Before summer had yet arrived, I was on my way to Alexander Valley with Armando’s family. After all, Armando alone wasn’t quite enough to make a decision involving a sum of over a million dollars.
We parked in front of a small winery building situated above the vineyard. The sign read, in crooked letters, “Laguna Creek Winery.” Laguna Creek. The name felt very friendly.
“This place... looks better than I expected.”
Armando let out a low breath. It was a sound mixed with anticipation and nerves.
His father, Jean, who got out of the driver’s seat, had broad shoulders and white hair. He quietly raised an eyebrow.
“Places always look fine from the outside. The real problems are the ones you can’t see.”
Armando’s mother, Rosa, who was closing the door in the back, laughed softly.
“Don’t start already. Brian came with us, so he’ll take a good look.”
The two of them were relying entirely on my opinion rather than Armando’s. Since Armando had been working on our farm since high school, they had heard through their son how Redwood Winery was changing, and they trusted me quite a bit.
Perhaps because we had called ahead, as we approached the house attached to the farm, the door suddenly opened as if he had been waiting. A man appeared, with silvery short hair and a neatly trimmed beard. His eyelids looked heavy with fatigue, and his shoulders sagged, drained of strength.
The man, who seemed to be in his early forties, approached with a smile that looked forced.
“I’m Thomas Green. You’re the ones who called...?”
“I’m Armando Cortes. I contacted you.”
Thomas’s gaze lingered on his young face. For a brief moment, his expression stiffened slightly. But he soon put on a smile.
“You’ve come a long way. Do you have some experience?”
“Yes, I do.”
Armando answered confidently, but Thomas merely nodded as if it wasn’t a big deal.
We first walked through the south-facing block where the rows of vines stretched out. Thomas pointed with the tip of his foot at a broken drip hose.
“That should have been replaced last month, but I got pushed back because I didn’t have enough people. Before summer comes, I need to check the pressure row by row and replace them... but doing this much alone takes a week.”
The bitterness in his smile conveyed how exhausting the work was.
“What’s the soil condition like?”
“The soil? It’s good.”
That was all he said. It was too much to expect an answer about what fertilizers and compost he had used, what kind of environment he had created, and how he was managing it.
“Looks like the wildfires missed you, fortunately.”
“That’s right. Last year, the fire came down the mountainside from the north, but it didn’t reach us. So the location itself is very good.”
Armando’s eyes sparkled. Rosa carefully touched the bark of the nearby trees, then looked relieved.
While the two of them examined the land, I looked at the condition of the grapes. Overall, they weren’t bad, but here and there I saw grapes that insects had eaten, and some vines showed signs that the berries hadn’t ripened properly.
On the way back to the house, I casually asked.
“Is there a reason you’re putting the farm up for sale?”
He looked as if he was wondering why a young Asian man like me was part of this group, but seeing that Armando and his parents treated me with respect without saying anything, he shrugged and answered.
“Because I want to get out. When I first moved out here to farm, I fell in love with the peaceful countryside scenery. Look at the Russian River flowing over there and that overwhelming landscape. Just looking at it felt healing. I was running away from a life where I woke up to an alarm every morning, commuted on a subway reeking of piss, and fell asleep at night hugging Excel files.”
From his answer, I realized he had been worn down by a life similar to mine. The difference between him and me was probably that I had known about the hardships and grueling labor of farming.
“I see. It must have been very hard.”
“Haha, it was. Then I took a vacation and traveled here, and at some winery, I drank a glass of red wine. That astringent sensation clinging to my tongue... strangely, it felt like comfort. Yes, let’s do this. That’s what I decided. There was romance in it. At first, everyone praised me. They said I was brave, that they envied me. On social media, the glasses sparkled, the comments were full of applause... But... farming was far from the romance I’d imagined.”
Arriving at the winery beside the house, he threw the door open. Inside, stainless steel tanks stood in silver rows, and the quiet, clinging scent of wine mingled with the aroma of old oak, circling the tip of my nose.
“Reality starts with waking up and pulling weeds. Weeds are the devil here. I use a tractor every week, but a week after I use it, they’re back to the exact same height.”
It seemed this man didn’t know he should be planting cover crops every winter. If you planted rye, barley, clover, and the like in winter to cover the soil, weed growth would be reduced, and in spring you could plow them under and use them as organic matter.
And looking at the ground, he wasn’t doing mulching either, where you cover the surface with rice straw, wood chips, compost, and the like to block light and suppress weed germination.
His complaints continued.
“Water? There’s never enough water. I had no idea the water bills and electricity bills would be this high. During harvest, finding workers drains you completely. Even if you manage to find someone, that’s not the end of it. Two days later, something comes up and they don’t show. Haha, farm work really isn’t easy.”
If he was always short on water and the water bills were high despite using drip irrigation, that meant he wasn’t using SWP to regulate moisture. In many areas, I could tell he had suffered because he lacked knowledge about grape cultivation.
On the other hand, even though he was saying things that could give us a bad impression of the farm, he didn’t hide them and spoke honestly. When I looked at him as if surprised, Thomas seemed to read the meaning in my expression and chuckled.
“You think I’m lying, don’t you? It’s true. You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all the bad things, but this is 1.1 million dollars. I don’t want to sell it by saying none of this and just pumping your chest full of dreams. That’s what happened to me.”
“Ah...”
“Still, it’s not all bad. The fantastic wine I wanted so badly is right beside me. When a large batch sells once in a while, all the hardship up to then is forgotten.”
“I suppose so.”
“The unfortunate part is that good wine takes time. Time and money, both at once.”
Looking back and forth between me and Armando again, he asked.
“The person who will actually be running the farm...?”
“Me.”
When Armando stepped forward again, he asked in a doubtful voice.
“How old are you?”
“A little over twenty.”
“Doing this at that age... Do you understand? You only get a short break in winter. You have to work all year round. When it rains, you worry the soil will wash away, and when the wind blows, all the leaves turn over.”
Like a tedious pastor’s sermon, he cautioned Armando. But even if Armando was snorting inwardly, he didn’t show it on the outside.
“Yes, I know. I’ve already worked on a farm. This friend’s farm is in Napa Valley.”
“Is that so?”
Only then did Thomas open his eyes wide and glance at me. Then he probed lightly.
“What’s the name of the farm?”
“Redwood.”
“Oh... I don’t know it well, but it must be a good place. If you have experience, then I suppose there’s nothing much for me to say.”
As if he truly had nothing more to say, he closed his mouth, and I checked the condition of the winery. Even if he lacked skill, he had been steadily using the winery equipment, so there didn’t seem to be any particular problems. Even if there were, a contractor would have to visit once anyway to clean everything thoroughly and fix any problematic parts.
“Think it over, and if you decide, please contact me.”
Perhaps he had experienced this several times already, because he spoke comfortably. But Armando met my eyes, then said to Jean and Rosa.
“I’ll do it.”
At the firm resolve in his eyes, Jean and Rosa looked at me. Their eyes seemed to ask if this was really all right. I felt extremely burdened, but unless the place was completely wiped out by wildfire, I didn’t think there would be any problem, so I told them it seemed fine.
And so the contract date was set, and Thomas, who had put the farm on the market, drew a thin smile across his lips. Just from that, I could tell how badly he wanted to wrap things up quickly.
In the car on the way home, unlike when we had been heading to the farm, Armando spoke with a stiff expression.
“You’ll help me a lot, right?”
“Of course. You already know a lot. Why did that man fail?”
“He had almost no knowledge about farming. He should be planting cover crops in winter, but hearing him say he rests in winter... I didn’t see many pheromone traps for pests either. Looking at the condition of the grapes, it didn’t seem like he’d fertilized them properly at the right time. And when you asked about the soil condition, just from the fact that he only said it was good...”
“Right.”
“I don’t think he measured SWP with a pressure chamber either, and it didn’t look like there was anything special about his winemaking. He just... seemed like someone who bought a winery because it looked nice without knowing a damn thing.”
“You saw it well. If you can see that much, it’s hard to call you a novice farmer now.”
“Really?”
Armando, looking a little brighter, stroked his chest as if relieved and said.
“It’s a little pressure, but I think it’ll be fun.”
“It is fun. It is...”
Armando and I returned while looking out at the beautiful scenery from inside the car, carrying both worry and excitement at the same time.
---
On the day Armando took over the farm, we held a party at the newly acquired winery. As all four of us friends came to own our own farms, we shared a strong bond that was hard to describe.
The Silver Oak farm site was changing rapidly in proportion to the money being poured in and the sweat I was shedding, Chloe was becoming more and more like a true cherry farm owner, and Armando clung desperately to his newly acquired farm to transform it into something like Redwood.
Time passed quickly like that, and September arrived. Just as Jacob’s brewery, Golden Grain Soju House, was gradually taking shape, the moment finally came.
A tasting was held ahead of the release of the Cabernet Sauvignon-based blended wine we had been waiting so long for.
When the door to the winery’s aging room opened, cold air and the scent of wood flowed out together.
“It’s been a year since I’ve seen you all.”
At Dad’s appearance in a black shirt and an apron embroidered with the winery logo, the eyes of the people who had come to the tasting shone with anticipation. Many of them were already familiar faces.
Theodore Goodwin of Blaze Bistro, Joshua Lumpkin of La Fiorentina, André Leclerc of Le Jardin, Owen Hall of Vineyard Table, and even Daniel Roca of Lumiere, who had worked in sync with me at the Winkler dinner before.
They had all gladly attended this tasting after being contacted by Redwood. Having tasted the shocking debut of Cerise, our cherry wine, they couldn’t have missed this tasting, where they could see Redwood’s true worth.
“I’m very pleased to see you all again through this tasting.”
Dad held a bottle of red wine in his hand. And because he was deliberately covering the label with one hand, the curiosity of the attendees swelled to bursting.
“The wine we will be presenting to you today is Redwood Winery’s first red wine from Napa, a blend centered on Cabernet Sauvignon. I believe this wine is the starting point that shows where Redwood will go from here.”
Anticipation filled people’s eyes.
“Redwood Winery’s first blended wine. I present it to you here and now.”
Every gaze in attendance focused on Dad’s hand, holding their breath.
“Echelon.”