Chapter 125: Assistant (3)
TL: Hanguk
At first it was just irritation, but as time passed, I started to wonder why he had suddenly shown up, picked a fight, and left. But there was no one to ask, and calling Warren, who was resting, to ask him about it felt strange too. I was mulling over what to do when Chloe's voice suddenly came from beside me.
"What are you thinking about?"
Chloe had just finished class and stood there holding a thick textbook.
"Ah... it's nothing. Someone just came by to see me for a bit..."
Chloe must have sensed I didn't want to talk about it, because she let it go without prying further. Then she nudged my shoulder with hers and said,
"You know everyone was talking about you today?"
"Yeah?"
"Everybody's saying a legend joined your winery. That's all anyone could talk about. You're going to be totally famous now."
"...A winery getting famous has its pros and cons. The biggest advantage would be that demand for the wines we release goes up, so prices rise. As a side benefit, it also gets easier to source sub-wines or grapes for blending, and it gives us an edge in distribution..."
"And the downsides?"
"Well, every wine we put out has to live up to people's expectations."
"That sounds like a lot of pressure."
I shrugged at her worried expression.
"I don't know about that. A pro has to be judged on everything they do. It's the same for an artist, and a restaurant selling food can't escape its customers' reviews either. For an athlete it goes without saying."
"Ah... right. We're not kids anymore."
"Exactly. The moment you and I each got our own farms, we stopped being kids and became farm owners. From that point on, we can't whine to our customers or make excuses. We always have to be judged by what we produce, so feeling burdened just because expectations got higher? That can't happen. If anything, we should enjoy it. My answer to 'how much better will it taste?' is going to be the wine itself. As in, 'Well? Is it as good as you hoped?'"
Chloe stared at me wide-eyed, then let out a soft sound of admiration.
"Ah... I see. You really are different. Anyone else probably would have. Worried they might get overshadowed by everyone else, or that they'd fall a little short of all those expectations and get torn apart for it..."
"I'm not saying it's bad to think that way. I just don't think it's a professional mindset. In that sense, the reason I welcomed Warren joining us is his ability. An ability I don't have."
"And what's that?"
She asked, her big eyes sparkling.
"Hmm... instinct."
"Instinct?"
"Yeah. When I approach wine, I always think in terms of data. But Warren is a born genius. Back in the day there weren't systematic research findings like there are now, so everyone had to rely entirely on instinct, and he's a man who reached the very top of that."
"So you're saying your data and Warren's instinct will come together and create good synergy?"
"Yeah. That's what I think."
"Wow, I never would've thought of that."
"Thought of what?"
"I just assumed you'd talk about his influence, or the things you wanted to learn from him... something like that. But you're talking about how you can put him to good use, so it caught me a little off guard."
"I can only say that because it's you. I couldn't talk like that in front of anyone else. It'd come across as arrogant."
I'd meant that we were close and ran a business together, but Chloe's face suddenly flushed red, and she hugged her textbook and squirmed bashfully.
"Really? Well, I'll listen to anything you have to say..."
Only then did I realize she was thinking something completely different from me, but correcting her would've made things awkward, so I quickly picked up my pace. And Chloe came scurrying along behind me.
Time flew by, and on Warren's first day at work, I took him on a tour of our vineyard.
"Now I'll finally get to properly learn your... no, the Boss's wine philosophy, down to every detail. I'm very much looking forward to it."
He used the word "Boss" without the slightest hesitation. I found it awkward, yet I was a little surprised that there wasn't a trace of pretense in his tone or his expression.
"Weren't the people around you surprised that you're commuting to our winery?"
Warren waved his hand dismissively.
"Don't even get me started, it was an absolute madhouse. People kept asking whether they could get my wine at Redwood now, and I told them that contractually that's absolutely impossible. I did an interview with a wine magazine too, so it should die down soon."
If he'd gone so far as to give an official interview to clear things up, then he'd done about as much as he could.
"...Actually, someone from Ste. Michelle came to see me."
He started in surprise and furrowed his brow.
"What? Was it by any chance a man named Brad Cooper?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Hmph! That sly bastard. What did he say? Gave you some half-baked warning, afraid I'd start making wine, didn't he?"
"You know all about it, huh?"
"It's obvious. Just watch the way he tried to lure my sons away and you can see right through what kind of man he is. Ste. Michelle has secured a high market share and a solid distribution network, so now they want to produce quality wine, and since I've gone and joined another winery, they can't help but feel uneasy."
"I can understand them feeling uneasy, but the way he talked..."
"That's just their way of doing things. They deliberately provoke the other person's emotions, push too hard on purpose. It's to bait you into a mistake or scare you. If they inflate the power they hold as much as possible and apply pressure, most people fall for it."
"You know them well."
He let out a snort of a laugh.
"You think I was some big deal when I first started my winery? When I bought a plum orchard in Stag's Leap and turned it into a vineyard, plenty of people laughed at me. The contempt from the French wineries especially was something else. Everything changed at the Judgment of Paris, but before that, there was a great deal of hardship."
"Ah..."
"Are you having second thoughts about taking me on, by any chance?"
"No, not really... Something like this doesn't even count as one of the hardships that come with running a business. Besides, I'm not interested in your blending secrets, so there's no situation where a future release would cause me any trouble."
He stopped abruptly, ran his hand over the ground, and then scooped up a handful of soil.
"I noticed it before too, but this is definitely strange. Unlike anywhere else, the soil here... I don't quite know how to describe it, but it holds moisture, and there's a well-formed layer of air between the particles."
By its nature, soil amended with biochar didn't have the hard, dense feel of an ordinary vineyard but instead had a loose, crumbly structure. That was what set it apart from other AVAs starting with the soil itself, and the reason I'd refused before to let a stranger take any soil was precisely this.
"Hmm... I'll say it again, but you understand this is confidential, right?"
"I know. That's why I signed the non-disclosure agreement."
When he joined, he hadn't just signed an employment contract; he'd also signed a non-disclosure agreement promising never to leak anything he learned at the company to the outside. It was common practice for major wineries to have their employees sign non-disclosure agreements to protect their own secrets, so Warren hadn't shown the slightest resistance to it.
"All right. This is called biochar. It's made by burning various wood scraps, compost, and the like down into charcoal."
"Into charcoal?"
"Yes. When you put wood through pyrolysis with the oxygen supply almost completely cut off, only the carbon skeleton remains, and that's charcoal. This structure has very high porosity (the proportion of empty space, excluding solids, within the total volume of the soil). So when you mix it into the soil, the bulk density (the weight per unit volume of soil) decreases and air circulates stably through the root zone. Simply put, it's a structure that raises the efficiency of root respiration."
Anyone hearing this for the first time would wonder what on earth it meant, but as a winemaker who'd already reached the level of a viticulture professor, he understood me right away. And, deeply impressed, he ran his fingers through the soil.
"I see... mixing charcoal into soil... astonishing. Charcoal has a microstructure full of holes like a sponge, so it'll hold moisture for a long time, and with porosity this high, drainage would be far better too."
In truth, biochar did more than that: it increased CEC (Cation Exchange Capacity), improved pH stability, boosted mycorrhizal and microbial growth, and helped retain total organic carbon (TOC) over the long term, but I didn't go into all that. Because if I explained even that, he'd ask whether there was any basis or research to back it up.
"Good heavens..."
He was already plenty amazed by just this much, when...
"That's it! Since you used charcoal, the mycorrhiza (the symbiotic structure formed when plant roots and fungi combine) would be activated!"
As expected, he was the kind of man who could work out a fair amount on his own without being told.
"Probably?"
"So this is why you told people not to take the soil. Did you by any chance seed it with microbes on top of all this?"
"Yes..."
"...I'm curious, but let's leave it here for today. If I take in too much on the very first day, it'll take time to digest. Looks like I'll have to crack open my chemistry books again for the first time in ages."
Looking at his thoroughly excited expression, I thought that even though he looked like an old man on the outside, there seemed to be a child or a young man living inside him.
"Right. There's still a lot to learn, so let's wrap up the soil here and head to the aging cellar."
"From what I hear, you're the only one allowed into the aging cellar? Is there some great secret in there?"
"You'll see when you go in."
At my words he clenched both fists and quickened his stride. He looked just like a child rushing off at the news that a new toy had arrived.
When I opened the door to the aging cellar, the smell of metal and wine mingled together and stung my nose. The moment Warren stepped inside, he spotted something and stopped in his tracks.
"What's that?"
His gaze fixed on one of the stainless steel tanks. Small modules were attached to the tank's surface, with thin cables intricately connected to them. The temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, and electrical conductivity (EC) sensors I'd installed were blinking in real time.
"Are these... all real-time measuring devices?"
I nodded and stepped closer to the tank.
"That's right. They're putting numbers to every variable that occurs during fermentation."
Warren frowned.
"Why on earth would you monitor all of this? You can read the reactions in wine perfectly well by feel alone."
I pointed at the tank's monitoring display.
"You're not wrong. But the only people who can do that are a handful of geniuses and those who come close to them. If clear data that's near the correct answer existed, then from here on we could use that data to make wine that's close to perfect."
"Haha..."
"The yeast in grape juice changes its metabolic rate depending on shifts in temperature, oxygen, and sugar concentration. You already know that, of course. You could call this a system that helps us control all of that quantitatively so we can produce wine of uniform quality."
Warren had been gazing at it in apparent admiration, but then, as if something had struck him, he whipped his head around toward me.
"Clear data that's near the correct answer? There's no way that exists yet."
"Correct. It doesn't exist yet."
"Then you could say this is the process of searching for that clear data that's near the correct answer?"
"That's correct too. And it's not just the aging system. You could say the artificially composed soil is our attempt to recreate what naturally formed at To Kalon. Depending on how the grapes that come out of it turn out, we'll be able to secure clear data and produce grapes that are close to the finished, ideal form."
"My word..."
Stunned, Warren touched the stainless steel tank with faintly trembling hands, then turned back to me.
"Now I understand why you brought me on. You needed my instinct for the process of searching out the wine that's near the correct answer."
"...That's right."
Suddenly he burst out laughing.
"Hahahaha! This really is something! And those fools at Ste. Michelle, knowing nothing, are sitting there worried I might use my techniques here, of all places. Hahaha!"
After roaring with laughter for a good while, he stopped abruptly and looked me straight in the eye.
"Thank you for giving me something to do before I die. I don't know how many wines I'll make before I close my eyes for good, but I'll give it everything I have."
"Let's give it our best."
"Just leave it to me. Boss."
*****
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