Chapter 152: Ruby Quartz (1)
TL: Hanguk
Jacob, who had come practically running up from the farm's entrance, waved at me as I stepped out of the winery.
"Brian!"
"Oh, hey..."
"Everybody's losing their minds right now, you know that? The whole cohort talks about nothing but Redwood!"
Just as Jacob's excited chatter suggested, all of Napa Valley had its eyes on the brand called Redwood. Warren Winiarski, practically an elder statesman of Napa Valley, had not only joined the company, but in less than a year they'd released a cult-class wine priced at $450 a bottle, so it was only natural that the UC Davis students were in an uproar.
"Uh..."
"What kind of reaction is that? You don't look happy at all."
"I am happy... I just already did all my cheering back on the day of the tasting event."
"Good grief... this is the best you can give me?"
Jacob shook his head back and forth, then rubbed his palms together.
"Is the brandy I'm learning today really something Mr. Warren Winiarski invented?"
Watching him standing there, a hulking guy who topped out near six-foot-three yet couldn't hide how giddy he was, I could see there was something endearing about him, bandit's build and all.
"That's what I said. How's business?"
"Don't even get me started. I've been out of my mind since September because of the harvest. Between bringing in the crop and filling the orders that came in... the workers threw a fit demanding higher wages, so I couldn't even run the operation for a few days, you believe that?"
"Was it just a straight pay-raise demand? Or did the neighboring wineries poach your labor?"
"Both, really. The big farm in the next town over started offering a higher hourly wage and my guys flipped. A small distillery like mine has no way to compete. But I've got so many orders I went ahead and raised their pay to keep them working. A boss who caved to his workers... that's me, right there."
Jacob answered with his shoulders slumped low.
"Still, it wasn't a serious hit, right?"
"Yeah, I do have a lot of orders... but the feeling of getting steamrolled by my own workers, that doesn't sit so well."
"Whew, nothing you can do about it. Let's make it back this time with a high-end brandy."
"When my thirty-percent majority shareholder clears the road ahead like this, it truly moves me."
We went into the winery like that, and I introduced Jacob to Warren. The moment Jacob spotted Warren Winiarski, his eyes went wide and he bent forward at a full ninety degrees.
"Sir! Allow me to greet you again! I'm Jacob, from Sacramento!"
Warren looked Jacob up and down over the glasses perched on the tip of his nose. It was a fussy, exacting gaze, as if he were checking the sugar content of a cluster of grapes.
"So, you're the one who's going to carry on my secret weapon?"
"Yes, sir! Teach me anything at all! I'll give it my all, down to my bones!"
"Hmph, bury your bones in a graveyard and keep your wits about you here. Distilled spirits are a hundred times more delicate than wine."
At Warren's prickly welcome, Jacob swallowed dryly. I shoved that same Jacob forward by the back and dragged him straight into the lab deep inside the aging cellar, where the specially built distillation equipment stood. That was enough sentimental reunion for one day.
"Jacob, I looked at Golden Grain House's most recent quarterly sales report. The vodka and soju lines are stable, but the average unit price is low, so your operating margin's been stagnant. It just so happens the old man's developing a new brandy-making method, and I figured it could be a good move for your distillery."
I said it while firing up the equipment. Jacob saw my gaze turn serious in an instant and straightened his posture.
"I know. That's exactly why I'm this desperate."
At that point, Warren adjusted a valve and launched into the lesson in earnest.
"Listen well. Brandy is the work of concentrating the soul of wine. But most brandy is boiled hard over a flame. Do that, and the delicate aromas the grape holds, that soul, get scorched to death by the heat."
He pointed at the vacuum gauge on the monitor.
"The key is pressure. I've dropped the current system pressure below 80 Torr. Create a vacuum like this, and alcohol starts to boil at around thirty-five degrees Celsius. Distillation happens at a temperature below body heat."
"Thirty-five degrees? The alcohol separates at that temperature?"
Jacob asked in astonishment, and Warren flipped the data sheet without changing his expression.
"That's right, and only by holding this temperature do the volatile ester compounds derived from the grape skins settle in among the alcohol molecules without being destroyed. Don't rely on gut feeling. The instant you miss the specific threshold where the aromatic compounds separate out, what you're making isn't a luxury brandy, it's just high-proof industrial alcohol."
Warren carefully took the clear distillate held in a vial and brought it up to the tip of Jacob's nose.
"Give it a smell."
Jacob cautiously drew in a breath. In that instant, his eyes went wide.
"Wow... this... this isn't just fruit aroma. There's something like cherry blossoms opening, and then at the finish there's this sharp, clean note... whoa...!"
"That's the essence of low-temperature distillation. It's an aroma made possible precisely because we shut out any oxidation reaction from heat at the source."
Warren had Jacob work the valves himself and taught him the finer stages of distillation. It was about the timing for cutting away the foreshots and catching the hearts, and about the master's instinct for filtering out the impurities left in the tail. Jacob wrote down Warren's seasoned advice and cross-checked it against the figures on my monitor.
"Brian, you're really something. You've got the whole thing captured in data, right down to how one degree flips the aroma completely."
"Agriculture is a discipline of statistics and probability. Leaving things to chance is what gamblers do. We're making reproducible miracles."
The lesson went on for hours. Jacob poured sweat the whole time, yet didn't miss a single movement of Warren's fingertips. For him, this technique was the key that would transform Golden Grain House from an ordinary soju factory into America's finest premium distillery.
Warren carefully poured the liquid from the vial into a tasting glass. Swirling in the glass was a vivid brown liquid, nothing like the cloudy amber of ordinary brandy, tinged with a clear yet deep ruby glow.
"Wow, the color's a real work of art. But it came straight out of distillation, so how does it take on a brown color? Isn't brown supposed to come from putting it in an oak barrel?"
At Jacob's question, Warren smirked, one corner of his mouth lifting as he answered.
"If I were going to put it in an oak barrel, why would I have bothered coaxing out the cherry aroma through low-temperature distillation? Once oak's strong vanilla, smoky, and leather notes get layered on, the delicate cherry aroma would vanish without a trace anyway."
"Now that you mention it, that's true. To keep that amazing cherry aroma, it couldn't go through an oak barrel. But then how did you get this color without one?"
I answered instead of Warren.
"It's low-temperature pigment extraction. After distillation, I separated out just the anthocyanin and the core flavor compounds from the leftover cherry skins, then recombined them with the cleanest distillate at the optimal ratio."
"Ah..."
Warren laughed heartily and swirled the glass.
"Kid, brown brandy laced with the flavor of wood chips is a dime a dozen. But this is the very soul of the cherry, bottled. Drink it, and your whole definition of the spirit called brandy is going to change."
Jacob brought the glass to his lips. After the impact of the alcohol, over forty percent, swept down his throat, instead of oak's dryness a bright fragrance, as if he'd swallowed an entire cherry orchard, filled his nasal passages.
"My god... this is a revolution. The color's this deep, but the taste is refreshing beyond anything I could've imagined! What's it called?"
At Jacob's question, Warren and I looked at each other.
"Why are you looking at me?"
"I figured you'd have already come up with a name, sir."
"This isn't something to be sold here, so I didn't think about it in advance. Wasn't sure that guy would even do as I say."
At Warren's pointed finger, Jacob leapt up.
"What are you talking about? Of course I'll do as you say."
"Anyway, I've got nothing in mind. You?"
"Hm... I've got one?"
"What is it?"
"Ruby Quartz."
"Oho, ruby crystal, is it..."
Warren seemed to like it; he stroked his chin and nodded, and Jacob smiled too.
"Not bad, right? It's simple, and it captures that deep yet bright brown feel the cherry has."
I added an explanation, as though supplementing Warren.
"I haven't thought about the brandy bottle yet, but for the label I'm planning to put in the line [Crafted by Warren Winiarski], to mark it as a brandy the old man made."
"Good, good."
He nodded, looking even more satisfied.
For the name of Warren Winiarski, the lead figure of the Judgment of Paris, to be inscribed on a distilled spirit rather than a wine, was no different from lobbing a nuclear bomb into the industry. Just how would the market take this?
And Warren, anticipating that very fervor from the market, wore an expression of great expectation.
The Mondavi mansion in Oakville, the symbol of Napa Valley, lay steeped in a heavy silence unlike its usual state. Robert Mondavi, who had been staring at the vineyards beyond the window from his wheelchair, slowly turned his head. In late 2007, the body of the master who had built an empire in Napa Valley had withered, but at least the light in his eyes still burned fierce and clear.
Before him, his children stood tense. Michael, the eldest son who led the Michael Mondavi Family Estate; Timothy of Continuum Estate; and his daughter Marcia as well... the real powers of Napa had gathered in one place at their aged father's summons.
At the center of the table sat a single bottle of "Astra Vale", the hottest wine in Napa Valley these days.
Robert, whose body now held little strength, lifted the glass with a trembling hand and took in its aroma. Then, very slowly, he held the liquid in his mouth. His children held their breath, hoping their father would rebuke the provocation of this rootless upstart winery. But the master's voice, when it finally broke the silence, cruelly trampled their expectations.
"That fellow Warren said he was going off to learn something, and now I understand why. While we've been stagnating, a new wave is going to lead Napa."
Unable to hide his bewilderment at the unexpected lavish praise, Michael spoke up.
"Father, what do you mean by that? Isn't that going too far, no matter how good it is?"
But Robert shot a cold glare at his eldest son.
"You're all still hiding behind the Mondavi name, selling off the past. The wine that kept advancing in Napa Valley started stagnating at some point. And while you've been sitting comfortably, this young fellow from the East has already surpassed you."
Robert forced out a labored cough and went on.
"Keep your eye on this San Francisco competition. It may well be the place where the kingdom you built comes crashing down."
As the children exchanged uneasy glances in their bewilderment, Emily Mondavi, the granddaughter who had been quietly watching this whole scene from a corner of the room, stepped forward. She was the one said to have inherited the most of her grandfather's passion and sharp tongue. Robert handed Emily the glass and murmured in a low voice.
"Emily, do you see it? The ambition held in this wine?"
Emily took the glass without a word. Then, following her grandfather's gaze, she held the Astra Vale up to the light.
In truth, a good many of the young heirs of Napa Valley's major families had already experienced Astra Vale, and Emily was among them. For her, beyond the shock of Quiet Hill, she felt something close to dread that a wine worthy of becoming a landmark for Napa Valley had come out of Redwood.
"Grandfather is right. This isn't just a delicious wine."
She knew it even without her grandfather's added explanation. What the man named Brian Choi had thrown down in Napa Valley wasn't a simple letter of challenge, but the blueprint for a new era.
"Puzzle over it, analyze it. How a Cab like this came out of Redwood's terroir. Because if you can't figure that out, Continuum's wine will never be able to make a better wine, not in your whole life."
Mondavi's words pinpointed the most fundamental question of how Astra Vale could have been born at all. Everyone fixated only on Astra Vale's unique blending, and paid no attention to the quality of its most essential element, the Cabernet Sauvignon.
"I will."
Emily, who resembled her grandfather the most, nodded with a hardened face. She thought that the wisdom-laden instruction from her grandfather, whose time was now running short, might become the thread that let Continuum leap to the next level.
*****
Join our Discord for announcements or to report any mistakes.