Chapter 144: Quiet Hill (2)
TL: Hanguk
"Good, very good."
Warren nodded and set down his glass, his eyes closed as though he wanted to keep savoring the lingering finish. For my part, I'd been monitoring the wine's condition in the barrel all along, so his admiration didn't leave me particularly relieved. All I cared about was how closely his impressions matched my own.
"Does it feel different from Sylphide to you?"
"Of course. How to put it, the aroma is the type that doesn't leap upward but seeps downward? Like thin layers stacked one on top of another. That's why the finish lingers so long."
His commentary was packed with the quirks peculiar to wine enthusiasts, so an ordinary person would have had no idea what he meant, but I understood. He was saying the early volatile esters weren't strong and that the wine was built around medium- and high-molecular-weight aroma compounds, so instead of bursting up into the nose, it unspooled slowly across the palate.
"The grapes from Grendel Hill had small, uniform berries with a high pulp-to-skin ratio. The sugar was a touch lower than the Hart Farm grapes I used for Sylphide, but they held their acidity better, and the seed maturity wasn't overdone either. There was no sign they'd been forced into overripeness. I judged them to be grapes whose growth rate had simply been slowed naturally while stress was kept to a minimum, so I aged them to suit that."
"I see. You read the state of the grapes and matched it appropriately... Appropriate. Very appropriately matched. So if Sylphide is a wine you fall in love with on the first glass, this one... you could say it reveals its true self by the third glass."
"That's why I don't think it's a party wine. A wine you drink alone, or among people who don't talk much?"
"Perfect for an old man like me, then. Have you settled on a name?"
"I decided on Quiet Hill. And once I'd chosen it, I found it suits the wine perfectly."
"You're not wrong. Quiet, yet it leaves an impression you can't forget. This is exactly what we call a masterpiece. It'll become a new milestone for single-vineyard Pinot Noir."
Just then, Mom came in carrying a large tray with a roast chicken, golden and perfectly done, like something straight out of a movie.
"Have a bite to eat before you go on."
"Oh, what a fantastic spread... I have to wonder whether I deserve such luxury in my old age."
"My boy still has so much to learn, so please look after him."
"Whatever do you mean? If anything, I'm the one being taught."
"Ho ho ho! Warren, how do you manage to have such a fine sense of humor? Well then, enjoy the meal."
Mom laughed brightly and left the aging room, and Warren settled into a seat and said,
"Your mother thinks what I said was a joke."
"Well, it isn't entirely serious either. It's not as though I've taught you all that much."
With a large knife he carved a good portion of breast meat from the golden-brown roast chicken and laid it on his plate. The fragrant, savory smell of the roasted chicken tickled my nose.
"Sometimes, you know, the sheer amount of knowledge isn't what matters most. The world overflows with knowledge. My sons would count knowing how to buy good real estate cheaply and turn it into great value as the important kind. For stock traders, making money on the market would be the important knowledge. And for laborers living hand to mouth, day to day, which farm lets them work easy for good pay would be the crucial know-how."
I sat down across from him, cut off a chicken leg, and set it on my own plate.
"I suppose so."
"And all that valuable knowledge and information can be worthless to someone else. Or a single thing that I happen to need... just one piece of knowledge can change a life. And that knowledge might not even be anything grand. Things like the sun rising in the east, or the fact that we die when we grow old. For me, your teaching was exactly that kind of thing. That wine is made by terroir. And from that, the realization that I could alter the terroir to make the wine I want."
"Hmm..."
"Once that clicked, the knowledge I need to learn grew enormously. It gave me a clear goal. So even if the amount you taught me wasn't large, I've gained a tremendous education from it."
Honestly, when I'd told him about engineering the terroir, I hadn't said it with any such depth of thought behind it. Back when I tore up and replanted the Silver Oak farm, and even now, all I'd been thinking was to cultivate soil like To-Kalon, land that would come to be recognized as immensely valuable in the future.
But what Warren was saying now was, as a certain manga might put it, a declaration of intent, that if a wine ever came close to the drops of god, he would go and seek out the terroir that had made it. It was as if I'd pointed at the moon and told him to look, and Warren had realized there was a whole new world out in space.
This changed the story enormously, and the effort and knowledge it would demand would be staggering. An assumption that anyone else would have tossed out as absurd, Warren was discussing with pure delight.
It was a passion truly worthy of genius, and hard to keep pace with.
"No, I mean, it's not really that big a..."
"As I thought... even the pairing is perfect."
He wasn't listening to me, chewing his chicken and sipping his wine. Realizing he'd already sunk into a world of his own, I closed my mouth and gave myself over to the meal.
To be fair, Mom's cooking was excellent, and with a pairing wine this fine on top of it, it was genuinely hard to keep any of the chatter in my ears.
After we'd finished eating, Warren asked,
"Have you applied for the label?"
"Yes. I submitted the approval request to the TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau)."
"What? You said you were still agonizing over the name, and you've already put in the approval request?"
"I moved as fast as I could. I know a design firm, so I'd been weighing two draft designs with them ahead of time, and once I settled on one, I pushed it through fast. At the latest, I should have the COLA (Certificate of Label Approval) by the week after next."
Even after bottling, at least three or four weeks had to pass before release, but the reason I was hurrying was that even once the label was approved, selling wine in California required state government approval on top of it.
"Good that you move fast. But why haven't you applied for our blend yet?"
"That's because I want to check what condition it's in after the marriage first. I'll come up with a fitting name then... there's no rush."
"Hah, Quiet Hill is urgent but that one isn't? Isn't that a bit of a double standard?"
He pursed his lips and voiced his displeasure. At the old man's grumbling, I gave him a look of disbelief.
"It's because I'm doing them one at a time, in order. It's harvest season now, so I've got grapes to bring in; Echelon and Sylphide are due out soon, and Cerasia's coming in November. Even one extra wine slotted in between them is a mountain of work. I want to take the blend a little more slowly."
"Bah..."
"Ha ha ha, I understand wanting to see the reaction quickly."
I did understand how he felt. It was a wine that bore his sensibilities, arriving just as Redwood was set to release a proper cult-tier blend for the first time.
Naturally he was dying to know how the market would react.
It had been quite a while since he'd launched a new brand at Stag's Leap, so wine enthusiasts were surely burning with curiosity about how a wine touched by Warren Winiarski's hand would turn out at Redwood, which was why he was so eager to show it off.
Looked at another way, it also told me how earnest Warren was about this blend. If the quality were poor, he'd never want to show it off at all.
Warren lowered his gaze for a moment, then frowned and said,
"It's because I want to show it to Robert soon."
"Ah..."
So there was a reason after all. Word was going around Napa Valley that Robert Mondavi's health was steadily declining. His personal physician was coming by every day, or so I'd heard?
It seemed he wanted to show Robert Mondavi, who was as good as a mentor to him, at least one thing before he passed.
"Don't worry too much. He'll make it through this year just fine."
"When old men lose their strength, there's no telling when they'll go. Honestly, I'm anxious."
"No. He'll get through this year in good health, I'm certain of it."
The reason I could say this with such confidence was that I knew the year of his death was next year. And Warren Winiarski, too, lived to a ripe old age, only closing the curtain on his life in 2024.
It was funny, really, and rather remarkable that both of them made alcohol, the worst thing there is for one's health, and kept wine at their side their whole lives, yet each lived past ninety.
"Whew, all right. I mustn't be so impatient. Would it be all right if I headed home a little early today?"
"Of course. Go on home early."
"In exchange, though... could I take a little of what's in the barrel?"
What he was pointing at was the Quiet Hill barrel, still unreleased and reverently set aside.
"...... You're heading home early because you want to drink your fill of the wine, aren't you? Be honest."
"What are you talking about? My spirits are low, so I just want to rest a little today. And Quiet Hill happens to be exactly right for soothing my heart. If you'd rather I didn't, fine, I'll make do with the wine at home. Quiet Hill is the perfect match for a mood like today's, but if you're truly set against it, I can hardly force the matter, can I?"
The way he slumped and spoke so bitterly, at a glance he looked like the most pitiful old man in the world, but I was dumbfounded. Watching this old man work his silver tongue, I was certain he'd charmed his way through plenty of women in his younger days.
"Take it."
I waved a hand as if I couldn't be bothered, and Warren traced a thin curve at the corner of his mouth before promptly turning glum again and saying,
"Well, in that case... I'll take a little to soothe my low spirits today. In old age this is all I have to set my heart on, so what can I do?"
"......"
And so Warren even had someone help him, filling an unlabeled one-liter bottle with barrel wine, and off he went.
"Heh heh heh..."
"Where should I put this?"
"Take it to the study."
Wearing a deep smile as he watched the employee carry the large bottle off toward the study, Warren headed for the kitchen. From the refrigerator he grabbed some Comté cheese and prosciutto to go with the Pinot Noir and made for the study.
But with the snacks in both hands, Warren ran into his son and daughter-in-law, who had just come home, along with an unfamiliar man.
"Father, you're back already?"
"Good to see you, sir."
The man who had followed his eldest son Andrew and his wife inside was, surprisingly, Mark Harrington, the owner of a large winery in Sonoma.
"Oh, Mark, what brings you to my home?"
"The truth is, I'd been meaning to come pay my respects, sir. I was going to wait until evening, but I never expected to see you this early."
"Hm? You came because of me?"
"Yes."
As Warren puzzled over this, Andrew cut in.
"I played golf with Mark this morning. He said he wanted to see you after lunch, so we came together."
"Instead of heading to San Jose, you're off playing golf?"
"Father, connections are hugely important in real estate. And Jonathan's over there today."
"Ahem... but why me?"
Mark was about to answer when he noticed the cheese and ham in Warren's hands and asked,
"Were you about to have some wine?"
"I was."
"Then might I join you?"
"Suit yourself. You, go bring up a bottle."
At Warren's telling Andrew to fetch a suitable wine, Mark tilted his head.
"The wine you drink must be something quite precious, then...?"
"That one's mine."
Then, perhaps thinking that too stingy, he added,
"I'll give you exactly one glass."
"Thank you. Shall we go in?"
Entering the study with Mark, Warren worked the tightly wedged cork loose and said,
"So why did you want to see me?"
But instead of answering, Mark gazed at the wine bottle, dark and featureless with no label on it, and asked,
"What sort of wine is that? Did you bring it from Redwood, by any chance?"
"... You're not slow on the uptake, are you?"
"A wine with no label would be one not yet released, and since you're working at Redwood, even a middle schooler could guess that much."
"True. Anyone who isn't a fool should manage to figure out at least this. Anyway, out with it, get to the point. When you get old you grow impatient, and I've no taste for people dragging things out."
When he pressed the point as he poured the wine, Mark answered,
"I understand that originally, after selling Stag's Leap, you'd intended to keep growing grapes on your own. And I hear that now you've left it all to your staff and stepped away entirely..."
"Hah! That loose-lipped Andrew must have gone and blabbed about that too."
"I was wondering whether you might be thinking of selling."
Warren didn't answer; he handed the wine to Mark with an unreadable look in his eyes. And then he said,
"Give it a taste."
The moment Mark reached for the glass,
"If you can honestly claim your winery has a wine finer than the one you're about to drink, I'll sell you my Arcadia Vineyards."
At these unexpected words, Mark's eyes wavered violently.
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