Late night in San Francisco.
“You go to sleep first.”
Christopher kissed Jane on the head and turned off the lights. Wearing a faint, happy smile, Jane quietly muttered.
“Damn wine...”
Christopher White opened the old laptop on the windowsill and began tapping at the keyboard. Worried he might disturb Jane’s sleep, only a stand lamp aided his work. Beside it sat a half-emptied bottle of Serasia; he had bought an extra bottle on the way out of the shop.
[Brentwood Cherry Wine, Beyond the Prejudice]
He typed the title and paused. The shameful emotion he had felt then came flooding back. It was the feeling of being scolded, as if the world were saying to him, “There are things like this, too,” despite his pride in knowing so much about wine. So Christopher poured that emotion directly into his writing.
— Until now, I had dismissed cherry wine as nothing more than a sweet fruit liquor. I imagine many people think as I did—that it is not a proper wine, but rather a children’s drink imitating wine. However, the pairing I experienced at Blaze Bistro shattered that preconception.
He picked up the Serasia he had bought himself, took a photo with his camera, and uploaded it into the middle of the manuscript. The simple, sophisticated Serasia label elevated the manuscript’s credibility.
— ...... Grilled scallops with lobster and cherry gastrique. At that moment, the cherry wine in my glass was the moment my common knowledge was turned upside down. It is clearly different from the delicate acidity and raspberry notes of Pinot Noir, the creamy texture and apple-citrus flavors of Chardonnay, or the heavy structure of Cabernet Sauvignon. Without belonging anywhere, yet speaking in its own voice from a place that is not unfamiliar.
The point that needed to be made clearly was that Serasia was not a supreme, high-quality product, but rather a new category that had not existed before.
Christopher transferred the emotion he had felt at that fresh shock directly into his sentences. He soon continued.
— Serasia is not what we commonly call a Fruit Wine, but if you drink it with too much expectation, you may be disappointed instead.
Even if it is not a grand prophecy, if you have grown bored with existing wines, it is worth trying at least once. Moreover, the price is cheap, so there is no burden in enjoying a new attempt. If you want to find the unique character of cherry wine, I recommend Serasia.
When he pressed the send button, the manuscript was transferred to the Wine Journal headquarters server.
“Redwood... cherry wine is just pocket money, right? Right?”
He thought he might be a little disappointed if that were not the case.
---
The day after the column on Serasia was sent from somewhere in California, before it could even be published in the magazine...
“Yes? Thirty cases? Understood. Today is difficult, but tomorrow is possible.”
“For forty-five cases, I’ll have to check our inventory right now.”
I stopped writing the order form for a moment. Orders were flooding in more than expected, and it occurred to me that there probably was not much stock left. Even at best, it had been ten tons of cherries, and they had made eight thousand bottles from that, but I had never imagined they would run out before December, before Christmas even arrived.
The truth was, this had happened because the winery owner had declared at the tasting event that there were only eight thousand bottles. Since the customers’ reactions were good, it was natural for them to want to secure some in advance, and because Serasia was cheap—only half to one-third the price of Pinot Noir—there had been no burden in stocking up.
In the end, leaving only two cases in case they needed them for gifts or to keep, everything was sold out.
“Does this even make sense?”
Mom, who had just finished serving the workers their meal, looked at me in disbelief at the news that stock had run out. Once Dad returned this evening and loaded the last of tomorrow’s shipment, then returned the vehicle, it would be over.
“I didn’t know it would do this well either.”
That was the truth. I had expected that creating a cherry wine different from the norm would certainly generate considerable demand, but I had not thought the speed would be this fast. I wondered if I should have pushed to get twenty tons if I had known this would happen, but I deliberately pushed that thought away.
At this small winery’s level, rather than constantly pushing inventory to its limits, it was right to steadily build up our foundation and expand equipment. The important thing was that earning seventy thousand dollars from cherry wine had allowed our suffocating cash flow to breathe. More than that was greed.
“You’ve worked hard.”
“It wasn’t hard; it was fun. Dad’s the one working hard making deliveries. I’m going to head over to Chloe’s farm now.”
“All right, be careful driving.”
“Yes, yes.”
Before leaving, I called Armando. Armando, who had been driving a small tractor between the grapevines planting cover crops, was now quite skilled and exuded an air of seasoned expertise.
“I’m going to Chloe’s place, so rest in the office and take any calls that come in.”
“Ooh! Great!”
At the order to wait in the office, Armando’s face brightened considerably. I sometimes gave Armando time to study in the office when there was no work, since he was a student and needed to study.
“We’re out of wine stock, so just turn them down politely.”
“What? Already?”
“Yeah. There are two cases left in the warehouse, but we’re keeping those, so just leave them.”
“Wow, unbelievable. Seriously, if we get a hundred tons and make it next year, how much money would that be?”
“Our farm’s revenue would be a bit over nine hundred thousand dollars?”
Armando’s jaw dropped.
“Nine hundred thousand dollars just from cherry wine? You’re going to be totally rich!”
“If it all sells. It might not all sell. That’s why I said it’s a big deal if there’s leftover stock the first year. We might have to adjust the price, or we might have to go do sales on the East Coast. When that time comes, let’s go to New York together, you and me.”
“Ooh! Sounds good! I’m totally a New York type.”
“...Have you ever been to New York?”
“No. Never. But don’t doubt that I’m a New York type.”
“...... All right. Take the calls.”
So I got in my old pickup truck and headed to Brentwood.
When I arrived at the vast empty lot where biochar was being made at Harris Farm, the mountain-like piles of biochar had visibly shrunk. It seemed the massive work was nearly done after having workers at it for nearly half a month.
I parked in the lot and got out, then saw a large man approaching from afar. It was Frederick, with big hands and broad shoulders.
“You’ve come?”
“Have you been doing well? That huge amount has almost decreased?”
“You have to be able to drag things out. It’s fortunate it didn’t rain much this year; if it had rained a lot, I would’ve had a headache. And the work you ordered isn’t that difficult.”
“Of course. It’s something anyone can do if they’re not an idiot.”
It was not a terribly difficult job, something you could have laborers do. You simply had to dig a circular trench beneath the small cherry trees and fill it with the charcoal that had been made with effort. Covering it with dirt was hardly work at all.
“Brandon seems to be following along well, too. It’s thanks to your good teaching.”
Though he had given the cherry farm to his daughter, I could feel he still kept worrying about his son.
“What have I done? And looking at Brandon, he didn’t seem to have any wariness or rejection of farming itself, surprisingly.”
“Surprisingly? Hmm... I suppose your first impression wasn’t good?”
“Well... it wasn’t. But keeping him beside me, I saw he follows along quite well.”
When I only spoke well, Frederick looked surprised.
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s just... other than seeming a bit troubled in the head?”
Perhaps because my explanation was a bit odd, Frederick tilted his head. Then, I saw someone approaching directly toward us from afar.
“It’s Raymond.”
Raymond, walking quickly with disheveled black hair, spoke to Frederick with a somewhat frustrated expression.
“Boss, if you do it like this, I cannot guarantee next year’s cherry harvest results. This... is a farming method I have never heard of or experienced!”
From a third party’s perspective, there was not a single thing wrong with his words. Suddenly taking a mere college student’s word, making charcoal with five hundred tons of wood and two hundred fifty tons of fertilizer to spread on the farm—how bewildering that must be as a farm manager was not something I could not understand.
Naturally, Frederick also looked awkward. Though he was clearly doing this trusting his daughter’s friend, saying he had done this to the farm manager based on faith alone must have been embarrassing for him as well.
“Didn’t I say there is basis for it?”
Suddenly the arrow turned toward me.
“Ah, yes. Charcoal is tremendously helpful to the soil. It holds water and nutrients for a long time, facilitates microbial reproduction, and saves on irrigation and fertilizer costs.”
“Good heavens... Do you believe those words?”
“Hmm... I believe it.”
“Boss, you mustn’t. When I was devoted to the walnut farm, I never imagined something like this would happen...”
He looked around the farm, unable to contain his devastation. And he immediately spoke to Frederick again.
“You must stop this strange practice at once. We must prepare for spring starting now so there are no problems with next year’s harvest.”
But Frederick only smiled a strange smile and continued walking, and naturally the three of us entered the middle of the farm. And there, the two siblings were diligently burying biochar together with the workers.
“Working hard?”
At Frederick’s voice, everyone turned their heads, and among them Chloe discovered me and waved her shovel.
“Come help me!”
Frederick looked at me, but I pretended not to hear and shrugged.
“She seems to be having a hard time.”
“You’ll be happy later on.”
What does he mean by that?
“Thank you.”
“......”
“Anyway, you all seem to be doing well.”
Then, Brandon stuck his shovel deep in the ground and complained to Frederick.
“Dad, let’s stop this now. Mr. Raymond said if we just give fertilizer properly, they’ll grow well enough!”
By this era’s standards, that was not wrong. The problem was that my method yielded above what this era’s standards could produce.
“That’s right. Even without going this far, I will make sure the farm has no problems at all. I admit that I lost the boss’s trust due to the previous aphid problem, but this is not the way.”
With Brandon’s support, Raymond requested strongly once more, so Frederick also looked troubled. When Chloe, unable to watch anymore, raised her eyebrows to say something, I cut in.
“That fertilizer... when you came to our winery before and showed me the cost breakdown, the fertilizer expenses were quite high, weren’t they? It was over eighty thousand dollars?”
Everyone focused on my words, and Frederick nodded in agreement.
“It was.”
“What do you usually use that costs so much? When I calculated it, even if I estimated high, it seemed like sixty thousand dollars would be enough?”
In that moment, Frederick’s head turned toward Raymond. Raymond, with the arrow turned to himself, was momentarily flustered but then confessed as if he had nothing to hide.
“Ammonium nitrate, urea, DAP, lime or gypsum... that’s what I’ve been using.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
He even made an expression as if asking what I could know from this. I turned to Frederick.
“Do you know what the ratio is among those?”
“That much...”
“Good. Shall we go to the warehouse?”
At my words, Frederick nodded as if entranced, and so the three of us unexpectedly headed to the warehouse by car. Because the farm was so vast, we had to drive about ten minutes before arriving. It was old and worn on the outside, but it did not look like it would collapse immediately.
With a creak, opening the warehouse door wide, a musty smell rushed out.
“Go in and look.”
Raymond gestured with his chin, his face unpleasant. He must be feeling bad about an Asian man prying into his work. But I did not care and entered the warehouse, looked around the fertilizer piled up like a mountain, and asked while pointing to a sack that said [UREA 46-0-0].
“Urea is overwhelmingly abundant? Why is that?”
Raymond was slightly flustered for a moment.
“Th-that’s... because nitrogen is the most important for farming, obviously...”
In UREA 46-0-0, the numbers mean forty-six percent nitrogen, zero percent phosphorus and potassium—a pure nitrogen fertilizer.
“What about SOP?”
“That’s over there...”
“This is all?”
When I saw the [SOP 0-0-50] piled up small in one corner and asked with a dumbfounded expression, his hands visibly trembled.
“This much is enough to get sufficient effect, yet you who don’t know anything...”
But just by looking at this, I could clearly see how Harris Farm had been managed all this time. Most cherry farms at this time were probably like this, but they had been fertilizing in an extremely inefficient manner. Most people probably did not even know that fertilizing this way was wrong. Additionally, on top of that, I could tell that the farm manager had been scheming with the fertilizer payments.
I turned, looked at Frederick, and spoke while shaking my head.
“You poured excessive nitrogen into the soil with cheap urea. You should check the purchase orders and delivery statements to find out since when.”
Now I saw it—the excessive nitrogen fertilizer had not been used to frame Chloe with pests, but because he had been purchasing excessive nitrogen fertilizer to skim off the payments.
“Raymond!”
At Frederick’s thunder-like roar, Raymond’s legs trembled.
“B-boss. That’s...”