Chapter 137: Cause and Effect (1)
TL: Hanguk
In the car on the way to Lodi, Warren sat in the passenger seat with his arms crossed, gazing absently at the scenery outside the window, when he suddenly spoke up.
"Master, the wine you're releasing this time, you got a name in mind for it?"
"Which wine?"
"Hm? Ah, right, there's more than one. I meant the blended wine."
There were two wines being released this year. One was a blended wine centered on Cabernet Sauvignon, and the other was a single vineyard Pinot Noir from Grendel Hill Farm in the Russian River Valley.
The single vineyard had already been fermented exactly the way I wanted and set to age in oak, so there was nothing left for Warren to touch. He hadn't even tasted it yet; he'd said he wanted to experience it at its absolute peak later on, so he was waiting.
Holding the steering wheel, I kept my eyes fixed on the road and shook my head.
"Not yet. No particular reason, just that nothing's come to me yet that really says, this is it. I was going to mull it over when I apply for the label before bottling..."
Warren's eyes went wide at once.
"Oh dear, oh dear... half a wine's identity is its name. A cult wine especially has to build up anticipation before anyone even tastes it. You know this, don't you? A name alone can bump the price up twenty percent."
Of course I knew that. But a name wasn't the kind of thing that came out well from being fretted over for ages, and I figured a good one would come to me naturally enough.
"I do know that... but do you happen to have something in mind?"
Since he'd brought it up, I figured he obviously had something he wanted to say. Sure enough, with a meaningful smile he leaned forward and spoke, his finger tracing letters in the air.
"So I came up with a few. Looking at your style, something too classical wouldn't suit you... but nothing too flashy fits either..."
"So what are they?"
He was drawing it out, so I let out a small laugh. The way he kept milking the suspense, he almost looked like a man who just needed someone to talk to.
"The first is Astra Vale, meaning the valley where stars fall. It combines astrum, for star, and vale, for valley. I tried to capture the feeling of you building a whole new world starting from the soil itself."
"That's incredibly poetic. I like it."
"Heh heh, you think so? Another one I came up with is Prime Meridian. The meaning is something like... a new standard. A cult wine needs a little nerve like that, you know?"
"That one's pretty good too."
"Right? Echelon convinced me. You've got such pride in your wine that you wouldn't hesitate over a slightly bold name. And there's one more I had in mind: how about Nocturne Cellars? Night, stillness, concentration... your wine builds its layers so delicately that an image like this would suit it well too."
I'd been wondering what he'd been thinking about the whole drive; turned out he'd been absorbed in naming the wine.
"They're all good names. Did you name all your own wines yourself, too?"
"Some I named, plenty I didn't. When I was young they were all my own ideas, but once the young folks joined the winery I'd often borrow theirs. If I did everything myself, it'd kill the staff's morale, so I had to keep that in mind too."
"Ah... that makes sense. The staff would only grow attached to the winery and put in more effort if a wine they blended and named themselves got released."
"Those are the headaches that come when a winery gets bigger. Truth is, I'm hopeless at that kind of thing."
I gave him a puzzled look.
"Really? You talk plenty, and... I wouldn't have thought you'd have trouble getting along with people."
He scoffed.
"Hah! You think I'm like this with just anyone?"
"Oh, you're not?"
Warren shot me an exasperated look, waved a hand, and said calmly,
"I'm not a man who bothers with just anybody."
"Ha ha, fair enough."
"Do you have any idea how many people come around just to get a word in with me? Show them a little kindness and they act all chummy, scrambling to walk away with something of mine. Honestly, it's not that I begrudge sharing what I know. I've no intention of locking it all away. As long as they understand it, where's the harm? But even among my own staff, hardly a one truly grasped what I was telling them. It was maddening... You know what the funny part is?"
"What's that?"
"When you teach them, they nod along to your face and pretend they've got it, but watch what they actually do and nothing really changes."
"Ah..."
I understood what Warren meant. Farming demanded a great deal of knowledge, but what truly mattered was the diligence to put that knowledge to use.
Farming was, at its core, about nurturing something to grow, which made it delicate work that demanded constant attention, and yet it never produced dramatic results in a short span of time.
"With staff, I could just scold them, but among the others, there were even people who later turned around and got angry at me."
"What? Why?"
"Said I'd taught them wrong. When I heard that I'd withheld the truly important things and only fed them the trivial stuff, so their wine turned out badly, that's when I made up my mind. From then on, I'd never share my winemaking techniques again."
"Ha ha... I can picture exactly what that was like."
"Some people, you see, always look to others for the reason they failed. The reason I talk to you so freely about this and that comes down, in a way, to one thing."
"And what's that?"
"You've got a solid center. You don't get swayed by my authority; you've got your own standards, firmly in place. That's not easy at your age... Usually when I'm around, people hand every decision over to me and just lean on me, but you never do that, so I can speak my mind with complete ease. And honestly, you don't even seem all that hungry for what I know."
What he meant was that no matter what he said, I'd make my own decisions in the end, so he felt no pressure in saying it.
"Thank you for thinking so highly of me. And it's not that I don't covet your knowledge, it's more that I have a philosophy of my own..."
"That's exactly my point. Even when people have one of their own, they still eye me hungrily to see if there's anything at all they can squeeze out of me... Well, that's neither here nor there. Anyway, is there one among those three names you like?"
"They're all good, so let's pick one from these."
A broad smile spread across his lips, as though pleased that I'd choose one of his three.
"Is that so? All right, then let's take our time deciding. Ah, and what about that Pinot Noir? You haven't settled on a name for that one either, have you?"
"For that one I've actually thought of a couple..."
"Oh ho, have you now?"
"One is G·HILL PL-1, just something simple I came up with. I went for a deliberately modern feel."
Warren nodded.
"That's not bad either. Simple and stylish. Is that the only one?"
"Hm... I came up with one more. Quiet Hill..."
"Hm? Quiet Hill? Oh ho, expressing delicacy and stillness, are you? It almost seems to capture that gentle layering unique to Pinot Noir, too."
"That's part of it, but the name also came to me thinking about the story behind that place."
Warren was lost for a moment, then it dawned on him: Grendel Hill Farm. He let out a small exclamation.
"Ahh... you're expressing how the owner of Grendel Hill Farm felt?"
"That's right."
"Remarkable. It carries the heart of a farmer who had every right to feel wronged, yet chose silence and poured himself into his grapes alone? There's meaning in that. Real meaning."
Still shaking his head in wonder, Warren went on talking about wine for a good while after that. Only after another thirty-odd minutes on the road did we finally reach the Lodi plains.
This place, where the young branches of second-year pear trees dazzled the eye, must have felt foreign to him; Warren kept looking around, his eyes brimming with curiosity.
Just then, an excited, joyful voice carried over from far off.
"Brian! You made it?"
Chloe came running in her boots, a scarf wrapped over her head. Then she spotted Warren standing behind me and stared in puzzlement.
"Oh? Hello."
Chloe, who had been around the farm before and seen Warren a few times, greeted him. To her look that asked what he was doing here, Warren returned the greeting and said,
"Ha ha, this fellow said he was heading to a pear farm, so I tagged along. I've taken an interest in farming methods other than the ones for grapes, you see."
"Ah, I see. Glad you could come."
After saying that, Chloe grabbed my arm and said,
"Actually, I meant to tell you yesterday, but a few spots have run into some trouble. I'll fill you in as we walk."
"Sure."
Warren wore an odd little smile as he watched Chloe walking glued to my side, and when our eyes met, he quietly looked away.
I shook my head and walked into the farm.
"Did you check the flower bud differentiation?"
"I tried to do it the way you told me over the phone... but I couldn't really tell just from hearing it."
"Once a sapling hits its second year, it enters a really critical stage. If you don't get it right now, the third-year yield could end up at zero, so it's hugely important to check it carefully."
As I walked, I ran my palm up along one of the trees. Then I pinched the tip of a new shoot, lifting it, and said,
"Hm... good. A new shoot tip that's grown to about 8 to 12 cm like this is a normal sign of differentiation. But the spacing between the nodes has started getting a little shorter, hasn't it?"
Chloe stepped closer and turned the shoot over to examine it.
"Huh? You're right. At first I just thought it had gotten scrawny."
"This is the sign that flower buds are getting ready. And... here."
I pointed a finger at a single flower bud that had begun to swell plump.
"This is going to become next year's flower bud soon. If the differentiation goes well over the next two months, next year's flowering rate stabilizes at over 70 percent."
Warren, who had been listening from behind, cut in.
"Hold on, do you read pear trees this precisely? This is more complicated than grapes...?"
Without turning around, I said evenly,
"Even if the crop's different, the principles are similar. It's about reading the signals of the shift into reproductive growth."
"Oh ho, I see."
But as I looked around the farm, I frowned.
"Hold on, it looks like you didn't prune all the water sprouts (those new shoots that grow out for nothing)."
"Huh? Is this not enough? Do I need to cut more? The new shoots have been coming up like crazy lately, so I cleared out quite a lot with the workers."
Chloe stiffened a little, thinking she'd made a mistake. It was only natural that she didn't know where the line was, this being her first pear harvest. So I traced my hand across the lower-middle part of a tree and said,
"Yeah. You need to clear it down to about here. When there's a bit too much nitrogen or irrigation, they shoot up like this in huge numbers, and if you don't clear them out properly, you get leaf buds instead of flower buds. You've got to thin them out more here."
"Got it."
"Still, looking at this, the irrigation wasn't lacking."
"I'd heard that too little irrigation means too few flower buds, so I was careful about it, but I guess I went overboard instead."
"That's why farming isn't easy. There's a part of it you have to feel out by instinct..."
Honestly, even if I'd been in Chloe's shoes, I'd surely have fumbled a bit when first deciding on the irrigation amount. How much was right was something that could only be worked out by trying it firsthand and watching the trees' condition.
"I think I'm starting to get the hang of it now."
Watching Chloe speak with such confidence, I patted her head without thinking. Past Chloe's bashful smile, I caught a strange look in Warren's eyes I couldn't quite place, and I turned back around and said,
"Branches with too much vigor, you set their angle right, and... huh? What's this? The leaves here are yellow."
When I spotted the leaves on one tree and walked over saying this, Chloe spoke with a glum face.
"This is actually what I wanted to tell you about. For a few days now I've been seeing these faded leaves here and there. I thought maybe it was just one tree and that I'd underwatered it, but then I saw it in other spots too..."
"You should've told me sooner."
"I meant to tell you yesterday..."
Seeing Chloe's face suddenly flush red, I cleared my throat.
"Ahem... these things happen. It's not too late yet."
Just then Warren, who'd been watching from behind with a look that said he could hardly stand the sight, smoothly cut in.
"Why's that happening? It looks pretty serious to me."
Even though I'd spoken as if it were nothing, Warren must have caught the darkness in my expression, because he zeroed right in on it. Chloe's face stiffened at once, so I quickly said,
"It's not super serious. Hm... if we deal with it quickly, it'll be fine."
"So why is it happening?"
I touched the yellowed leaves and gave a wry smile.
"Looks like the muddy water from that farm back then has caused trouble all the way out here."
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