Chapter 103: A New Flavor (2)
TL: Hanguk
Eyes full of pure disbelief.
"Look, I know just how macho a country America is, but the women will love it, won't they? What about you?"
With everyone's attention suddenly on her, Chloe shrugged.
"Well... it'd probably be fine?"
"It'll definitely only sell a little, and only to women."
Jacob said it as though there was no way it would ever get a good reaction.
"My point is, if you want something sweet, you buy juice. Why drink fruit liquor? Look at wine, too. If the sweetness is too strong, it gets written off as cheap."
"But strong, sweet liquor sells well too."
"That's... true, but..."
Jacob faltered, as if, now that he thought about it, that was a fair point. I leaned my upper body forward and explained slowly and carefully.
"Listen. Of course women want something tasty, something they can sip on and get drunk off of without even realizing it, rather than something strong. Don't ask me why. It just is."
"It... just is?"
"That's right. But do you really think men will hate it?"
"You're saying they won't?"
"People who drink do it for roughly two reasons. One is to enjoy the flavor of the drink itself. Whether it's pairing with food or the inherent flavor of the liquor, they enjoy the beverage itself. And the other is people who drink just to get drunk."
"...Right."
"Good. The people who enjoy liquor, whether for the food pairing or the flavor it carries, fruit soju won't suit them. But if those were the only people who existed, would there be any reason for something colorless and odorless like vodka to sell well?"
"......"
Jacob was drawn into my explanation as if spellbound.
"Good. So let's assume that a considerable number of people drink as a means to get drunk. Then, between liquor that's harsh and reeks of alcohol enough to make you gag, and liquor that goes down smooth like juice, gulp after gulp, which one would they choose?"
"...Still, wouldn't men not choose fruit soju?"
American culture is more macho than one might expect, and if a man shows even the slightest sign of softness, people tend to think of him as gay. From the way they dress, to using an umbrella, to even the music they listen to, American men are conscious of how others see them.
Men like that, drinking fruit soju? For Jacob, it was simply unimaginable.
"If you're just drinking alone, sure, you might think that. But what if it's a drink to get someone in the mood?"
"Huh? If that's the case..."
Only then did Jacob nod, not entirely convinced but at least understanding.
"Right? What's the go-to seduction drink for young Americans these days?"
It was Chloe who answered.
"Cocktails."
"Exactly. But to drink cocktails, you have to go to a cocktail bar. You finally manage to set the mood, and then you're going to drive all the way to a cocktail bar? It even costs a lot of money. But what if you just grab some fruit soju from the store?"
"Mmm~ That's all you ever think about, huh?"
"Why'd the topic suddenly jump over there?"
Armando, who hated listening to this, scoffed.
"Hmph! Hey, she's like that because you won't buy her cocktails. Hurry up and buy her some. Or just make a bottle of this fruit soju and get her drunk already."
"It's not like that, okay?"
Armando didn't even bother dealing with Chloe as she snapped back at him.
"Yeah, right. Anyway, I'm in favor. Because there's someone I'd like to try this fruit soju on too."
Watching Armando puff up his shoulders smugly, a sudden dread struck me, and I asked cautiously. A fear washed over me that I might have to witness that nauseating scene at school all over again.
"Is this someone maybe somebody I know too?"
"Whoa there, why are you trying to butt in? You've already got someone."
"You crazy bastard, so it's true. Can't you tell just by looking? That girl's got a serious attitude. Make one wrong move and you get a slap right across the face."
"Well, I can take a slap or two."
At Armando's attitude, his willingness to take a measly slap to the cheek, for the first time the guy looked cool to me.
"Ooh~ Not bad."
"You only just figured that out? So let's hurry up and make it. How do we do this?"
"It's too late today. Let's meet at Jacob's Golden Grain Soju House. I need to prepare a bit too."
If this were Korea, I'd swing by a friend's place as easily as I did after school, but this was America. It usually took an hour just to get home from school, and if I stopped somewhere to take care of business before heading home, it'd be the middle of the night, so heading straight over felt like too much.
Because this was a place where it wasn't easy to roam around freely late at night, the way it was in Korea.
"Prepare?"
"I need distillate. I can whip it up at the school lab, no problem. I'll make a few things there, and then let's gather on the weekend."
"All right..."
And so we left the conference room, got into our separate cars, and scattered to our homes.
The next day, I distilled and extracted a few fruit aromas at the school's Pilot Winery (a winery for test production), then headed to Jacob's farm over the weekend.
"Everyone here?"
"You're late. Hurry up and get over here."
Armando and Chloe, who had arrived earlier, were eating the corn the lady had given them as a snack. Golden and well-ripened, it looked absolutely delicious.
"Want one?"
In Chloe's outstretched hand was a perfectly ripe ear of corn, cut in half, but I chuckled and waved it off.
"I'm good. I ate breakfast, so I'm not hungry."
The inside of the brewery was filled with the sweet smell of grain and the warm heat of distillation. Stainless steel tanks stood lined up beside a small still, and I set a row of clear glass bottles down on the worktable with a clatter.
"What's this?"
When Chloe asked, I opened a lid to show her.
"Peach, yuja, and raspberry. I distilled and extracted just the fruit aromas."
"Mmm~ But couldn't you make this with cherries too?"
"Of course. If I just needed syrup, I'd have asked you to bring me cherries, but this needs distillation processing, so this time I handled it myself. With syrup, the aroma dies in the alcohol, so there's no way around it."
"Ah... so this is what you do if you don't want the aroma to die in the alcohol."
"Yeah."
I poured the soju base spirit into a beaker and dropped in a few drops of peach distillate with a dropper.
In an instant, the scent of peach exploded into the air.
"Whoa... that smell is insane."
"Pretty good, right? And it's not just the smell that's insane."
These guys didn't know it, but I knew that before my regression, fruit soju had taken America by storm, so I had far more confidence in this than in the American-style Andong soju. [TL: Andong soju is a traditional distilled Korean liquor from the city of Andong.]
Jacob took a sip from the glass brimming with peach aroma and his eyes went wide.
"Mmm! Uh... this... this is good?"
It couldn't not be good... Fruit juice and fruit soju feel completely different. It's not the merely sweet taste that fruit juice has; the aroma and texture of the alcohol blend with the fruit's distinctive scent, making it a special drink in its own right.
"I told you it's good."
When I said it with an I-told-you-so air, Jacob furrowed his brow and tried the drink again. After sipping it a few times, in one moment he downed the whole thing and stared at the empty glass with wide eyes.
"This... is dangerous. You just keep drinking it."
"Now you get why I called it a seduction drink?"
"Yeah, right away..."
Impatient, Armando hurried me along.
"Hurry up and make me another one."
When I mixed the peach distillate into the soju base spirit again, Armando gulped it down immediately and his eyes went wide.
"Hey, this is killer."
"Why do you make me nervous?"
"Don't be nervous. The way I see it, you've got genius-level talent."
"That's not the way you make me nervous, though."
"Hmph! I'm just saying, don't go getting jealous of the talent I've got."
"You're calling that talent. Honestly terrifying..."
Humoring Armando's banter, I made a glass for Chloe too, and after one sip she burst out laughing.
"Hahaha! What is this! Hahaha!"
"Pretty good, right?"
"It's hilarious. This is definitely going to sell. So how about we do another tasting with this one? I really think we have to sell it centered on college towns. Which means we should do a tasting at the university."
Jacob nodded at her words.
"Nothing wrong with that. But we'd need a fair amount, wouldn't we? I don't think one bottle of that is enough to make tasting quantities."
He gestured with his chin at the small glass bottle I'd brought. I thought for a moment, then said.
"I kept this simple because I was making a tasting sample just to show you guys. To be precise, the aroma of this essence doesn't last long, so it's hard to make it marketable."
"So then?"
"This was to give you a feel for it. To make it properly, it has to go through beverage-level blending and a stabilization process."
"Ah... so it's not simple."
"It's not easy, no. You can't just match the distillation ratio and bottle it and ship it out like 'The One'. You need flavoring like what I made, and you'll also need actual fruit juice, sweetener, an acidity regulator, and probably an antioxidant too."
At the more complicated composition than he'd expected, Jacob's mouth fell open.
"Wow... this is seriously factory-level."
"It is. But you don't need to worry too much. You just have to set up a beverage-type blending system. Selling 'The One' freed up some cash, didn't it?"
"Yeah, that's right. I've got quite a bit of room in my finances."
This time, Jacob had sold a whopping 7,000 cases of 'The One'. That brought Jacob's net profit to over $700,000, and at this level, recouping the investment in the very first year of brewing had already exceeded all expectations.
Out of this, I got my 30 percent, a little over $200,000, and Jacob earned $500,000, more than half of which he used to pay down his loans. With that kind of breathing room, I figured Jacob could do a premium soju this year, or he could skip it.
"Roughly... it'll come to less than $100,000, I bet? A mixing tank, a chiller, a large refrigerator, things like that? You'll need filtration filters and various tools too... oh! You'll have to renovate a warehouse. So it can do cold storage. Generously, that's $100,000, and if you do it cheap, you might be able to manage it for $50,000."
"Really? At that price, none of it's a burden at all."
"Producing the fruit juice concentrate and essence in-house here would just be more of a headache, so let's just buy those in."
"Ah...! If that works, then there's nothing to worry about!"
"In that case... let's say I'll do a wine tasting event around next Tuesday, and we buy enough flavoring for that. Since we need a fair amount, it'd be a stretch for me to make it, so let's just place an order outright. If the reaction's good, we bring in the equipment right away, how about that?"
"Sounds good! Let's do it!"
Having decided this, we even ate lunch at Jacob's place to sober up, lazed around for a good while, and then headed home.
The next week, after obtaining three flavorings from a company called Givaudan, peach, apple, and pineapple, we got approval from the school right away and started the wine tasting event.
"Come have a taste before you go!"
"Would you like to try a fruit-flavored liquor?"
Maybe because this was a school with so much interest in alcohol that it even had a viticulture and enology department, the students approached with curiosity at the words "fruit-flavored liquor." And they showed a completely different reaction from when they'd tasted the grain-scented premium soju before.
"Oh, oh! Wow!"
"This is totally delicious."
"If you sold this, I'd buy it for sure."
Unlike with the premium soju, the students who tried the fruit-flavored soju opened their eyes wide and wore expressions of admiration, while it was the middle-aged crowd, the professors and the staff, who made strange faces.
"What on earth is this..."
"It doesn't suit me."
The reaction was so dramatic there was no real need to check the evaluation sheets dropped in the box.
"It's working!"
Even in the middle of the tasting, Jacob clenched his fist. Having already gained confidence selling 'The One', he became certain that the moment they produced it, it would sell without fail.
"You think it'll work?"
When I asked quietly, Jacob gripped my shoulder and said earnestly.
"This is definitely going to work. We distribute it through bars and clubs centered on college towns. And I think regular retail stores would be good for this too. It goes down way too easy."
"True. It is easy to drink casually. I wonder how far this will go...?"
It really did seem like once people got a taste for it, they'd keep coming back, but there was no telling how fast it would spread.
"This is definitely going to be a huge hit. Thanks."
"No need to thank me. First, let's file a patent before launch."
"A patent?"
"Yeah. With wine, the manufacturing methods are so varied and there's so much know-how that there's no need to file a patent, but this is different. A single liquor could dominate the market, so it needs a patent."
"Ah... I see what you mean."
"For now, let's bundle the concept, a soju base that you could call a rice vodka, blended with light fruit flavoring and fruit juice, and file it as a patent. That way we can prepare for any situation that might come up."
Jacob hurriedly nodded at my words. A vague but powerful sense of anticipation was spreading out from his eyes.
*****
Join our Discord for announcements or to report any mistakes.