Chapter 133: America in Turmoil (4)
TL: Hanguk
The wine made from the Cabernet Sauvignon harvested at Ironwood Cellars, which we'd acquired last year, was in pretty good shape. It fell short of the wine made from grapes harvested at Redwood, of course, but since it came from grapes we'd poured every ounce of effort into cultivating in that first year, it had still come up to roughly the level of the Redwood Cabernet Sauvignon.
"You're going to blend with this?"
Warren's eyes went wide as he stood before a barrel filled only with grapes brought in from Ironwood. He'd assumed we'd naturally use Redwood's fruit, since we were aiming for a top-tier cult wine.
"I think Redwood should keep going with Echelon. We've got about fifty thousand liters, so we can't turn all of it into cult wine. I was thinking we take maybe a third, the good barrels."
"Hmm... that'd come out to just under two thousand cases, then?"
"That's right."
The grapes harvested from the thirty-acre Ironwood Cellars came to about eighty-five tons. They said the place used to bring in more than double that, but since I'd focused on slashing the yield to push up quality, eighty-five tons was the whole of it. Turning that into wine yielded just under fifty thousand liters, all of it made under optimal conditions inside the state-of-the-art stainless steel tanks I'd set up.
I was confident it would hold up just fine as a cult wine.
"Hmm... for the flavor to open up this much in less than a year... Doing the lot separation and the fermentation and extraction differently from the very start, that was honestly beyond me. How did you even come up with it?"
"I've been studying nonstop and picturing it in my head."
It was less picturing it in my head than a long string of experiments, but I had been studying nonstop, so it was roughly half true.
"Impressive. People call me a genius when it comes to wine, but even I wasn't at this level when I was young."
"You're too kind."
"How long are you figuring for the marriage time?"
Marriage time, what's commonly called the wedding period, referred to the stretch during which the separate wines bound together into one.
Pouring wines as distinct as Cabernet Sauvignon, Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot into a single bottle and mixing them didn't produce a perfectly fused flavor on its own. The period needed for wines of such different characters to meld properly was reckoned at roughly four to six weeks, and only once that time had passed was the blending considered properly complete.
Every batch of Echelon to date had gone through this same period before it was bottled from the barrel and released.
"I figure we'll want to give it six weeks."
"Good. Shame it won't be a Napa Valley wine, though."
"It's fine. I made this looking purely at the wine itself, so we can let the appellation get its due later. And I'm curious, too. When the region's reputation is poor but the wine's own quality is high, how will the market judge it...?"
"Now that, I'm curious about it myself."
To print the name of a specific AVA (American Viticultural Area: a grape-growing region designated by the U.S. government) like Napa Valley on a wine bottle, at least 85 percent of the grapes used in that wine had to have been grown in that region.
Among the components going into this cult wine, the Petit Verdot made up no more than 8 percent, not a large share, but the problem was that Prime Mountain, the farm where the Cabernet Franc was grown, sat right on the border between Napa Valley and Sonoma.
Which meant the Napa percentage could only be calculated if we could prove exactly whether the Cabernet Franc harvested at Prime Mountain counted as Napa-side or Sonoma-side fruit.
Because of that, realistically we couldn't use the Napa Valley label on this cult wine, but I didn't much care. I was more focused on how to make it a good wine.
Just then, a call came in from a number I didn't recognize. I answered without thinking, and a lively voice came through.
"Hello there. Is this Brian Choi of Redwood?"
"It is. How did you get my number?"
"You didn't save it, did you? I gave it to you a few years back, when you acquired Silveroak..."
"Ah...! Right..."
He seemed to be the lawyer who'd reviewed the terms on Silveroak's side back when the contracts were going back and forth. I'd only met him once, so his face didn't come to me clearly, but I could conjure up a sense of him.
"To get right to it, I was reaching out to see whether you might be interested in a vineyard listing again this time around."
Of course I was interested. Wasn't that the very reason I'd been holding off on spending and stockpiling cash all this while?
"You've got something good?"
When I asked, playing a little hard to get, the response from the other end came back eager.
"Absolutely! I'd love to come by and walk you through it. Would that be possible?"
"Hmm... it's a busy time of year right now..."
I was interested, but I played hard to get one more time.
"I understand. It's September, harvest is bearing down fast, I know you're swamped. I won't take up much of your time, just a quick rundown of the listing. Would tomorrow work, by any chance?"
"Sure, sometime in the afternoon should be fine."
"Understood. You'll have a little breathing room around four, then, so I'll come by at that time."
Farm work mostly started in the morning, so by late afternoon there tended to be a fair amount of breathing room.
I could tell he already knew this line of work inside and out.
"Sure, sure."
When I hung up, Warren asked,
"What was that about?"
"It's the lawyer who reviewed the contract on the other side when we bought part of the Silveroak farm before. He says he's got a good listing and wanted to know if I'm interested."
One might wonder why a lawyer would handle this sort of thing, but vineyard and winery deals weren't simple real estate sales; they took on the character of corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A), so it was common for a lawyer to get deeply involved or even to hold brokerage credentials of their own.
So a lawyer reaching out wasn't all that unusual.
"Oho, so you've got expansion on your mind?"
"I can't exactly be content with one small farm forever."
"You could just as easily think about doing something else with that money, so good on you. If it were my own sons, all they'd think about would be saving up to do something else entirely. Tsk, tsk, tsk..."
He'd suddenly started badmouthing his own kids, and since I could hardly join in, I just looked away for no particular reason.
"I just don't have any interest in other things."
"And that's the right way to be. When a man has talent like this and turns his eyes to easy money instead, he loses on both ends and wrecks his life. I've seen plenty of fellows like that. I even knew one who gambled his whole winery away."
"That's a shame."
"No guarantee my own kids won't end up the same way. You make sure you raise yours right."
"I'll keep that in mind."
He soon shook his head, scolding himself.
"Getting old's turned me into a nag, it's a real problem. Let's go have a look at the Merlot."
"Let's do that."
And so Warren and I got in the car and headed for Sonoma. Since we couldn't use the Napa Valley name anyway, the range of choices was much wider, which suited me fine.
The next day, a white Lexus rolled slowly up to the farm's entrance and came to a stop. The door opened and a man in a crisp black suit stepped out. Close-cropped hair, cool, settled blue eyes; he was a striking man.
"Pleasure to meet you. Ben Lowell."
"Woody Choi."
After shaking hands with my father, he immediately extended his hand to me.
"Brian Choi."
"It's an honor. I was floored when I heard that Warren Winiarski, a man I personally admire, had come to work here... and it's a privilege to present my listings to Redwood."
"Ha, shame he's down in the aging cellar at the moment."
"Can't be helped."
Settling onto the office couch, Ben Lowell drew the documents he'd prepared from a black briefcase and spoke.
"For what it's worth, I pride myself on being an expert among experts here in Napa, a man who knows it all: law, taxes, farm sales, cadastral maps, environmental regulations."
What an assertive, self-assured boast... In moments like this, the difference between Korea and America came through plain as day.
"I see."
"I wanted to make it clear up front that I'm not like those clueless hacks who don't know the first thing and just hawk a plot as 'a vineyard.' And looking at Redwood from that angle, I think I can see just how remarkable the abilities of Mr. Woody and Mr. Brian here really are."
Dad, who'd been listening quietly, asked,
"Based on what?"
"I knew the previous owner of this place."
"Ah..."
"This area, just a little south of To-Kalon, the place they call the very heart of Napa Valley, is a cluster of small farms packed together like Redwood. They each seem to have their own character, but from a consumer's point of view there was really only one impression. It's part of Napa Valley, yet the wine isn't anything special."
"I suppose you could see it that way."
"Redwood here couldn't even manage to make that unremarkable wine properly, and then the ownership changed and everything was different. And now it's becoming the star of Napa Valley."
"You've done your homework."
At my remark, Ben let out a small chuckle.
"It's not homework, this is my turf, and wine and vineyards are part of my life. It's the sort of thing I'm bound to know."
"Oh..."
"So I'll admit I was a bit nervous coming to Redwood today. I even double-checked the listings again this morning. I half wondered whether the prices might have dropped, but there hadn't been any change yet."
He said it with a wink, and I thought, of course, a lawyer through and through, the man had a real way with words.
"Right now every grower across the board is in a tough spot. There's hardly a farm out there that isn't struggling. But flip it around, and it could also mean that whoever makes good use of these hard times stands to grow enormously once the market recovers. The listings I'm showing you today are a perfect fit for exactly that."
He spun his pitch as though unveiling some great treasure, and it was entertaining, but it quietly got my hopes up too. They said lawyering was all just sales, and this man looked like he could sell cars just as well.
"First up is Spring Mountain Vineyard."
He tapped a finger on the photo on the document's first page. A mountain ridge piercing up through the clouds, and the Cabernet Sauvignon planted densely along that ridge; it made quite an impression. He carried on with his explanation, his face brimming with confidence.
"This forty-six-acre farm sits at an elevation of four hundred fifty to five hundred fifty meters, and its drainage is among the best in Napa. The gravelly loam soil is top quality. It's a place where a very clean acidity develops at sugar levels between 25 and 26 Brix, so for any owner hoping for high-altitude Cabernet Sauvignon, you could call it ideal."
"And the downsides?"
At my question, he grinned.
"Oh, there are some. For one, the access is terrible? Moving workers in is a hassle, logistics are a pain, and the irrigation system is on the old side. You'd be sinking a fair bit of capital in right after you buy. And... the upkeep costs are monstrous. But the price is a mere five and a half million dollars. It's come on the market dirt cheap."
"Shall we see the next one?"
Ben nodded as if he'd expected as much and flipped a few pages.
"The second is Oxbow Vineyard. At a relatively small twenty-five acres, in a sense you could call it a place to invest in without overcommitting."
Twenty-five acres might be called small, but it was still ten acres larger than Redwood. The gentle hill near the river in the photo was as beautiful as a painting, the kind of view that made me want to own it.
He carried on with his explanation as if he were selling some exquisite work of art.
"The soil is alluvial loam, sediment the Napa River has swept down over tens of thousands of years. It's ideal ground for growing Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc."
"So you're saying it's good land if you want to grow white wines."
"Exactly. The location's good too. It's close to town, so hiring workers is easy, and it'd be a prime area for expanding a tasting room."
White wine was something I'd been wanting to take a crack at one day, so it would have been a lie to say the place hadn't tempted me.
"And the downsides?"
"It's land with almost no downsides, but if I absolutely had to name one, it'd be water. Low-lying alluvial land tends to lean heavily on groundwater for irrigation, and word is there's a rumor they'll bring in rules so you can only pump a set amount of groundwater. The governor's even gone so far as to set up a task force directly under the state government and talk up the need for regulation. I've no idea when it might be enacted, but if it does happen, things could get a little difficult."
Inwardly, I was fairly surprised. I hadn't expected him to be candid enough to cite a law that hadn't even been enacted yet as a downside. And the downside he'd named did, in fact, come to pass when the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was enacted in 2014, putting farms in quite a bind.
"Shall we see the next one?"
He gave a shrug and showed me the last document. But the photo of the farm on it had a very familiar shape.
"Huh?"
"You know it, right? It's Silveroak Hills Vineyards, in the neighborhood right next door. Thirty-two acres, sitting right beside you, the perfect plot for expansion."
Watching his eyes light up, it was clear Ben had come here from the very start to sell this piece of land.
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