Chapter 135: Merger (2)
TL: Hanguk
"They've agreed to the deal."
Ben Lowell, who had come out to the farm once more, announced the result with a bright smile.
"I see. So all that's left now is for the money to change hands."
"Ha ha, that's right."
"How much is in the tanks?"
"Roughly fifty thousand liters."
"Exactly as I expected. And the bottled wine, will it stay in the warehouse as is?"
"Since it could be awkward for both sides, they'll use an outside warehouse."
"We've done this kind of deal with them before, so the thought of going through it once more does make me a little uncomfortable."
"I suppose it would, wouldn't it? But try to see it in a good light. Silveroak actually sees this as a chance to clear the debts they're carrying and make a fresh start."
"Just how much debt were they in?"
Ben Lowell shrugged and spoke matter-of-factly.
"They don't lay it all out in front of me, but at the very least it's well over two million dollars."
"Two million dollars, huh..."
"I heard that one million of it is secured against the farm, so they've probably taken out about a million in a Wine Inventory Loan for short-term operating funds. There may be Barrel Financing on top of that, too."
"Wow... that'd be steep interest, over ten percent."
"Ten percent is on the cheap side. If they took on extra collateral through barrels or bulk, the interest would have climbed past twenty percent. Banks naturally charge brutal rates and fees on loans backed by unconventional collateral (inventory rather than real estate, goods vulnerable to weather and the market). And honestly, the interest isn't the important part. In this climate an extension is out of the question, and if they miss the deadline the bank seizes the whole lot. That's what they would have feared most."
"Hmm..."
"Looked at that way, Redwood gave them a fairly generous price. Considering the Wine Inventory Loan maturity bearing down on them, they couldn't have refused even at a lower one."
He thought of my generosity as something remarkable, but to me this was no great loss.
"You said there are fifty thousand liters in the tanks. It's not as if I'm going to throw it out, and depending on the quality, I can easily turn a profit beyond that."
The farm alone had originally been priced at 5.8 million dollars, so in effect I'd valued the fifty thousand liters of wine and the tanks at seven hundred thousand. A price that was neither expensive nor cheap.
"Your skill goes without saying. Personally, I have high hopes. I can't wait to see what kind of magic you'll work with Silveroak's wine."
"Do you enjoy wine yourself, personally?"
I asked, wondering how much he really knew, and he widened his eyes and raised his voice.
"Do you think I broker farm deals without even knowing wine?"
"I wouldn't go that far, but..."
"There's exactly one reason I'm in Napa of all places. I wanted to be a little closer to the wine I love."
In other words, he was something of a wine geek.
"Ah..."
"Redwood's Echelon, Sylphide, and even Cerasia, I personally never considered cherry wine to be real wine, but when I tasted Redwood's Cerasia I couldn't hold back my admiration. For the record, I bought six bottles of Cerasia at Macy's Department Store earlier this year, and I'm down to my last one now, savoring it."
"Ha ha..."
"Actually, as Echelon grew famous across California, I tried it myself once and was deeply moved. I've kept my eye on Redwood ever since, and after I read in a magazine that Mr. Warren had joined, my own hopes have been running enormously high. You can't imagine how moved I am to be handling a deal for a winery like that."
"It means a lot that you'd think so... thank you. In any case, when have you set the contract date for?"
"The day after tomorrow. The other side wants the funds as soon as possible. Is there anything more you'd like to check? Examine the wine fermenting in the tanks, perhaps...?"
I shook my head at his cautious question.
"No, that's all right. I trust Silveroak's skill."
They were surely heartsick enough over selling the farm, and I had no desire to go out of my way and upset Elowen all over again by harping on about the quality of the wine in his tanks. Besides, since they'd even been featured on a TV show, I figured the basic quality of the wine would be there. Even if their standard for that quality differed a little from mine, I wasn't particularly worried.
"Understood. I'll leave it there, then, and let you know the time and place for the contract once they're set."
"Since you're here, let me give you a gift."
I fetched a bottle of Echelon I'd stashed away at the winery and handed it to him. His grin stretched from ear to ear, and he stroked the wine in its wooden case as he spoke.
"My goodness... this is exactly why I can't leave Napa Valley. Thank you. Um... could I get your signature here...?"
"You're not getting my signature just so you can avoid drinking it, are you?"
"I'll have to think about that one. Hahaha!"
I scrawled my signature across the bottle and handed it over, and he left the winery beaming.
"......"
Seeing someone love a wine I'd made and cherish it like that stirred up a strange feeling I couldn't quite put into words. But I let it go just as quickly, turned, and headed for the aging cellar.
Today was a very important day, one I was to spend with Warren...
"Huh?"
As I opened the door to the aging cellar and stepped inside, I met eyes with Warren, who was holding a wine glass.
Caught off guard for a moment, Warren smoothly set down his glass.
"No, look... your conversation kept dragging on and on. I started wondering how long I'd have to wait, and I just... gave it one taste. It's good, isn't it?"
"What's this, after going on and on about tasting it together? You said we'd open it together!"
The barrel had been aged a long time to make a Cult Wine, and we'd predicted it would reach its peak right around now. But this wasn't a pressure cooker; drawing a barrel sample partway through to check on its condition wasn't going to spoil the flavor or anything.
For my part, I only checked now and then to see whether anything had gone wrong, and I'd told him to go ahead and taste it if he was curious, but Warren had stubbornly refused every time. His reason was that he wanted to check it at its peak and feel that thrill firsthand.
Today happened to be exactly that day, so we'd agreed to open and taste it together, but while I was off discussing the acquisition with Ben, he hadn't been able to wait that short while and had gone ahead and drunk it on his own.
He kept avoiding my eyes, and when I looked closer, I saw he hadn't merely tapped the barrel.
"Wait, you blended it?"
One look and I could see the traces of a blend made from wine drawn out of barrels here and there. He clasped his hands behind his back and cleared his throat.
"Ahem... once I'd had a glass of the Cab, I got carried away and couldn't stop. So I tried blending it at the ratio you laid out. Everything was already prepped, wasn't it? We'd run hundreds of experiments and dialed in the perfect conditions... all that was left was to mix it, so how was I supposed to hold back?"
"Wow... so how does it taste?"
He whipped his head around, his eyes glittering, and broke into a grin.
"I'll tell you, it's the most astonishing wine I've tasted in nearly ten years. There's a part that stands out a bit too much, sure. It could be because it hasn't gone through marriage before bottling, or because the Petit Verdot is a touch heavy. That'll need some time after bottling, but even the excess struck me as part of its charm. Like a feisty little tomboy, you might say?"
When wine lovers reached for abstract descriptions like that, there was no point in challenging them. It was best regarded as a kind of culture all their own.
"So you're saying it's good?"
"In a word, this is insane. Insane, I tell you. At this level, a thousand dollars a bottle wouldn't be too much."
I took the beaker he'd blended, poured some into an empty glass, took a sip, and rolled it around in my mouth. Slurping noisily to mix it with air and pull out every bit of aroma, I was certain it had come very close to the aroma I'd known before my regression. Back then, how thrilled I'd been, all on my own, to discover this blending ratio...
"It's good."
If anything, my understated reaction took Warren aback.
"Good? That's it?"
"Well, I mean... this was about the target I'd set for myself in the first place."
"That may be so, but... Cabernet Sauvignon is at the center, and the Merlot folds in this smoothly? Why does the Franc settle in like mist instead of sticking out? And the line of the Petit Verdot... ugh, it's insane... how is this the blend of a beginner? This... even at your age I couldn't have dreamed of something like this. Does this even make sense?"
But as it turned out, there were several beakers he'd poured.
"Looks like you adjusted the ratio a bit?"
"Hm? Oh, that... doing it exactly the same left a part that nagged at me a little. So I changed it ever so slightly."
"Which one is the one we calculated at the start?"
"This one."
I poured the wine from the beaker on the far right into a clean glass and tasted it, and though it was very subtle, I got the impression the Franc's violet aroma was a touch stronger. But it was so subtle that even I, who had studied wine obsessively before my regression, probably wouldn't have found it easy to flag as a flaw at first.
"Do you think that one's better?"
"Hmm... no. The first one I tasted has more appeal."
At my words, Warren's face brightened.
"Right?"
"Yes. The one we originally calculated is more solid, sure, but the one you adjusted is... how should I put it, somehow more captivating?"
"But I'd like to chalk this up to a difference in taste. I thought the original ratio was perfect too, you know. I changed it slightly just in case, and as luck would have it, a slightly different version came out, is how I'd put it."
I'd caught on that his presenting the altered ratio first and making such a fuss had been somewhat deliberate, but I pretended not to notice. Because this, perhaps, was exactly the sort of thing I'd wanted from him when he joined the winery.
The thing I couldn't do myself. I'd believed he was the man who could take my score, capped at ninety, and lift it to ninety-five, to ninety-eight, and sure enough, he'd pulled it off flawlessly.
"Let's bottle about a case for now and watch it for four weeks or so."
"Shall we, then?"
At the suggestion that, if there were no problems and the harmony came together even more perfectly after the marriage, we'd release it as is, Warren drank his wine with a face brimming with excitement.
"Right. And I've got something to take care of, so I'll be heading out. Get some rest. You can have the staff handle the bottling."
"Where are you off to?"
"To go look after a farm."
"A farm? Which farm?"
"The pear farm. Chloe's place."
He blinked, then asked with a serious expression.
"You really tend to all of that?"
"Of course."
"You look after the cherries, and the pears, and the almonds too?"
"Yes."
He tilted his head as if he couldn't make sense of it.
"Wine is something you can't fully grasp even after studying grape growing and winemaking alone for decades, and the way I see it, you've reached a level beyond your years. When I call you a master, I'm not joking in the slightest. And yet you've mastered other kinds of farming on top of that? How?"
"Hmm... I just take a strong interest in farming."
"Ha... it's maddening. I feel like a fool."
"If you say things like that, Mr. Warren, you'll shock everyone else. You're the genius of the century."
"I'd been given that label, yes. Until I met you, that is."
"Oh, come now. Just look at earlier, even. You took the ratio I'd worked out, tweaked it a little, and made it better."
"You're the one who built the framework, though."
"You know how it is, right? Anyone can build the framework. What matters is the fine sense for it. That subtle difference is something not just anyone can pull off."
Warren felt pleased and, at the same time, envious. This young fellow already had such a clear, objective grip on himself that he knew exactly what he lacked, and there was simply no telling how far he would grow from here.
"I'd better live a long life, then."
"Sorry? Why say something so obvious. Anyway, hurry up and get inside."
As I left the aging cellar and was on my way out with the bag I'd left in the office, Warren asked from behind me.
"What's that?"
"Oh, this? I just picked one up."
"To give to that girl?"
"Yes."
"Lucky you."
"If you're jealous, I'll buy you one too sometime, Mr. Warren. It's nothing special."
"Never mind. I don't need one, so go and have a good time."
"Sure."
I ran quickly down the hill from the farm. If I set off now, I'd be able to get there before lunch.
Meanwhile, Warren, who had been watching from behind, furrowed his brow and muttered.
"I'm dying to know... but she's his girlfriend, so I can't very well tag along..."
Feeling that his hunger to learn hadn't dimmed in the least even as he aged, and ruing how the years kept slipping by, he shook his head.
*****
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