One afternoon, only a few days after the New Year had dawned, a black sedan glided into the front yard of the winery.
Through the window, an unfamiliar face could be seen, and when the car door opened, a man in a neatly pressed suit stepped out at an unhurried pace. Then, confirming the words [Redwood Winery] written at the entrance to the farm, he let a thin smile touch his lips.
“Redwood Winery... It does look small...”
Though it was far off, he could see the farm’s boundary line, which made it clear that, for Napa Valley, this was certainly no large-scale estate. He slowly moved along, leisurely taking in the scenery of the farm. The winter basics—pruning, planting cover crops, and the like—had been done very well, making him think the grape quality would be above average at the very least.
“What brings you here?”
He spoke to the young Latino man approaching him.
“I came to meet the owner of this winery. I did contact you in advance. I’m Christopher...”
“Ah! The wine columnist, right?”
Christopher gave a faint nod to the startled young man.
“Well...”
“This way, please. My friend is waiting.”
“Friend?”
“Yes. There is an owner of the winery, but in practice, my friend had a hand in almost everything that was made here. That cherry wine... my friend made it.”
Though the young man was talkative, what he said was shocking enough to be hard to believe. In short, wasn’t he saying that a mere college freshman had created Ceracia, that wine with its unbelievable, complex structure?
It had broken the existing notion that cherry wine had to be sweet, and instead built up proper aroma and structure like wine made from grapes. Naturally, he had assumed the maker had to be someone with a deep understanding of wine.
“Mm... I see...”
But he was not the type to trust others easily. So he gave a perfunctory reply, and when they arrived at the winery, he saw an Asian young man struggling with an oak barrel.
‘Surely not...?’
“Brian!”
When the Latino youth waved and called out, the Asian young man looked back and smiled. Christopher tried to conceal the bewilderment rising within him.
‘He’s really Asian?’
By his common sense, this was impossible. Even looking worldwide, there was no history in his memory of an Asian person receiving recognition in wine. And on top of that, he was only a college freshman?
“Hello. I’m Brian. You’re Mr. Christopher White?”
He smiled awkwardly and shook his hand.
“Nice to meet you. I write wine columns, but my main job is wine distribution. Mostly exporting American wines overseas.”
“Ah... I see.”
“Are there any other adults here?”
That somehow awkward expression as he searched for an adult. The moment I saw it, I knew. Ah, this man is flustered because I’m Asian.
“My father? Hmm... Could you wait a moment? Dad!”
When I called Dad, who was in the office, he still looked awkward as he shook hands with him. He must have expected a Westerner married to an Asian woman to come out, but when he saw Dad’s face, even the corner of his mouth began to twitch. It was obvious he was desperately trying to figure out how to react.
“Thank you very much for praising our wine. I was moved.”
“It was an objective view of the wine. It was extremely... surprising. There’s one thing I’m curious about... Since when have you been operating the winery?”
“Since the end of the year before last. The farm fell on hard times and went bankrupt, so we acquired it.”
“Acquired it? At the end of the year before last?”
“Yes.”
“Then you started making the cherry wine...?”
“Naturally, from the middle of last year.”
“... Remarkable... Even if one comes up with the idea of making cherry wine, it isn’t easy to think one should follow existing wine grammar. What made you think that way?”
As soon as the conversation grew deeper, Dad gave a broad grin and passed it to me.
“Sorry, but I have something urgent to take care of right now. Why don’t you talk to my son?”
“What? No... Still, I should hear from the owner of the winery...”
“There are times when my son is better than I am, so you’ll be able to hear the answers you want well enough. Then...”
With that, Dad vanished, and his face turned toward me.
“Shall I answer?”
“... Yes, please.”
“My friend’s family runs a cherry farm. So we decided to collaborate and make it as a trial. The existing sweet dessert liquor was too obvious, so we tried to make it properly.”
“Haha... Is that so...?”
I asked him, seeing how flustered he was.
“Is there a problem?”
“No, the answer is just much more... simple than I expected.”
“Ah... Did you think there might be some deep philosophy about wine behind making Ceracia?”
He smiled lightly and readily admitted it.
“I can’t say there wasn’t a part of me that thought so.”
I nodded, then answered seriously.
“It’s not that I know nothing about wine. But the reason we made cherry wine differently from the existing kind wasn’t because of some grand philosophy about wine. It was to make a better wine. That’s all.”
“A better wine...”
He nodded with an unreadable expression, then asked with a slightly more serious face.
“Cabernet Sauvignon must be Redwood’s main variety, correct?”
“That’s right. Since you’re here, let’s go to the aging room.”
I took him into the aging room inside the winery. Among the cold metal tanks and the rows of oak barrels, he carefully smelled the air brushing past his nose.
“The aroma is good. It’s still young, but there’s no unpleasant odor. It seems well managed.”
“Thank you.”
“Certainly, if you could produce such a good cherry wine, I thought your understanding of orthodox wine would be even deeper. What do you think it’ll be like next year?”
I shrugged.
“I can’t say anything definite right now. As you’ve heard, it hasn’t been long since we acquired the farm, so I’d say our mindset is to make it as marketable as possible and put it out quickly.”
“Put it out quickly? It’s Cabernet Sauvignon. Aren’t you being too impatient?”
“You may think that, but once you actually taste the finished wine, you might like it quite a bit.”
But he was not readily convinced by my words. In this era, that sort of reaction could be called perfectly reasonable.
“I don’t want to meddle, but you’d be better off reconsidering. In Napa, there aren’t many places that highly value a wine finished in just one year. And... there’s a considerable amount of wine in those stainless tanks. It’s not as if, like the cherry wine, it’ll end at eight thousand bottles, is it? Then if you can just hold out on loans for at least two years...”
“That’s vinegar.”
He looked stunned.
“What?”
“What’s in those stainless tanks is vinegar. The wine has already all gone into oak.”
He blinked, then stammered in confusion.
“Wh-what is the... vinegar made from?”
“Grapes.”
“Was it perhaps of poor marketability? I heard there was a major wildfire last year... Ah! It must have been heavily smoke-tainted!”
“No. There wasn’t much difference in marketability.”
At last, he even wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“Just how much did you harvest?”
“About fifty tons last year. Half of that is being made into wine, and the other half into vinegar.”
Christopher burst into laughter as if he found it absurd. But that laughter was mixed with both astonishment and anger.
“You’re using such high-grade grapes for vinegar? Are you out of your mind? Napa Valley Cabernet, and half of it at that, into vinegar?”
It wasn’t as if I couldn’t understand why he was so flustered, so I answered calmly.
“Yes, that’s what we did.”
He tapped the notebook in his hand and raised his voice.
“I’ve sold wine for decades, but I’ve never seen such a foolish decision. Try telling overseas buyers. ‘Our winery made half of our high-grade Cabernet into vinegar.’ From that moment on, this place will be treated like a joke.”
To the excited man, I leaned my back against the wall beside an oak barrel and said,
“I think your thinking differs from mine because you’re a wine columnist.”
“How?”
“I’m a farmer. No matter how carefully you’ve raised something, if it doesn’t make money, a farmer plows it under. I don’t want to take out more loans just to make more wine and barely scrape by. Dad feels the same.”
“No, even so...”
He still waved a finger as if he could not understand.
“Turning Napa Valley Cabernet into vinegar is a waste close to a crime.”
“I don’t think so. Rather, I think it was the best way to survive. By making and selling vinegar, we got room to breathe, and thanks to that, we can challenge ourselves again next year. I’m grateful to the vinegar. It lets the winery prepare for the following year.”
For a moment, he glared at me as if he had been struck speechless. His eyes were like he was trying to draw a different answer out of me. But I did not waver.
“... If you truly mean that, then you’re merely a farmer and cannot be called a wine craftsman.”
“I have no intention of driving the farm into crisis just to be called a wine craftsman. And besides, do you know how many housewives are waiting for our vinegar...?”
If we hadn’t earned over a hundred thousand dollars from vinegar last year, the farm would undoubtedly have had great difficulty operating. In particular, without the vinegar, it would surely have been impossible to secure over forty tons of Pinot Noir.
Christopher, unaware of these circumstances, simply could not understand making vinegar from grapes grown on such expensive land and thought my vision was shortsighted.
“Fine, we’ll see. When this Cabernet comes out as wine, I’ll judge it then.”
He closed his notebook and turned away. He seemed to misunderstand us as a farm that had missed something important and was distracted by something else, but I did not bother trying to persuade him. After all, once the wine was released later, it would be evaluated coldly then.
“I was going to give him a glass of Pinot Noir... He can ask for it later.”
After Christopher, who had left me feeling a little disappointed at the end, disappeared, I got into the car and headed for Brentwood. But at the entrance to the farm, I saw Frederick having a serious conversation with someone.
When I got out of the car, Frederick saw me and raised his hand high as he called out.
“Oh! Brian!”
The man who had been talking with him also turned to look at me. He was quite old, and his belly was so impressive that his body was shaped like a rhombus. With that figure and yet such a small face, I found myself thinking that Westerners’ bodies were truly mysterious.
“Say hello. This is Mr. William Hartford, president of the Brentwood Cherry Growers Cooperative.”
I ended up greeting him without thinking.
“Ah, yes. Hello. I’m Brian, and I operate Redwood Winery in Napa Valley.”
“A winery in Napa Valley? Chloe’s boyfriend?”
“Pardon?”
When I made a strange face, he turned his head back to Frederick and said,
“Surely you aren’t thinking of an Asian son-in-law, are you?”
“Don’t say anything useless.”
“Fine. In any case, what I want is one thing. Are you going to let Safeway slip away? It’s a supply contract for a full five years. Once you sign the contract, every year you can sit back without worry and just count money. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
It seemed Safeway, the large California supermarket chain, had proposed a long-term supply contract to the Brentwood cherry farmers. But Frederick looked troubled.
The reason was obvious. He was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to overhaul his land using the method I had proposed, and now they were telling him to hand everything over all at once as a single Brentwood product. Of course he could only want to refuse.
While Frederick was hesitating, the man named William tapped Frederick on the chest and said,
“What exactly are you agonizing over? Don’t tell me you’re really thinking of making cherry pizza or something? Get a grip. This is a contract going in through the cooperative. If you people drop out, the unit price falls!”
At that moment, unable to keep watching, I cut in.
“Uh... Sir, he’s changing varieties, so I think it would be difficult...”
William Hartford immediately frowned.
“Changing varieties?”
When he glared at Frederick, Frederick looked at me in sudden confusion. But soon he spoke to William with an apologetic look.
“Sorry, but I’m thinking of changing varieties. So I don’t think I can join you.”
“Why change varieties?”
“...... Just because.”
“What?”
“In any case, count us out. We won’t be able to join.”
Since he said the variety would be different, William seemed unable to do anything about it. He scowled fiercely, then immediately got into his car and left the scene.
Watching him leave, Frederick asked,
“You say I should change varieties?”
“You looked troubled, so I improvised for the moment. You don’t have to change them right now. It’s fine to earn a profit this year, gain confidence, and then switch varieties.”
“Hmm...”
“But there is one point. You’re doing irrigation work now, and if you change varieties later, you’ll have to redo the irrigation lines.”
“You mean it’ll cost extra money?”
“I’m saying it would be nice to do it together while you’re at it. But as I said, changing varieties costs a lot of money, so I thought it might be better for you to do it after making money from this year’s harvest.”
“What varieties would I change to?”
“Three.”
“Three whole varieties?”
“They each have different harvest periods. So the weather risk is spread out. All three also have slightly different characteristics. But compared to the Bing cherries you’re growing now, I can guarantee a vastly superior taste. And the profit won’t even be comparable. By the way, that man from earlier seems pretty rich, doesn’t he?”
“He is. He owns three hundred acres of cherry orchards, and if you include his other farms, he’s a large landowner with a thousand acres.”
“I guarantee you’ll earn more profit than what comes from those three hundred acres even without changing varieties. If you do change varieties, at least double?”
“......”
“Maybe with two hundred acres, you might see profits comparable to a thousand acres...?”
Frederick’s pupils trembled, and he immediately led me deeper into the farm.
“Let’s go inside first. We’ll go in and talk about this in detail.”