Chapter 106: A New Flavor (5)
TL: Hanguk
As the evening glow began to blend with the streetlights, the front yard of a mansion in Westwood was already crowded with people. The "Winter Mixer", hosted by UCLA film students. It was billed as a gathering where film-loving students could mingle over the break and talk about movies, but that was just the pretext. It was simply a party.
On one side stood a tub packed with ice, and inside it RTD (Ready-to-drink, or premixed cocktail) bottles like Smirnoff Ice, Mike's Hard Lemonade, and Bacardi Breezer poked their necks out.
It didn't look all that different from any other college party. The DJ, who had 50 Cent's "Candy Shop" playing, wore gold headphones as he worked the turntables.
"How about a beer?"
Lisa scrunched up her face at Clayton, the boy who came up smiling with a can of beer in hand.
"Beer is kind of... too filling."
Clayton glanced at the Smirnoff in Lisa's hand and said,
"I like Smirnoff too. It's like a soft drink."
"Right. Vodka's too strong and beer isn't really my thing. This is just perfect."
At her words, Clayton dashed off and came back with another bottle of Smirnoff. As if to say he wanted to drink the same thing she was, he popped the cap, tapped his bottle against hers with a clink, and brought it to his lips.
After that they kept the good mood going, chatting about this and that, until Clayton's hand landed on her thigh. Lisa flinched and immediately shoved his hand away.
"Don't do that."
"Oh, sorry... I didn't mean to..."
"I know. I know you didn't mean to. It's just... I'll drink on my own."
At her firm words, Clayton looked disappointed for a moment before drifting away. Lisa shook her head and was sipping her Smirnoff alone again when it happened.
"Want me to give you something good?"
It was an Asian boy with the unmistakable air of an exchange student. Lisa, who normally took no interest in Asian boys, gave a shrug.
"I'm not interested in drugs."
"It's not a drug. It's a liquor that's seriously hot right now."
"Liquor? This is all the liquor I need."
She gave the Smirnoff in her hand a little shake, and the Asian boy grinned.
"That's way too sweet. Right now all the kids who like RTDs the way you do are drinking this."
What the Asian boy slid toward her was a brand she'd never seen before.
"The One Peach Light Soju? I've heard of 'The One' before... but what's soju?"
"Ah, you don't need to worry about that one. It's an Asian-style vodka. Some people who like it love it, and the ones who don't just feel kind of meh about it. But this is different. It's not like some forced Jungle Juice. It's totally clean."
"Yeah?"
If it had been some drink he'd just brought from who knows where she would have flat-out refused, but since it was still a brand-new, unopened product, her curiosity got the better of her.
"Let me try it."
At that, the Asian guy twisted off the cap and handed it to Lisa.
"Here."
She hesitated for a second, then took a sip straight from the bottle. Then her eyes went wide and she looked at the Asian guy.
"Mmmm! This is pretty good!"
She really liked this drink. Mixing all sorts of things together in the name of making liquor taste good was unsanitary, and sometimes people slipped drugs in too, which had always made her wary, but there was none of that here. It was clean-tasting all on its own.
"It's good, right? If you want some fizz, just add some sparkling water and mix it, and you can drink it like a soft drink without it feeling heavy at all. Want me to make you one like that?"
"...... Sure, why not?"
"Hold on a sec."
The Asian guy scurried off and came right back with a plastic jug that held about a liter, a few 500ml bottles of sparkling water, and two empty cups. Then he poured in the Peach Light Soju from her hand along with the sparkling water, gave it a light stir, and poured it into one of the empty cups.
"Try it."
Lisa took a small sip of the clear-colored drink and nodded with a satisfied smile.
"It's good!"
The truth was, even though she'd been drinking the Smirnoff, she hadn't even finished half of it yet. It tasted fine, but the sweetness was too strong, and more than that, the alcohol was so weak that she'd been pacing herself. But when the sparkling water and fruit soju were mixed together, the alcohol got even lighter, and the subtle fruit aroma combined with the refreshing fizz made it taste just like a soft drink.
Of course, even without the fizz she'd liked it plenty, and she stood there for a long while staring at this new bottle of fruit soju.
"Right? I'm going to suggest it to the company. To release a carbonated fruit soju too."
"That'd be great... So, what's your name?"
"Lucas. I came from Korea to study film."
"Huh? Lucas? Your name is...?"
"That's right. I took the last name of George Lucas, the director who made Star Wars, and made it my name. My Korean name is complicated, so I'll tell you in class later."
"... Okay."
The two of them quietly kept their conversation going amid the noisy party. And scenes just like this were unfolding all over the West Coast and the Midwest.
January passed in the blink of an eye, and around February, Jacob pulled off his helmet in front of the new building behind the factory.
It was the newly built Golden Grain Soju House Plant 2. In that space, where the smell of brick mingled with the smell of metal, two stainless steel tanks brought in a few days earlier gleamed.
"The valve connections on that line over there are done."
At the worker's shout, Jacob waved his hand.
"Great, nice work. I'll do a test run and just confirm everything's working."
By now the little distillery had steadily grown in scale, and there was so much work that it was no longer something one or two people could run. More than ten workers rotated through shifts, and the still kept billowing out hot steam.
The inside of the factory was thick with a sweet peach aroma, and at the end of the bottling line a steady rhythm of "tick, tock, tock" went on.
Jacob stopped and watched the scene for a moment.
Last spring, this little distillery had been nothing more than a country factory brewing soju from rice, but now it had become a base producing liquor that would ship across the entire United States. Just then, the flip phone clipped to his waist rang.
The name "Malcolm Lee" was on the screen.
"Malcolm? What's up?"
"Jacob! It's chaos over here right now!"
The voice coming through the phone was practically a scream.
"LA, San Francisco, Chicago, it's all sold out! Clubs, pubs, supermarkets, all of them! We've got less than 200 cases of stock left. Can you produce more?"
Jacob paused and looked over toward the tanks.
"No. I'd love to do it right away, but the federal and state filing approvals still haven't come through. They say it'll be soon, but... it might take another week or two?"
"Ugh... that's way too late!"
"I know, but it's not like we can run an extra plant without the government's approval. For now we'll have to make do with just the existing distillery's equipment."
In the U.S., a distillery was a licensed production facility, so any time the facility was expanded or new equipment was added, a change of registration (Amendment) had to be filed with both the TTB (federal) and the state Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC). Violate that and recklessly add equipment and start producing, and there was no avoiding legal punishment.
It was thanks to Brian's advice, calling in a specialist right away to draw up the blueprints, file the paperwork, and then bring in the equipment, that the turnaround had been so short and they'd managed to get the facility set up this quickly.
Had he just been running the factory with no expectations at all, he might well have been in a full-blown meltdown by now.
"We need to ride this momentum and really light a fire under it..."
"The fire's already lit at the distillery. You have no idea how much I'm paying the workers in wages..."
"That's just how explosive the sales are. Don't worry about it too much."
Even as a sigh escaped him over the labor costs, Jacob's face was bright.
"I know. At this rate I'm starting to wonder if we'll burn through last year's rice in under half a year..."
Last year's harvest had been excellent, but this time around they hadn't sold the rice off as is, instead piling all of it up in storage. Selling it wouldn't have brought in much money, so on the off chance it might come in handy he'd stockpiled it, and now he thought it had been a really good call.
"So when do you think you can get it running?"
"It doesn't seem like it'll be that late, so we should be able to run it in two weeks at the latest."
"Okay, got it. Then I'll figure on restocking every supermarket out there within a month. And let's double the target for this quarter. In two weeks Unity will send two trucks. The club kids are going nuts. Everyone keeps asking, 'When's that peach liquor coming in?'"
"It's that intense?"
"It's cool! Oh, and this Peach Light Soju is a clear color, but could we change that a little?"
"How?"
"So it has a subtle pink tint to it."
Jacob tilted his head, then answered.
"I think it's doable? But it'd mean adding food coloring... actually, the younger crowd would probably like that even more."
He hadn't thought of it at first, but once he reminded himself it was a party drink, he wondered why he hadn't come up with Malcolm's suggestion sooner.
His own peers would sometimes deliberately mix in things like juice just to get some color, and the fact that he'd seen all this before and still hadn't thought of it made him feel a little pathetic.
"Alright. So once the additional facility expansion is finished, let's add approved food coloring so it gets a faintly pink tint. It'll look way more appealing."
"Got it."
"And when are you planning to release the other flavors?"
"Right now we don't have the capacity to release anything besides the peach flavor."
"Ah, right... What about after the additional facility expansion is done?"
"At that point..."
"How about lemon?"
Americans had always been fond of lemon, so Jacob had no reason to dislike lemon soju.
"Sounds good. Lemon concentrate isn't hard to source, and this time I'll try adding yellow coloring from the start too."
"Great. It'll be tough, but think of it all as money and put in even more effort, okay?"
"Yeah, got it."
After hanging up, Jacob headed straight into the distillery. He had to lend a hand himself and produce even one more bottle.
At that same hour, Brian was heading to Brentwood with Chloe in the newly bought Z4.
"How does a situation flip around like that? Jacob was the one I was most worried about, and now it seems like he's the one doing the best."
Seeing her pout, a smile crept onto my lips before I even realized it.
"What? Jealous?"
"Hmm... no. Honestly, I was just the tiniest bit jealous, but I'm trying not to be."
"I bet you'll be jealous when he does even better later on."
Chloe tilted her head, then answered honestly.
"If he does super well I think I'd be a little bit jealous, but you're going to make us do well too, right? It's fine. That's the whole reason we're heading to the farm right now."
Just as she'd said, our destination was the almond farm we'd newly acquired this time around. Mr. Frederick, who had taken over a massive farm spanning more than 200 acres, had set up a company splitting the shares fifty-fifty with his son Brandon, and was now studying almond farming in earnest.
The loan Brandon had taken out to establish this company came to over half a million dollars, so he clearly had no intention of just coasting along on Mr. Frederick's coattails. If anything, having staked every asset he'd inherited to take out that loan, his resolve was surely no less than Chloe's.
"Yeah, some of us might end up making more money, but let's just be happy for each other. We're all making more than middle-class money."
"I know. That's why I kind of want Armando to do even better too."
"Oh, I didn't realize you thought of Armando that way."
"Of course I think about him. As long as he doesn't pull that gross, smarmy look and tone of his in front of me, that is."
"Heh heh heh..."
Armando used to come by the department every single day saying he was going to try talking to Sienna, but now that it was break and he couldn't see her, he'd been a little down about it.
These days, while he threw himself into winter work for next year's harvest, he also often came by Redwood Winery to learn about wine.
"We're all going to do well. Armando too, and you the same. Almonds are a crop that can't help but do well. Same goes for cherries and pears."
"But here's the thing. With Jacob's place, change comes fast and the results show up fast too. But farming isn't like that..."
"That's true. With farming there's a part where the results don't show up right away."
Chloe gazed at me quietly.
"You understand how I feel, right?"
"Yeah. But the thing about life is that everyone moves at a different pace. Your prime just hasn't come yet, that's all."
"Ooh, so when's my prime?"
"Three years from now. I promise you. Just give it three years of effort. Then I'll make you the cherry queen of Brentwood."
"Hee hee hee. Okay. I'll be waiting."
In a much better mood now, Chloe smiled and looked out the window.
*****
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