On an afternoon when the winter rain that had poured down all day had paused for a moment, the inside of Gold Grain Soju House was filled with the smell of damp iron and the subtle fragrance of grain.
On the table, bottles stood demurely like the stars of the day: “Echelon,” “Sylphide,” “Cerasia,” and “The One,” clear within its white glass.
Reporter Miriam Ross placed her recorder in the middle of the table and smiled. The notepad she pulled from inside her light dress jacket had clear creases where it had been folded up and down.
“All right. The shoot is finished, so now I just need to hear your story. Don’t be nervous, and just talk the way you usually talk to each other.”
Jacob drew in a breath and nudged my side with his elbow.
“Don’t get nervous.”
The most nervous person here was Jacob himself. Even now, he was sitting bolt upright, staring straight ahead.
Surprisingly, the most relaxed person was Armando. The guy was smiling with complete ease as he gazed lovingly at reporter Miriam Ross. Objectively speaking, Miriam Ross, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, was pretty.
“How did the four of you first meet? It feels like four different roads all leading in the same direction.”
Armando answered that too.
“It was fate.”
“......”
At the sight of Armando gazing intently at Miriam, the three friends who knew him looked at one another and made faces of disgust. But Armando pretended not to notice, showing her plenty of interest as he continued.
“We all went to Vintage High School in Napa, and we were all interested in farming. Except Chloe.”
“I was interested too, you know?”
When Chloe glared at him, Armando laughed and waved a hand.
“Let’s say you were. Anyway, we gathered around Brian here. Brian has a genius-level talent for farming. As you can see, Jacob is strong, and Chloe’s family is incredibly rich. Since you filmed at her farm, you probably know this, but besides their 200-acre cherry farm in Brentwood, they own even more farms.”
“Then what about you, Mr. Armando?”
“I’m... a romantic.”
All of us either turned our heads or lowered them.
“Oh my, are you?”
“But there’s one thing. When it comes to farming, I’m sincere. Vast vineyards, grapes ripening with the seasons, and the work you repeat every day to produce those grapes. In a way, it can seem boring, but when you look down over the farm from above, it’s a feast for the eyes. Especially the view of the Russian River from our farm. It looks like a painting. You saw it when we were shooting, right?”
“I did. It was incredible.”
“You know what’s funny? At first, when I thought about doing farming, I assumed it would be terribly boring. But in practice, it was different from just being boring. There are set tasks to do for each period, and you have to keep studying and accepting the latest research. If you fall behind, you can’t get ahead.”
“Ah...”
What was astonishing was that while my friends and I were embarrassed by this whole situation, reporter Miriam Ross was listening to Armando with sparkling eyes, as if she were hearing the most fascinating story in the world.
At first, I thought it was just her journalistic spirit, but as time went on, she genuinely seemed to find Armando’s story interesting.
“But if there’s one thing you could call a downside, it’s that it’s lonely. Farming is a lonely thing. The fact that the farmer has to bear every result alone in full is what makes it lonely.”
“Oh dear...”
Her eyes wavered, and if there hadn’t been people around, she looked ready to grab Armando’s hand. Unable to watch any longer, Chloe cleared her throat.
“Ahem... Anyway, we met in high school, and each of us received Brian’s help at one point. That’s how we became close, and when we went to UC Davis together, we grew even closer.”
As if she had come back to her senses after the change in atmosphere, reporter Miriam Ross continued with her questions.
“Interesting. Then let’s go a little deeper...”
The interview went on for nearly a full hour, and we talked about farming, alcohol, and each of our lives.
At last, Miriam turned off the recorder and said,
“That’s enough. This will probably run as a major headline in the opening section of the January issue. It was quite an impressive story.”
“Thank you for your hard work.”
“May I contact you at the number you gave me? I think I could tell you a lot about new farming methods, or alcohol.”
Armando kept flirting until the very end. At that persistent effort, even Chloe shook her head and muttered quietly, “I want to kill him.” But the sight of reporter Miriam Ross nodding shyly at that left us even more dumbfounded.
In any case, because of Armando, the interview had taken an unexpectedly sticky turn, but we were satisfied enough.
The eventful year of 2005 passed, and the sun rose on 2006.
Not one of us took it easy just because it was winter. I, who seemed as if I should have been the busiest, was actually on the more relaxed side, while Armando was preparing for the next year’s farming and, for the sake of the quality of the vinegar he was currently making, had taken out an additional loan and was aging part of it in oak barrels.
Because of “The One,” whose name was gradually becoming known, Jacob had his distillery running without rest, and Chloe was stabilizing the land she had plowed up in order to convert not only her existing cherry farm but also a tomato farm into an orchard for growing pears.
Then one day,
“Brian! Look at this!”
Chloe burst all the way into my house, waving a magazine in her hand as she shouted.
“Oh, Chloe. You get prettier every time I see you.”
“Thank you, Mother. You get more beautiful every time too.”
“Don’t say things like that. Have you eaten?”
“No. Please make me something delicious.”
“All right, sit down. But what is that?”
“Well, we’re in a magazine!”
“The one you interviewed for before?”
“Yes!”
When I came down to the first floor, Chloe had taken a seat at the dining table and was waving the magazine.
“Come here! We’re in it.”
The cover of the January 2006 issue of Blender was Britney Spears. Below that, past the table of contents, we were in the third section, “Fresh Faces.”
The title was written in large letters: [The One, Four Young Farmers of California]. Beneath it was a small line: From Vine to Spirit, A Generation’s New Taste.
There were various photos. Me sitting on a tractor and looking out over a distant field, Armando holding a valve beside a stainless steel fermentation tank, Chloe leaning among cherry trees, and Jacob beside a still, shining a light on “The One.” Beneath the photo was a short caption.
[They are not making alcohol. They are making a future.]
“Not bad.”
At my reaction, Chloe actually opened her eyes wide and looked at me strangely.
“That’s all? It’s Blender.”
“Aren’t you the one getting too excited? You were so calm during the interview that I wondered if you found the whole thing annoying.”
“That was... all because of Armando. He was openly trying to seduce the reporter, and it was so disgusting I couldn’t manage my expression. Anyway, look. I came out well, didn’t I?”
Wearing a cowboy hat, Chloe looked exactly like a female model doing a photo shoot with a farmer concept.
“You look fine.”
“Hmph, that’s all?”
“I mean you look good.”
Mom, who had brought out the food, took Chloe’s side.
“He’s always a little blunt. If he says you look fine, that’s quite a compliment. It means you’re pretty. And from what I can see, you’re much prettier than the woman on the cover.”
“Really? More than Britney Spears?”
“I don’t know what that girl’s name is, but to my eyes, Chloe is much prettier.”
“Thank you. I’ll enjoy the meal.”
After thanking her, Chloe looked at me as if to say, Did you hear that?
“I wasn’t saying you looked bad either.”
Avoiding Chloe’s sparkling gaze, I examined the magazine in detail. Seeing Jacob smiling brightly while holding “The One,” I thought that perhaps Korean-style distilled liquor might establish itself in America more easily than I had expected.
---
“Mom! Look at this!”
At the same time Chloe was storming into Brian’s house, Jacob, holding a magazine, stormed into his own house in exactly the same way.
“What is this? My goodness... Our son came out like this?”
Mrs. Maggie stroked Jacob’s face in the magazine her son showed her.
“It came out well. You look exactly like your father when he was young.”
“Really? Anyway, the liquor should sell well now too.”
After signing with Unity Spirits, aside from the 500 cases they had taken with them, there had been no additional shipments yet. They were probably distributing the initial batch to important markets and bars and waiting for the reaction.
“Your mother believes in you. And I’m so happy to see you and your friends getting along like this. Even if a person has a lot of money and succeeds, if they’re lonely, they’re unhappy. I don’t want you to become that kind of person.”
“Don’t worry. I have a very good relationship with these friends. And they all have so much more for me to learn from, so I don’t treat them carelessly.”
Of course, he hesitated slightly when he thought of Armando... but he let it pass, thinking that there were still things he could learn from Armando too.
“Yes. If you treat people carelessly just because you’re close, their hearts will end up hurt. Always be careful and treat them well.”
“I understand.”
And a week after the magazine came out, a call came in. It was Malcolm Lee, the vice president of Unity Spirits.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jacob. Did you see the magazine? I told you, didn’t I? The One is seriously blowing up.”
His voice already carried that distinctive Black excitement.
“I saw the magazine. But is there something else?”
“The response is already coming in. Clubs in LA are rushing to place orders. The big places are asking for 20 cases, even small bars for 5 cases each. Altogether, it’s already over 300 cases.”
“Really?”
“It’s the response I was hoping for. When you go to clubs, everyone’s holding bottles and taking pictures. DJs are shouting ‘To The One!’ before they play songs. Your liquor is flowing around with the music right now, wahaha!”
It was astonishing news. Unable to hide his excitement, Jacob clenched his fist tightly.
“That’s really true, right?”
“How much stock do you have in the warehouse right now?”
“For now, I’ve made 500 cases.”
“That won’t be enough.”
“What?”
“You know the magazine didn’t go out only in California, right? Because the article says it’s a Korean-style liquor taught by your Korean friend, the response is coming for now from clubs centered around LA, where there are a lot of Asians, but it’ll gradually spread. We need 1,000 cases right now. Can you do it?”
“I-I can.”
“Okay, bro. Fill the warehouse with ‘The One’ right now. Our people will come running to empty it out immediately.”
“Understood.”
After hanging up, Jacob clenched his fist and cheered silently.
A thousand cases would mean, roughly speaking, more than 120,000 dollars in sales. Considering that the largest portion of the ingredients going into it was rice, he had to expect that, at worst, nearly half of that would be pure profit, and it meant that a considerable portion of the financial problems that had arisen while operating the farm would be resolved.
“I can do it. I can do this...”
While Jacob was reaching the threshold of success like that,
[Redwood Vineyards]
I changed the name on the fence of the farm that had originally been Ironwood Cellars. With part of the Silver Oak farm and this place combined, it was a farm of about 60 acres. It could now be considered a mid-sized farm.
“Whew... It’s wide.”
Looking out over the farm spreading so widely it seemed to have no end, I smiled faintly. There was still a lot of work to be done on the soil, but in any case, in 2006, we were expected to produce over a whopping 100 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon.
Even Echelon alone was expected to pour out more than three times as much as last year.
“Last year was a test case.”
The Echelon to be made from now on would be produced through state-of-the-art equipment equipped with temperature sensors, dissolved oxygen sensors, and CO₂ sensors during fermentation. It might still be wine whose flavor had been awakened in just one year, but there was no doubt that it would become a different wine from before.
Last year, it had won Double Gold. What would happen this year?
I was already beginning to look forward to it.