Chapter 108: Cute and Terrifying Creatures (2)
TL: Hanguk
As February rolled around, Christopher paid a visit to Redwood Winery for the first time in a while.
He arrived in a black coat and black leather gloves, and in his hand was a 2004 vintage of Opus One.
"I happened to come by it, and it brought you to mind."
"Thank you. My father's been completely caught up in wine lately, so he'll love this."
"Isn't Echelon enough for your father all on its own?"
"Ha, true, but you've got to try all sorts of wines. Come on in."
When I led him into the office, Dad welcomed him warmly with a broad smile.
"It's been a while. Your face is looking better?"
How much variation could there really be in a white man's complexion for anyone to tell all that from it? It was just a greeting. Maybe it struck him as odd to be told his "face" looked good, because he hesitated for a moment, then figured from the mood that it must be a compliment and gave an awkward laugh.
"Is that so? Ha... More importantly, I came to bring you some good news."
"Let's have some tea first, and then you can tell us."
Dad had brewed up some yuzu tea he'd picked up not long ago at a Korean market in LA. Christopher blew on the hot yuzu tea, hoo, hoo, and took a small sip, and his eyes went wide at the sweet, tangy taste.
"Ohh, this is delicious."
"Right? In Korea, it's a tea you absolutely have to have in winter. It feels empty without it. One pass through a single winter, and a whole jar of this is gone."
"It seems like Koreans have a lot of good things the rest of us don't know about."
"Of course. You probably won't know them all even after ten years."
That's right, Dad. These are the same people who, around the time I went back, were only just losing their minds over things like gimbap, tteokbokki, and galbi.
"So that must be why you're able to make wine with such care, too."
"Now, that one's all us."
"Ah! Hahaha! I suppose so."
Bursting into hearty laughter, he went back to sipping his yuzu tea before getting down to business.
"The truth is, half of the Sylphide stock distributed across the eastern US has already been depleted."
"Ah, that's the distribution strategy you mentioned, where you said you'd deliberately throttle the supply?"
"That's right. I cut back even more than what I explained to you at the time, and yet the field kept pressing for more stock, so things didn't quite go according to plan."
"Ah... so you'd meant to cut it even further."
It seemed he wanted to stockpile a fair amount of Sylphide and sell it at a premium. From our standpoint, we'd handed it all over to the distributor at wholesale price, so as long as he didn't ruin the brand image, whatever he did with it was none of our concern.
"As a result, the value of the limited-edition Sylphide put up for auction this time is expected to climb even higher. And so..."
He stole a glance at us, then asked in a coaxing tone.
"How are things coming along with that other Pinot Noir you got from another farm in the Russian River Valley?"
In other words, since I'm doing such a fine job, hand the distribution rights for that one over to me as well.
"Hmm... it's coming along well enough... but I'll let you know when the time comes."
Dad had no intention of making any rash decisions. My thinking, of course, was the same as his.
"Ha, I see. It's just that I'm so looking forward to it. Oh, and there's one more thing I wanted to tell you... A pretty good farm has come up in Napa. Seeing how you kept buying up farms before, we figured we'd give you a heads-up..."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. It's not far north of Oakville, so the location is excellent, but apparently the owner got hooked on gambling and lost big. Which is why he's putting the farm itself up for sale..."
I tilted my head. The fact that some farm's grape contract had ended was the sort of thing a wine distributor like him could easily learn, but it was curious that he'd know about a real estate deal like the farm being put on the market.
"You know about that kind of thing, too? How curious."
"Ha, I got lucky."
"Did he list it for a big discount?"
"No, not that. After all, the Napa Valley name carries weight, and there's a rumor he first cleared his debts with the reserve wine sitting in his winery."
Only then did I catch on to how he'd come by this information.
"You found out because the reserve wine came up cheap?"
"Exactly. There was a rumor that a rival wine distributor of mine had secured a large batch of a wine I'd had my eye on at a bargain, and when I looked into it, I uncovered the whole story."
He said it with a wry smile, and I could tell that wine distribution, too, was fiercely competitive.
"I appreciate it, but for now... just in case, I'd like to keep my funds on hand until this year's harvest."
"Ah, I see. Holding on to about a year's worth of accumulated funds isn't a bad strategy, I think. A good farm can come up again anytime."
"In any case, thank you for letting me know."
After he left, Dad wore a faintly regretful expression.
"I'd have been better off not hearing about it at all. Now that I've heard about it for nothing, the wanting creeps in. I suppose this is why they say the sight of a thing stirs desire. There's not a single old saying that's wrong."
"Exactly. Let's just release the wine we've prepared for this year and see how things move from there. A better piece of land might come up by then. And we don't even know what state this year's wine is in yet..."
"That's true."
Since wine changes a little in character every year, even setting aside any financial crisis, putting money aside really was an important part of running a winery.
"I'm heading out now."
"Ah, you said you were going to the almond farm again today, right? Drive safe."
"Will do."
I left the winery right away, got in the car, and set off for the almond farm in Brentwood.
After about an hour and a half on the road, I arrived at the almond farm and made my way to the spot where the beehives I'd had stacked a few days earlier were gathered. Already I could see the bees buzzing about. Normally I'd have flinched first and checked where the bees were, but since I knew they were Italian honeybees, I didn't pay them much mind.
The species of honeybee mainly used for almond pollination in California was the Italian honeybee (Apis mellifera ligustica), and there was a reason Italian honeybees in particular were used rather than other bees.
For one, they adapted well to the California climate. Their overwintering ability was weaker than the Northern European strains, but they tended to begin spring brood-laying early. The advantage, then, was that they could maintain a strong colony in time for the start of bloom in early February.
And the crucial point was their gentle temperament. Pollinating an almond farm of dozens or hundreds of acres meant setting out and managing hundreds of hives, and at that scale, contact with neighboring farms and laborers became unavoidable. Naturally, unless the bees were docile, there was a high chance of major disputes, and the Italian bee tended to be low in aggression.
In the end, they were a perfect fit for almond farming.
"Still, it's nerve-wracking."
Of course I'd studied up on beekeeping, but unlike with wine, I'd never experienced it firsthand. Other insects didn't scare me, but bees did make me a little uneasy.
Tense like that, I made it safely to where the hives were, and there I saw Brandon and Harold Cooper, whom I'd met before, working away at something.
"You made it?"
Brandon, holding a smoker, raised his free hand. With a net pulled over his head, hard at work, he looked a little comical.
"Things going well?"
"This is killing me..."
He grumbled the same as ever, but it wasn't as though he looked like he truly hated it.
I quickly pulled on the rubber gloves laid out for me, changed into boots, and carefully draped a net over myself so no bees could get in. Then, when I walked over to where the two of them were, Harold Cooper was in the middle of giving Brandon a lesson.
His hands were hardened like thick leather, and there was an ease in his movements. With a thick finger, he gently lifted the cover of a hive.
"This right here is the herald of spring. Look, when the bees spread their wings, it means they already sense the flowers."
Brandon shook the smoker and asked cautiously.
"This... do I need to puff a lot of it?"
"No, keep the smoke to a minimum. Bees react to the air first, so if you blow it too hard, they'll panic."
Cooper adjusted the smoke with a practiced hand as he spoke. But in that instant, I realized I'd made a mistake.
'Ah... this isn't good...'
I'd only assumed that, while he managed the bees under the hive rental, he'd pass some knowledge on to Brandon, but it had never occurred to me that this knowledge was hopelessly outdated by 2025 standards.
I could easily have thought it through that far, but since the almonds weren't my own farm, I'd sketched out a rough picture and let it slip. Still, I couldn't just leave it be, so I spoke up carefully.
"Do you happen to have a thermometer and a hygrometer at the farm?"
Brandon looked up.
"Not here, but there should be some at the cherry farm?"
"Ah, really? Got it. I'll just run over there for a sec."
Harold Cooper, who'd been listening, asked.
"What do you need a thermometer and hygrometer for?"
"From the hive temperature alone, you can tell how much stress the bees are under."
Harold Cooper's face twisted at once.
"What's that? Is there any basis for that?"
"Of course. Keeping it roughly between 34 and 36°C means they're healthy, but if it stays below 33°C for about an hour, the worker bees' heat-generating activity drops off and the brood's development starts to slow."
Brandon, standing beside us, grew curious and asked.
"And what do you do then?"
"You add external insulation like foam or rice straw, and around dusk you reduce the hive entrance to a third of its size."
I said it exactly as I'd seen it in a paper before I went back. But of course, in this era there was no beekeeping manual matched to temperature, so Harold pushed back.
"I have no idea what you're talking about. This is the first I've ever heard of it."
"Ah... that's because it's data from a research paper."
At that, Brandon, not the least bit bothered by Harold's foul mood, asked again.
"So what if it's lower than that?"
"If it stays below 32°C for more than three hours, the brood mortality rate spikes and the queen stops laying. At that point, you install a preheating pad or a thermos-style heating mat in the center of the hive to prevent sudden die-off."
"Hah, this is unbelievable."
Harold's face crumpled more and more, and Brandon's questions kept coming.
"And what if the temperature goes up instead?"
"If the temperature inside the hive rises above 37°C, the colony itself experiences a dehydration effect, and the brood larva proteins denature. The queen stops laying."
"And what do you do then?"
"You set up shade cloth to create shade and vent the heat out through air holes. You also turn the front of the hive to face north so as little heat as possible gets in."
"Ah... so when the temperature's high, you shouldn't smoke them like this?"
"Right. Instead of smoke, it's better to stabilize the hive temperature with a fine water spray. And if you use smoke too often, the moisture evaporates and the eggs can dry out, which is why humidity matters just as much as temperature. Humidity should always be kept between 50 and 65%."
Brandon nodded as if he understood. All the while treating Harold, the hive expert beside him, as practically nonexistent.
Reduced in an instant to a living mannequin as he stood there, Harold sneered as though he couldn't take it anymore.
"Spray water on the bees? Look here, I've been doing this thirty years. Bees orient themselves by the smell of smoke. Water wrecks their wings."
I understood why he was getting worked up, but there was nothing I could do about it.
"That's an old method. Spraying water into the air reduces heat and maintains humidity, you know. And when smoke raises the carbon dioxide concentration, the queen bee's laying rate drops."
In that moment, the buzzing in the air grew louder. I noticed the bees stirring restlessly.
Reading the room, Brandon quietly lowered the smoker. Angrier still at the sight, Harold shouted.
"Young man, you don't learn bees from books. Thermometers, hygrometers? Those are toys for a laboratory. This is work done by the feel of a person's fingertips!"
I let out a sigh and shook my head.
"Since 2006, the honeybee population across all of California has been plummeting. Temperature changes and stress are the suspected causes, and more than half of it is due to excessive smoke treatment. Even now, the bees are putting off laying."
"That's just your opinion! The bees have declined? That's the weather's fault! It's something no human hand can stop!"
"Which is exactly why we should turn it into data. The senses can be wrong, but the numbers don't lie."
"Enough!"
Cooper hurled the smoker down and shouted.
"I can't stand being told what to do! Some worthless Asian punk... Hmph! Let's see you do it yourself!"
Before I could even try to stop him, Harold stripped off the protective suit he'd been wearing and stalked off.
Brandon and I stood there blankly staring at each other, when,
"Well, I just need someone who'll teach me properly..."
Brandon muttered, quietly dropping his gaze.
*****
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