Chapter 146: Quiet Hill (4)
TL: Hanguk
Looking at his reddened eyes, I suddenly remembered something from long ago.
"This is about someone I know. His parents were farmers, and he was an accountant. He could never understand why his parents farmed, why they did such backbreaking work, but one day, while he happened to be helping his elderly parents in the fields, it hit him. His body was worn out and aching... yet he felt something more than that, a deep sense of fulfillment. And so he found himself wanting to grow into someone like his parents, and he took up farming."
"......"
"Maybe your son, too, took an interest in grapes because he wanted to grow into someone like you, Mr. Grendel. He was praised for doing well, so he pushed himself to do even better, and when he made a mistake he was crushed by it and left. Maybe that was just... out of shame. That's what the man I knew told me."
"Oh? Sounds like you know him pretty well."
"Yes, we're fairly close, actually. When he learns this wine has come out into the world, I imagine he'll think of his father."
Elias held the ruby-colored wine up to the sunlight once more and smiled bitterly.
"I hope that boy tastes this wine and thinks of Grendel Hill."
"If he knows his parents have always been waiting right where he left them, he'll come back for certain."
He nodded quietly. Then he rose from his seat and walked over to the map hanging on the office wall.
"The blocks you've contracted are this F block and E block here, and this H block. As it happens, there are some remaining blocks whose contracts run out this year. Care to sign on for those too?"
Watching him point them out one by one as he explained, I gave a faint smile.
"You'll give me a good deal, right?"
"Hmph! You don't go slashing the price of grapes! You pay exactly what they're worth. But since it's you, I'll make sure not to rip you off."
"Come on, I make such good wine with them. Cut me a little discount."
"No chance. Come next year, there'll be a line of people over a mile long begging for these."
I burst out laughing at how stubbornly he refused to budge on the price.
"Hahaha, all right, all right."
"But I've got one condition."
"What is it?"
"Sell about thirty percent of the total Quiet Hill volume over in Europe."
I wasn't one to miss the reason behind it. Since this was nothing a good talk with Christopher couldn't sort out, I readily agreed.
"I'll do that."
"Good."
Elias broke into a gentle smile and then stroked the wine I'd brought as though it were a living person.
He must have been struck by the hope that if a Single Vineyard Pinot Noir from Grendel Hill Farm made its way to Europe, the odds of his son tasting the wine made from his father's grapes would only grow.
"Well then, let's head out to the fields, to watch the harvest."
It was time to get back to work. Stepping out of the office, I found dozens of laborers who had just finished getting ready standing lined up in rows.
"Careful not to knock the berries loose, be careful, careful now as you work!"
At Elias's shout the laborers scattered, and I fell in behind him, moving at an unhurried pace.
As October set in, I moved around so busily that twenty-four hours in a day weren't enough. Napa Valley's Cabernet Sauvignon was harvested from early to mid-October, so October was always a hectic stretch to begin with, but now, with wine releases and other farms to look after on top of it all, two of me wouldn't have been enough.
First off, Redwood released Sylphide, the Single Vineyard Pinot Noir, ahead of everything else.
"This vintage is superb, as always. New York's going to be buzzing over Sylphide all over again."
Christopher tasted the newly released Sylphide for the first time, marveled at it, and over three days swept the warehouse clean. Even Warren was astonished that he'd carried off a full 3,800 cases in one go. In monetary terms, it meant paying out, in a single lump sum, a staggering amount exceeding three million dollars.
For a small-to-midsize distributor it was quite an outlay, but it was worth it, thanks to the price of Pinot Noir, which had begun to climb steadily ever since the film Sideways hit theaters.
"Did you snap up the Russian River Valley Pinot Noir ahead of time because you saw all this coming?"
Warren clicked his tongue in astonishment as he watched the once-packed warehouse get swept bare.
"No."
A lie, of course.
"Incredible. Merlot, on the other hand, has fallen a whole thirty percent, I hear."
"Oh dear... what a shame."
Merlot, which the film's protagonist had disparaged out of dislike, had unfortunately seen its grape spot price plunge by more than twenty-five percent and its wine price by around thirty percent compared to 2004. The same time, effort, and money had gone into growing it, yet some farms made money while others took heavy losses.
"This is exactly why luck matters in business. It's Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, the prince among Pinot Noirs, so that distributor Christopher's the only one having a field day."
"That's true, I suppose. The wholesale price is the same as last year, after all. But we bumped the wholesale price up sharply once last year, so I've no complaints."
"Fair enough. A Pinot Noir with a seventy-dollar wholesale price... the wineries in Sonoma must all be screaming."
"... By the way, when's the brandy going to be finished?"
"......"
Next up to bat after the Sylphide release was Echelon. This time it was Macy's Department Store's F&B manager and John Anderson, the two of them, who came to clear out the warehouse.
"Thank you for another year of the finest Cab."
At the two men's grateful greeting, Warren cautiously made a suggestion.
"I think we could raise the price? It feels even better than last year's vintage, doesn't it?"
On the day the bottled Echelon was released and the first bottle was opened, he'd finished off two bottles by himself and even fallen asleep clutching the wine in the aging room. Because of that, his two sons had shown up with Stag's Leap staff in tow and made a whole commotion about carting him off home.
"We've still got the real weapon in reserve, remember. I'd still rather Echelon not be too pricey a wine."
"That's not a bad point either."
Apart from the wine releases, I often went out to the pear farm to help Chloe.
"Good thing a lot of the salt's washed out. And luckily the flower buds have come up pretty normally too."
"Still, it's kind of a shame. They could've come up thicker..."
"It's fine. It's your first time farming, and your first time dealing with muddy water backing up on you. There was nothing you could've done. And you locked in a permanent water supply out of it, so honestly it's a blessing in disguise. Pear farming takes a ton of water."
Climate change wasn't severe yet at this point, but as time went on the California region too would see its climate grow more and more erratic. The damage would eventually grow serious enough that people would start planting crops resistant to climate crises, so securing a permanent water supply was a far bigger deal than Chloe realized.
"We also need to check that enough flower buds have formed. Whether they're clustered too high up or too far inside, whether the buds are spread evenly across each branch, that kind of thing."
"My eyes are gonna fall out at this rate."
"But you can handle it, right?"
"Yeah."
Chloe grumbled like it was a huge chore, but she never let slip a single thing that needed doing.
"Now we've got to cut the nitrogen out entirely. We stop the new shoots from growing and harden up the stem and branch tissue to fend off cold damage."
"Huh? That sounds kind of complicated?"
"To put it simply, a pear tree's new shoots are fragile, so once winter comes they can get damaged. So we coax the tissue into toughening up. To do that, we shut off the nitrogen and cut the growth signal. Then the branches firm up, and even below freezing there's hardly any cell damage."
"Oh, is that so?"
"We also lower the moisture content and build up carbohydrates so it can ride out the winter."
"But California winters aren't all that cold, are they?"
"Right. But the day-to-night temperature swings are big, so a sudden cold snap (advection frost) can do serious damage to the trees. That's why even in California, how you get a tree through the winter matters a great deal. If it goes through winter in incomplete dormancy, the buds don't all break at once, so flowering ends up staggered unevenly over two or three weeks and pollination fails. And then, of course, fruit set comes out poor and the yield crashes, right?"
"Ah... got it. You're a total professor. A real professor."
Chloe gave my chest a couple of light taps and then nestled right into me. As we passed the time together in that sweet, cozy way, before I knew it we'd reached the tail end of October, and Quiet Hill was released.
A white mansion in Healdsburg, with the Russian River laid out below it in a single sweep. It was the home of Mark Harrington, owner of Harrington Winery, counted among the top three in Sonoma.
The doorbell rang there, and a visitor arrived.
"Mark."
When he opened the door, the man standing there was Joseph Higgins of Castello Winery. It wasn't strange for him to pay a visit, but at the sight of the wine in his hand, Mark's expression stiffened slightly.
QUIET HILL, and REDWOOD.
Seeing the wine with Grendel Hill Vineyard printed right there in plain sight, a surge of fire rose up inside him.
"Aren't you even going to ask me in?"
"Come in."
Joseph deliberately raised the bottle so the label would show clearly.
"So it's been released, I hear."
Mark said nothing for a moment. He simply showed Joseph to the sofa in the sitting room, then brought over wine glasses and dropped down into his seat.
Reading Mark's manner, Joseph offered only a faint smile and, without a word, pulled the cork with the opener lying on the table. There was no bursting pop. A quiet, tidy sound of opening.
"Have you tried it already?"
Joseph nodded and said, as he poured the wine.
"It made me think of Daniel."
At those words, Mark's face hardened once again. Daniel Grendel. A young man who had once been Harrington Winery's winemaker, the man who had perfected the structure of Harrington Noctis Ridge Pinot Noir, the winery's current flagship.
"Did you come here to mock me?"
"How could that be? Honestly, I'm saying this because it's a genuine shame. If that fellow were still around, the owner of Quiet Hill might well have been you."
"That sounds like mockery too, if you ask me."
Joseph quietly held out the wine, and Mark took it. As if by some prior agreement, both men brought their glasses to the tips of their noses, then took a light sip and held it in their mouths.
"Just as I thought... this is Russian Valley Pinot Noir through and through."
Joseph nodded, set his glass down, and went on.
"I'm saying this in case any awkwardness keeps you from seeing your rival's strength for what it really is."
"Ha. You think I'd run from it?"
"If not, then all the better."
"Hmph! I'd already tasted it before you brought it over."
Perhaps finding this unexpected, Joseph's eyes went wide.
"Oh? They only just announced the release, and it hasn't even gone into distribution, so all they've done is pass a small amount around to the neighboring wineries. I'd have thought I was the first to bring it to you."
"I had it three weeks ago."
"Three weeks?"
At Joseph's look of disbelief, Mark let out a snort of laughter.
"At Warren's house, that is."
Only then did Joseph's face show that it had clicked.
"Ah... so you drank it when the old gentleman brought a bottle home ahead of time. Then it seems I brought this over for nothing."
At the suggestion that he'd come all this way for Mark's sake, Mark gave a wry smile. He'd known from the start that Joseph wasn't the warm, kindly sort. This was probably meant to stoke his competitive drive and push him into pressuring Redwood even harder.
That must have been why he'd brought up the name Daniel so abruptly.
"Still, thank you. I don't actually think your intentions are entirely wrong. It's true that I ought to draw inspiration from this wine and push myself forward."
"That's exactly what I'm saying. What's more, Mr. Warren told me the Redwood wines are all going to be entered in the upcoming San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition this year..."
For an instant Mark's fingertips trembled faintly. They hadn't entered last year, so he'd been holding out hope it might be the same this year too. But if every one of their brands was entered this year, he would have no choice but to go head to head with Redwood in the Pinot Noir category.
"... I see."
Nodding with a stony face, Mark raised one corner of his mouth. Joseph's intent, coming all this way just to needle him, was so transparent that Mark couldn't help getting in a word of his own.
"Ah, I happened to hear a little something myself, as it happens."
"Oh? And what would that be?"
To a puzzled Joseph, Mark said, swirling his wine glass.
"Word is Redwood's about to unveil a new cult-tier wine besides Echelon. I heard it from Warren."
"I've heard that much too, though?"
"Have you? The quality of it as well?"
"......?"
"Warren told me that once that wine is released, it'll probably send a seismic shift through the Napa Valley Cab market. This San Francisco Chronicle is going to be well worth watching."
At those words, Joseph's eyes wavered violently.
*****
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