The people outside naturally assumed that the person who had created this new wine was the older Woody Choi, so they didn’t pay much attention to Frederick suddenly dragging me away. No—more accurately, their attention was elsewhere, so the sight didn’t even register.
“One more, please.”
“If it’s not too much trouble, may I ask how you managed to draw out this kind of aroma?”
They clung to Dad and refused to let him go, persistently peppering him with questions. Dad answered what he could, exactly as I had coached(?) him to, and when it came to things he shouldn’t reveal, he merely smiled and gently sidestepped them.
In contrast, I...
“We need to have a somewhat more serious conversation now.”
As if we’d been cracking jokes this whole time? This was only the third time I’d met him, and I felt like most of our conversations had been serious...
“Ah, is that so?”
Frederick continued with a face full of conviction and resolve, as if he were making the most important decision of his life.
“In my view, Redwood Winery has the ability to produce wines that are competitive not only in Napa, but throughout California. From that perspective, this cherry wine is certain to raise the Redwood brand significantly.”
“......”
I simply smiled in silence and looked at him. Under that subtle psychological pressure, Frederick seemed to think this wouldn’t be easy and continued trying to persuade me.
“In order to maintain a brand like that consistently, you need to secure a supply of high-quality cherries at a reasonable price. And not with quantities fluctuating every year, but stably. Do you agree?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
I smiled with my eyes as if I already knew exactly what he was going to say, but Frederick didn’t get pulled in and continued.
“Do you happen to know how long our farm has been around? Fifty years. It’s a cherry farm that has continued for a full fifty years. That’s how consistently we’ve maintained a uniform flavor. On top of that, the quality is top-tier.”
“There’s no question about the quality.”
“That’s exactly it. Think about it. This time, you made it with ten tons, and it’s only eight thousand bottles, but what if it were a hundred tons? That’s eighty thousand bottles. It would be tremendous revenue.”
“Come on, eighty thousand bottles of cherry wine is easy to say, but if the taste is even a little off, we might have to throw it all away.”
He hurriedly waved his hands at my words.
“No, no. That won’t happen. What do you think the restaurant owners outside are thinking right now? They’re probably wondering how much stock they can secure. Once they find out there are only eight thousand bottles, they’ll be even more eager. I guarantee it—if this quality is maintained, even eighty thousand bottles will be handled without a problem.”
“So... you’re telling me to take a hundred tons of cherries?”
“To be honest, I’d like to do more, but I know it won’t be easy because of the winery’s limitations, which is a shame.”
Frederick looked around the winery with genuine regret in his eyes. Since it was a winery attached to fifteen acres, it was inevitably lacking in scale compared to the large winery facilities of major farms. On top of that, it wasn’t exactly state-of-the-art, so it was a bit lacking in terms of equipment as well.
“Wow...”
When I let out only a quiet exclamation without looking surprised in the slightest, he spoke urgently.
“You have a very special ability. An ability like that is not easily given. Especially here in Napa, it’s a talent money can’t buy. I’m saying we should let that ability fully bloom together.”
“......”
I folded my arms and looked outside, pretending to think it over. The people kept calling out “a little more” to Dad, and Dad was doling it out little by little as if it were terribly precious. The only slightly unexpected thing was that, far off, Sienna’s father, Mark, was looking this way, so our eyes met a few times.
“Is that someone you know?”
“Who? Ah, Sienna’s father?”
“... So that girl’s name is Sienna? Chloe never said.”
“She’s a third-year senior. He’s Harrington, the owner of a large farm in Sonoma. He introduced us to several of the restaurants that came here today.”
In an instant, Frederick’s eyes gleamed. He led me farther inside again and said,
“I believe trust is extremely important in business relationships.”
“Of course. I think so too.”
“Are you perhaps considering anything besides cherries?”
“Actually, I was going to show you today. We pre-purchased from Russian River Valley and are doing custom crush.”
“Is that so? How much?”
“At the time, a little over forty tons came in.”
He looked at me with curiosity, then asked,
“Then it must be a long-term contract?”
“That’s right.”
“How about a long-term contract with us as well?”
I asked him as he tried to look composed.
“How much are you willing to pay?”
“I’ll set it at 1,100 dollars per ton. For premium cherries, that is by no means an expensive price.”
As he said, I knew that quality cherries from Brentwood could fetch 1,200 dollars without much difficulty. But I shrugged and said,
“I know the cherries from Brentwood maintain an extremely high standard. But since prices fluctuate every season, I think setting a fixed annual unit price for a hundred tons and securing a stable sales channel would be profitable enough.”
At my words, Frederick looked slightly impressed.
“Honestly... you’re not wrong.”
“Then receiving a supply of a hundred tons of cherries won’t benefit only us—it will also benefit your farm. So this part can clearly become a win-win strategy for both sides, but... the problem is that if we want to process a hundred tons of cherries, our farm’s facilities alone won’t be enough.”
“Aren’t you already using custom crush?”
“That’s right. We’re doing custom crush as an investment after seeing the long-term value of Pinot Noir, but unlike Pinot Noir, the problem with cherry wine is that it’s hard to charge more than twenty dollars per bottle. If we send it through custom crush, after the rental costs, it’s difficult to leave a large profit.”
“Hm... So what’s your opinion?”
“That we have no choice but to expand the wine facilities.”
Frederick tilted his head at the abrupt topic.
“Expand the facilities?”
“Yes. In that sense, how about doing this?”
I glanced over the atmosphere outside again, then spoke in a low voice.
“You invest 700,000 dollars in our farm to expand the facilities.”
“Seven hundred thousand dollars?”
His eyes flew wide open at the sudden suggestion, and I calmly explained.
“I plan to sell this cherry wine for around eighteen dollars a bottle. That’s fairly expensive for a fruit wine, but do you agree that it will sell at that price?”
“Well... it should be able to get that much.”
Since he had already tasted it and rushed in, Frederick might have even more confidence in the price than I did.
“Good. A hundred tons of cherries makes roughly eighty thousand bottles. The yield may be a little lower, and some might go out for promotion, so let’s call it about seventy-five thousand bottles. If we set each at around eighteen dollars... mm... around 1.3 million dollars? It’ll be close to that. From there, I’ll give you twenty percent of the revenue earned from the cherries.”
“So you take eight, and I take two?”
“That’s right. Let’s calculate it. The revenue from selling a hundred tons of cherries to a winery is 110,000 dollars. But if you take twenty percent of the proceeds from 1.3 million dollars, that comes out to roughly 260,000 dollars. Then the total revenue you gain from a hundred tons of cherries is 370,000 dollars. That’s money you couldn’t earn even by selling three hundred tons of cherries.”
At my explanation, Frederick blinked, and I continued.
“Now, if we sign a ten-year contract for 700,000 dollars, the long-term profit the farm earns will be an additional 2.6 million dollars, minus the 700,000-dollar upfront investment, for 1.9 million dollars. And in the wholesale market for fresh fruit, the wholesale price is decided almost entirely through price competition rather than other factors, isn’t it? If a certain winery uses only the cherries from Chloe’s father’s farm, a clear premium will form. Including those invisible benefits...”
“......”
When a young man barely twenty years old... someone no different from a greenhorn, instantly ran the numbers like that, Frederick was left speechless. Since I could see through everything as if he’d been stripped bare, there was no room left for negotiation.
“You can recover the 700,000 dollars in two years. Even excluding the cherry sale price, you can recover it in three. And while it starts with a hundred tons, if we gradually invest in the facilities and increase capacity...?”
“......”
“Well, you might not be interested, so...”
As I unfolded my arms and tried to leave, Frederick grabbed me firmly with his thick hand.
“Ahahaha... Not interested? What are you talking about? In truth, I’m very pleased. I had no idea you were thinking this deeply. I am in favor of your plan, which envisions a progressive future for both of our farms. As long as there is a clear contract, that is.”
“Then... deal?”
“Deal.”
He patted my shoulder, then suddenly burst into a hearty “Ahahaha!” and walked outside. He came out swinging both arms and wearing a meaningful smile, and while the others glanced over and immediately returned their attention to the wine, only Mark Harrington watched him closely.
After exchanging a signal with me through our eyes, Dad set down the stainless steel decanter he was holding and said,
“The wine you have all tasted is scheduled to be officially released in about two weeks, and we are considering a price of eighteen dollars per 750ml bottle.”
Some people looked slightly surprised at that, but most seemed satisfied with the price or nodded. And one person even raised his hand.
“What is the minimum order quantity?”
It was Theodore Goodwin of the one-Michelin-starred Blaze Bistro.
“I was just about to explain that. The minimum order quantity is three cases, with one case being twelve bottles. The deposit is one-third of the total order amount. And because there isn’t much of this cherry wine, the total production ends at eight thousand bottles.”
“Oh, dear...”
Perhaps because the quantity wasn’t large, everyone looked regretful.
“I recommend stocking up on Redwood’s cherry wine before Christmas. As I said, there isn’t much of it.”
Before Dad had even finished speaking, people from several restaurants raised their hands, and I quickly wrote down their orders in the notebook I had prepared in advance. Since I already knew exactly where they were from, all I had to do was note how many cases each place was taking, so it wasn’t difficult.
Just when I expected the tasting to end that way, I drove the pickup truck up.
“What’s that...?”
What Armando and I pulled down from the back of the pickup truck was a large oak barrel.
“There is still one more thing left for you to taste.”
After saying that, I slowly pulled out the thick wooden bung. The faint fruit aroma spreading from inside the barrel pierced the air and captured everyone’s attention at once.
“It isn’t cherry?”
Rather than surprise simply because it wasn’t cherry, it was an exclamation tinged with curiosity about what a wine made from grapes would be like, if the cherry wine had been made this well.
I placed the stainless steel decanter at the barrel opening and carefully drew out the Pinot Noir. The deep crimson liquid flowed in a stream and struck the metal surface, further emphasizing a soft yet distinct fruit aroma. It was a scent like cherries, raspberries, and rose petals bursting all at once. It was hard to believe it had only been fermenting for three months.
Dad took the decanter filled with wine from my hands and said to the guests,
“This is Pinot Noir harvested this year. It is only three months old, but since we have prepared such a meaningful occasion, we wanted to present it to you in advance as something special.”
Everyone looked bewildered. If it was a Pinot Noir only three months old, the acidity would usually be excessive, the tannins rough, and the fruit aroma often buried beneath fermentation notes. In short, it was still an unfinished wine, so being given it to taste was understandably perplexing.
But after Armando set out all new glasses and Dad poured a little wine for each of them, the atmosphere changed. The aroma rising from the glasses was so clean and distinct that it was impossible to believe it was only three months old.
“Are you saying this is really three months old?”
Mark, who knew Pinot Noir better than anyone there, lifted his nose from the glass and asked Dad.
“Of course. We purchased it from Hart Farm in Russian River Valley, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find the records.”
He looked as if he couldn’t believe it. Naturally. In 2004, they hadn’t used cold soak to bring the skins and juice into contact at low temperatures for several days before fermentation to extract color and aroma, nor had they used micro-oxygenation, the oxygen management technique of introducing a minute amount of oxygen during aging.
And above all, the yeast I used was surely different from what Mark used.
“So please try it first. It is not a completed wine, but something meant to show its direction, and to ask you to remember our Redwood Winery well in the future.”
When Dad raised his hand to invite them, Mark and the other attendees all took their first sip, and in that moment, everyone’s expressions hardened at the same time.
“Amazing.”
“A mere three-month-old has this kind of balance?”
“A monster is going to emerge.”
Someone said it like a joke, but no one laughed. They all merely looked into the wine in their glasses once more, gazing at it with awe.