back in his chair. Had he ever seen a report like this in his life in wine? Probably not.
“All of that goes into one glass?”
It was less a question than something close to talking to himself.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. And this is the material for Castello’s first vintage, the one we have to make.”
At that moment, Marcus turned another page of the report with trembling hands. Before I knew it, the corners of his eyes had reddened slightly.
“Fifteen years.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ve been looking at this vineyard for fifteen years. All that time, I had no idea these things were inside these grapes, and I just made them into ordinary Cabernet. If Mr. Higgins had seen this…”
“Mr. Higgins wouldn’t have known either. This analysis itself is technology of this era. In his time, this wouldn’t have been possible.”
Marcus let out a small sigh. It was a sigh closer to some unknowable emotion than to self-reproach or regret.
I drew a graph on the conference room whiteboard.
We had entered full-fledged fermentation design. The horizontal axis was fermentation days, and the vertical axis was temperature. On it, we marked in different colors the zones where each of the three precursors would be released.
Pointing to one part of the whiteboard, I said,
“The problem is here. The temperature ranges in which the three precursors are released are all different. Thiols are most active at 18 degrees, C13 at 22 degrees, and monoterpenes only begin to come out in earnest at 24 degrees. There’s also a time difference. Thiols are released in the early stage of fermentation, C13 in the middle, and monoterpenes in the late stage.”
Warren crossed his arms and studied the whiteboard.
“Then isn’t that a good thing? Since there’s a time difference, if you design the temperature curve well, you can draw out all three, can’t you?”
“In theory. But there’s a problem.”
“What is it?”
“If we release all three, the aromas will clash.”
At my words, the two of them paused and looked at me. I took a step back from the whiteboard and continued.
“Think about it. The aroma of whole pepper is pricking your nose, and at the same time you smell orange blossoms, and then ripe plum is mixed in too? On top of that, flinty minerality and dried rose petals. If all five aromas are in one glass…”
“It becomes scattered.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Warren slowly nodded. There was a limit to the number of aromas that could fit into a single glass of wine. If too much went in, it was no longer an aroma but merely some unpleasant smell.
At that moment, Marcus carefully opened his mouth.
“Then what do you intend to do?”
“We have to make one of them the main axis. The other two will support it.”
“Then which one are you thinking of making the main axis?”
I fell silent for a moment and looked at the two of them. In truth, the answer had been decided from the moment I first saw the report. It was just that we needed the process of arriving at that conclusion together.
Then I slowly opened my mouth.
“Thiol.”
Here, the two men’s reactions split starkly.
“……?”
“Oh… That makes sense too.”
Marcus looked as if he could not understand, while Warren nodded, a faint smile appearing at the corners of his mouth.
At this, Marcus, realizing that Warren had anticipated something he himself had not, asked out of curiosity.
“If we make thiol the main axis, that means pepper and flint become the main aromas, doesn’t it? Plum and rose petals move to the side. Is that right? Isn’t C13 the aroma people generally like more?”
“That’s right.”
“It is? Then why…?”
“Because of that very reason.”
I stood in front of the whiteboard again.
“If we make C13 the main axis, it becomes a wine people are familiar with. That elegant aroma of an old Bordeaux First Growth. We’ll receive the evaluation that it’s a well-made Cabernet. But there are already many wines like that in the world. Even if we price it high, the comparison will ultimately be Margaux or Lafite.”
“Ah…!”
“But if we go with thiol, it’s different. The thing that created that figure of 4.8 times is Block C’s VA mycorrhizal fungi. No other winery has those mycorrhizal fungi. This is Castello’s weapon. It means that even if other people try to imitate it, they can’t.”
“I understand. Mr. Warren, you knew that too, didn’t you?”
At his question, Warren answered with a benevolent smile.
“The core of wine pricing is ultimately rarity. Of course, the quality of the wine itself has to support it. But if that’s there, then which wine is special becomes the deciding point. I judged that Brian’s choice went straight to that core.”
“As expected…”
Marcus clearly acknowledged that Warren Winiarski’s sense and experience were far superior to his own.
I smiled at the two of them and said,
“In any case, plum and rose petals will go as supporting elements from the side. The main stage will be flinty minerality, with black pepper lightly laid over it. The plum will serve to complete the savoriness in the mouth, and the rose petals will only brush past slightly in the final lingering finish. The citrus will remain at the tip of the nose a beat late after you take your mouth away.”
Warren stared at the whiteboard for a long while before slowly opening his mouth.
“Master, you already have this picture completely drawn in your head, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Ha… It hasn’t even been an hour since we got the report.”
“Come on, it’s not as if I’m some genius. To be honest, I had a vague sense of it from the moment I smelled the soil. The numbers only confirmed it.”
Even so, Warren let out a hollow laugh, shook his head, then closed his eyes and murmured while making a gesture as if he were holding a glass.
“When you bring the glass to your nose, the first aroma is that strange mineral scent of flint pricking your nose, and behind it, arriving just a little late, the spiciness of freshly ground black peppercorns. After that settles in a layer over the minerality, when you take a sip and hold it in your mouth… At first, a firm structure will press down on the tongue. That firmness unique to Cabernet. After that, the dense sweetness of black plum will follow, but it won’t be just sweetness. At the end of the plum, there’s a slight savoriness. That’s the trace of the thiol. No one will know, but that savoriness will make the plum’s sweetness twice as intense.”
Listening, Marcus swallowed without realizing it.
“After it rests in the mouth for a beat, dried rose petals spread beneath it. And not right away, either—they slowly reveal themselves on the second sip. Elegance only peeks through then, not too blatantly.”
“……”
“And finally. Only after you take the glass away from your mouth. A bergamot-like citrus comes a beat late to the tip of your nose. That draws the final line over the plum and pepper left in your mouth.”
Warren slowly opened his eyes. Looking once more at the whiteboard, he said,
“If this really gets made, I’ll have to get a glass. The first glass is mine.”
“Of course.”
After the meeting ended and I was leaving Castello, my phone rang. It was Chloe. One message and two photos.
[I looked at the candidates for Deer Ridge Club. I think we should choose the rehearsal dinner from these. And what did you have for lunch?]
I laughed despite myself. Warren, who was getting into the car beside me, saw it.
“What is it? Chloe?”
“Yes. She sent the rehearsal dinner candidates.”
In California, winery weddings are an extremely popular option. Moreover, if the groom-to-be was the owner of Redwood, which had risen to become the best winery in Napa Valley, then of course the ceremony venue had to be Redwood Winery.
But from her position as the Cherry Queen, completely excluding Brentwood was unthinkable, and since the place most familiar and comfortable for her parents was Deer Ridge Country Club, we could not rule it out entirely either.
Fortunately, in American weddings, the rehearsal dinner, ceremony, and reception are separate, so we had reached an agreement to hold the rehearsal dinner there the day before the ceremony.
“Haha, prepare for the wedding as seriously as you design fermentation. Otherwise, the bride will scold you.”
“Of course. I’ll keep that in mind.”
In the car, I slowly flipped through the two photos. Both were different spaces within Deer Ridge Country Club. The garden side and the indoor hall. There were not just one or two things to decide.
I sent a reply.
[I think the garden side would be nice. See you tonight. I didn’t eat lunch.]
Her reply came immediately.
[Eat first. Your mother would scold you.]
I let out another small laugh.
Outside the car window, the vineyards of Castello were growing distant. The grapes of Block C, turning a faint violet, were slowly ripening in the sunlight.
There were three months left until harvest. In that time, Castello’s fragrance would grow clearer and clearer.