The office of Laguna Creek’s vinegar winery. Armando sat at his desk, staring blankly out the window. Beyond the fermentation tanks, the green ridgelines of Alexander Valley stretched out long and wide. Normally, at this hour, he would have been reviewing label designs or drafting the shipping schedule for the next quarter.
But it had been a month now—that same thought had refused to leave his mind.
“Haa...”
Letting out a long sigh, he leaned back in his chair. The pattern on the ceiling, which he normally never even noticed, suddenly came into view.
All at once, he remembered that phone call from a month ago.
“Hey! Brian! What’s up?”
He had answered as boisterously as usual, but his friend on the other end of the line was not as usual.
“I’m getting married. To Chloe.”
For a moment, Armando went blank. In truth, he had expected his friend to marry Chloe someday, so the marriage itself was not shocking. If anything, they had been dating so long that he had wondered why they hadn’t done it sooner.
It was just... he was surprised that Brian was going before him.
“You bastard! Seriously? Wow... are you serious?!”
Armando burst into laughter. Belatedly excited, he shot up from his chair and paced around the office, showering him with congratulations.
“Seriously, congratulations! No, when did that happen? Did Chloe do it? Or did you?”
“...Actually, Chloe did it first.”
“Hahaha! I knew it! There’s no way a frustrating guy like you would do it first!”
“Frustrating guy...”
“So when’s the wedding?”
“December, and the ceremony will be at Redwood Winery. And...”
The call went on for quite a while before ending. His congratulations were sincere, and he was truly happy for him.
But what came after was the problem.
As the days passed, then a week passed, and now, with nearly a month gone by, the same thought would not leave his mind.
‘What about me?’
At first, he thought it was just a fleeting thought stirred up by the news of his friend’s marriage, but it did not disappear with time. If anything, it grew clearer and clearer.
‘What about Sienna and me?’
Sienna’s face kept coming to mind. On the day the heat wave struck, he remembered himself at the ruined 13-acre farm, excitedly talking while holding grapes like black diamonds, and Sienna beside him, following him around in work clothes. At first, it had felt strange that the only daughter of the Harrington family would stay beside a Mexican-American vinegar maker like him.
At first, he had simply been happy about it, but now he had grown greedy. He wanted to bear real fruit, not just talk. The thing he had only imagined for a long time.
Armando slowly straightened his posture and picked up the pen lying on his desk.
“There’s no reason I can’t do it too.”
Muttering softly, he pulled a notebook out of his drawer. A thick leather notebook he usually used to make business plans. It was time to move the thoughts he had been turning over in his head for a month onto paper.
He lifted his pen and, with a fairly serious expression, wrote a single line in the center.
Sienna Proposal Strategy!!
Beneath it, he drew two columns. Weaknesses, Strengths. It was exactly the same method he used when making business decisions.
‘Just like winemaking needs a plan, this needs one too.’
A self-deprecating laugh escaped him. It was ridiculous, but considering who the other person was, he could not do this without thinking. Perhaps this was, after all, a crossroads of a lifetime.
First, he wrote down the weaknesses.
-Mexican-American immigrant
-Vinegar winery
-Family history effectively first-generation
-Sienna’s father’s feelings
His pen stopped for a moment at the last item.
Mark Harrington. Sienna’s father, and a man still in the prime of his vigor, had usually acknowledged his daughter’s boyfriend and supported him, but Armando could not be sure whether he truly saw him as real husband material for his daughter. He had talked big to Brian, but that had merely been common male bluster.
“Ha... It’s fine. This isn’t ordinary vinegar.”
He set the pen down for a moment and poured himself a glass of whiskey. It was early, but it couldn’t be helped.
After taking a sip, he picked up the pen again.
This time, strengths.
- Grand Reserve-grade, $500 range for one 750ml bottle
- Direct deals with Michelin-starred restaurants like The French Laundry and Benu
- Unrivaled as a Napa/Sonoma vinegar-specialty winery
- Self-made
- An ally named Brian Choi
After writing that much, a smile briefly appeared at the corners of his mouth. Then he added one more line.
- The fact that Sienna has stayed by my side for two years
Grinning, he shrugged. Whatever Mark Harrington thought, whatever it meant that he was Mexican-American, whether vinegar looked a step below wine. All of those things were secondary.
Because the most important thing was Sienna’s heart.
‘Right. First, Sienna...’
He picked up his phone, then soon set it back down.
“I should talk it over with Brian.”
Since he was facing something important, he decided it would be better to consult Brian. Brian had always given him the right answer. And... wasn’t he already a successful senior when it came to getting engaged?
The next afternoon. The terrace of Redwood Winery.
“Brian!”
Armando, who had suddenly barged in, sat down as if claiming the place, laughing as boisterously as usual. I had been working while leisurely looking over the vineyard, and I greeted him with a smile.
“You’re here?”
“I am! Came to see the face of our engaged man.”
Armando pulled me into a hug and patted my back. Then he once again launched into a long string of congratulations on my marriage. He had already said more than enough over the phone a month ago, but saying it in person had a different meaning.
“Where’s Chloe?”
“She couldn’t come today because she has work at the farm.”
“Yeah? I was thinking of taking you out. That works out, then. I have something to talk to you about, just the two of us.”
My eyebrows immediately rose.
“Why? Is something going on?”
“Sit down, first.”
We sat facing each other at the terrace table. The early July sunlight lay long across the vineyard.
Armando took a light sip of his grape drink and set the glass down.
“The thing is... I’m thinking of proposing to Sienna too.”
“Oh, come on...”
I made a face as if I had bitten into something foul, and Armando burst into laughter again.
“Hahaha! Why? I want to marry Sienna too.”
“Yeah... I guess you would.”
“So? You’re not going to help me?”
The thought of Armando succeeding in marrying Sienna and looking triumphant was absurd, but I couldn’t very well refuse to help a friend get married. Perhaps Armando’s dream and Sienna, a rich family’s daughter, might not suit each other, but I also thought they might suit each other precisely because she was Sienna. With Sienna’s charisma, she would probably be able to rein in the wild Armando and live well with him.
“What do you want?”
“Hehehe... The thing is, convincing Mark, Sienna’s dad, is the hard part. Our winery is doing pretty well, but if you look at it coldly, I’m a Mexican-American immigrant who came into Napa Valley and makes vinegar instead of wine, right?”
For him to assess himself this objectively... it seemed he had steeled himself firmly to win Sienna.
“So you think Uncle Mark might look down on you. Is that it?”
“He might. Acknowledging a relationship and approving a marriage are different things.”
His thinking was certainly correct.
“All right. If I give you a tip...”
Armando’s eyes shone, completely focused. The sight was so funny that a smile formed on my lips before I knew it.
“Uncle Mark is a businessman. Chloe’s father, Uncle Frederick, was a businessman too. Looking back on why Uncle Frederick first saw me favorably, I think it was because I seemed extremely attractive from a business perspective.”
“Ah... you mean your wine business?”
“Yeah. When I was making wine with cherries, Uncle Frederick was incredibly proactive. At the time, I just thought he liked me because I was someone who could make money, but looking back, I came to think of it differently.”
“How?”
“Mm... as someone he could trust?”
Armando slowly nodded.
“Someone he could trust?”
“That’s right. And as he watched me from close by, he saw I wasn’t some strange person, so that trust must have built up more and more. I think it was the same for you. At first, Uncle Mark probably just watched because Sienna liked you, but more than anything, he must have been keeping an eye on your winery business. How the business was doing.”
“Ah... I’m confident about that. We’re probably far above most Napa wineries in sales.”
Armando shrugged, and he had every right to be proud. As far as I knew, Laguna Creek’s projected vinegar sales for this year were approaching ten million dollars. What was even more encouraging was that the profit margin was well over 50%.
The reason the profit margin was so high was that, in terms of sourcing raw materials, he had obtained them at prices that were practically a scam. He used overripe grapes that had suffered sunburn during the heat wave, and since those grapes were not suitable for ordinary wineries to make wine with, he had been able to buy them for next to nothing.
Because the other party was such a large winery with a long history, Armando felt slightly intimidated, but Laguna Creek had now become a solid, profitable winery making at least five million dollars in profit every year.
As a potential son-in-law, he did not fall short.
“So don’t be scared. Take a bottle of Grand Reserve-grade balsamic with you. It’s $500 a bottle, and you said you’re supplying it directly to The French Laundry, right? Honestly, Harrington is overwhelmingly bigger in scale, but they don’t have a cult wine, do they? Their wines are cheaper than the vinegar you sell, so there’s no need to be intimidated.”
“Hmm... That’s true.”
“And most decisively, if Sienna insists on getting married, Mark probably won’t oppose it much. He might even like it. At the very least, his future son-in-law isn’t some guy from who knows where, but a winery owner in Napa Valley. And one at the mid-sized level or above, bringing in over ten million dollars in sales every year.”
Perhaps it was exactly what he had wanted to hear, because Armando nodded with a satisfied smile and said,
“Good. Then if I need to, I’ll get some help from you too.”
If things came down to it, he was clearly planning to appeal by saying he had high growth potential through collaboration with Redwood. There was no reason he couldn’t, and it was true as well, but I shook my head.
“Save that as your last card. The most important thing is for you to pull it off yourself. If Sienna’s father is looking at you as son-in-law material, and you appeal by saying things will go well thanks to your friend, I think it’ll be a minus.”
“That’s true too.”
Armando nodded.
“But what about Sienna? Does she know you’ve made up your mind to marry her?”
“I haven’t told her.”
“What are you going to do?”
“That’s why I’m meeting her tonight to test the waters.”
I chuckled. Would Sienna really agree? I didn’t know their relationship exactly, so I couldn’t say for sure, but I was curious about the result.
“Do your best.”
“Thanks.”
That evening. A bistro in Healdsburg.
It was a small place in Sonoma wine country, one the two of them often visited. Sienna liked it because, more than the food, it had a good wine list.
Naturally, Armando had arrived first. As he always did on dates, he wore a neat shirt and cotton pants, so there was nothing outwardly lacking about him either.
The door opened, and Sienna came in. A white dress with a light cardigan. Her hair fell naturally loose, and even though they had been dating for quite some time now, Armando’s heart still gave a slight thud.
“Sorry I’m late. Something came up at the farm.”
“No. I just got here too.”
Sienna smiled as she took her seat. At that single smile, Armando went dazed again for a moment. It was a smile he had seen for a long time, but perhaps because his mindset had changed, it looked different to him.
Pulling himself together, he handed her the wine menu.
“What do you want to drink?”
“You choose today. I’m so tired my brain isn’t working.”
“Then how about a glass of Harrington Pinot Noir?”
“Our company’s?”
“Yeah. How about drinking a glass of your own company’s wine? Once in a while.”
“Well, that sounds good too.”
He called the waiter and placed the order. The food was light as well. As usual, Sienna chose a salad and pasta.
Until the wine came out, the two talked as they always did. Business matters, such as preparations for Harrington Winery’s summer event, new equipment investment at Armando’s vinegar factory, and next month’s shipping schedule.
But since his mind was elsewhere, it was only natural that he looked somehow strange.
“Are you not listening to me? What are you thinking about?”
Armando flinched in surprise and began sweating as his eyes darted around, and she asked again.
“Is something wrong?”
After agonizing for a long while over what to do, Armando picked up the wine the server had brought and gulped it down.
“What? Why are you doing that?”
As Sienna stared at him in surprise, Armando set the empty glass down with a thud and said,
“Marry me.”
“What?”
“I said marry me. I’ll make you happy.”
Then he took out and presented a gold ring he had bought from some no-name jewelry store in Napa Valley. At a glance, it was nothing luxurious, just something that looked like an ordinary couple ring.
“I don’t know about anything else, but I love you. Let’s do it. Let’s get married.”
She looked down silently at the ring. The accessories she was wearing right now added up to more than thirty thousand dollars, while this ring seemed to be worth only a few hundred at most.
And yet, this rough ring, so much like Armando himself, strangely shook her heart.
“Really?”
“Huh?”
“Will you really make me happy?”
At those words, the tension drained from Armando all at once, and a smile spread across his face.
“I’ll make you the happiest woman in Sonoma.”