Chapter 153: Ruby Quartz (2)
TL: Hanguk
The Sacramento plains stretched so wide the eye couldn't find their edge. Set right in the middle of them, the Golden Grain Soju House was thick with tension even in the late hours of the night. Jacob stood before the low-temperature vacuum distillation rig Warren had taught him to use, glaring at the numbers on the monitor.
The vacuum gauge read exactly 78 Torr, and the temperature of the heating jacket hadn't wavered so much as 0.1 degrees from 34.8 degrees Celsius. To recreate the brandy Warren had made, a spirit unlike any in the world, Jacob had gone three days without sleep.
His matted hair and the sour smell rising off his body made plain just how rough a state he was in.
"Please... just once..."
The moment Jacob's cracked voice broke the silence, a change was finally detected at the outflow tube at the end of the still. A liquid as clear as melted diamond began to bead, then poured down in a thin, steady stream. When the low-temperature colorant extract he'd prepared in advance was blended in through a precision pump, the once-transparent liquid took on a lustrous ruby-brown hue in an instant.
With trembling hands, Jacob thrust a tasting glass under the flow and caught the raw spirit.
"Done... it's done!"
While he stood there holding the glass, drunk on elation, the brewery's heavy steel door swung open and the sound of solid footsteps carried in. A man in a dark gray suit with a gold tie clip, Malcolm Lee, Vice President of Unity Spirits and Jacob's steadfast distribution partner.
"Hey, Jacob. You look like hell. Get into a fight with the workers and end up inside the still?"
Malcolm approached wearing his trademark hearty grin. The buoyant, resonant baritone characteristic of a Black man, along with the Patek Philippe watch visible at the sleeve of his fine coat, spoke to exactly where he stood in the world.
Having pulled in considerable sales and bonuses off the vodka and fruit soju produced at the Golden Grain Soju House, he'd gone around telling people he loved Jacob more than his own wife.
"Malcolm, perfect timing. Come over here. This might just be the thing that changes your life."
Malcolm's eyebrow twitched at the glass Jacob held out with such confidence. Distribution expert that he was, he read the color and texture before anything else.
"What's this? Brandy? But why's the color like that? That's way too vivid a red for oak aging. Don't tell me you used artificial coloring. I can't put anything like that on our list."
Malcolm's tone was smooth, but the substance of it was sharp.
"Just taste it first, then talk. You'll probably be shocked."
Malcolm brought the glass to the tip of his nose, his face full of doubt. In that instant, his upper body went visibly rigid.
"......!"
He stopped speaking and drew in the aroma once more, deeply. Then he wet the very tip of his tongue with a tiny amount. Where the punch of a spirit over 40 percent passed through, the scent of a fresh cherry orchard laden with morning dew bloomed like an explosion and shook his nasal passages.
Malcolm held the glass and said nothing for a long while.
"Malcolm?"
"Jacob, you crazy son of a bitch. What the hell did you do? This... this is brandy, right? But how is the aroma still alive? It feels like freshly harvested cherries were crushed on the spot and condensed straight into alcohol. How can a brandy feel this vivid?"
Awe settled into Malcolm's eyes. He held the glass up to the light, letting one exclamation after another slip out.
"Isn't it obvious? It's a technique I learned over at Redwood."
"Of course... there again."
Knowing that every spirit in this brewery was made with techniques learned at Redwood, and that Jacob held a 30% stake there, he nodded as if it all made sense.
"Not sure if you've heard, but a legendary winemaker named Warren Winiarski joined my friend's Redwood. This is a technique he developed. It's called low-temperature vacuum distillation, drawing the spirit off at a temperature below body heat, and that's how you get a brandy with the fruit aroma still fully intact like this."
"Any liquor distributor who doesn't know that man is no better than a con artist. But Warren Winiarski, making a brandy... now that's genuinely astonishing. Once this hits the market, it's not just California, every liquor lover out there is going to come running. You settle on a name yet?"
"Yeah. Ruby Quartz."
Malcolm pointed at Jacob, apparently taken with the name.
"That's really good. An outstanding name."
Malcolm turned the glass slowly, turning the names over in his mind. Thousands of distribution channels and marketing strategies were already spinning fast through his head.
Malcolm pulled a notebook from his pocket and started sketching the shape of a bottle with his pen. Rough lines took form at his fingertips.
"Let's make it different from the outside in. Forget the ordinary brandy bottle. Round and classic will only kill this revolutionary color. We need to go with a 'crystal decanter (not the smooth, round shape of a typical wine or vodka bottle, but an angular, ornately cut glass bottle like a fine whiskey or cognac, or a perfume bottle)' style, one that traps the aroma while refracting that ruby light in its most dazzling form. Like a perfume bottle, it needs plenty of angled facets so the color of the spirit shifts every time the light comes through. Just by setting this bottle on the table, the consumer should be able to steal the gaze of everyone around them."
Malcolm's eyes flashed with a businessman's heat. Then he drew another picture on a different page of the notebook. Watching from beside him, Jacob could tell he was working up a label mockup, and he spoke.
"Ah, since Warren made this spirit, we need to put the phrase [Crafted by Warren Winiarski] on it."
"Yeah? Got it. Then... let's put that phrase not dead center but along the bottom, with Warren's own signature laid in gold foil. Background in matte black, on a paper with a really coarse texture. That way the ruby liquid will shine all the more brilliantly on top of it."
Malcolm's proposals were concrete and meticulous. He was already picturing the scene of this spirit being served at a rooftop bar in New York.
"How are you thinking of handling distribution? I really do want Unity to distribute this in earnest. Otherwise..."
There was no way Malcolm missed the intent behind Jacob letting his words trail off on purpose. It was pressure, the message that if Unity wanted the contract, it would have to give its all.
"Come on, Jacob. You know how much I care about you, right? So give me a shot first."
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"Twenty-four hours. I want you to give me exactly twenty-four hours. Don't contact any other distributors until then. In the meantime I'll go back to the company, pull together the whole strategy, and come back. How's that sound?"
"Hmm... all right."
For Jacob's part, it was easier to keep the contract going with Unity Spirits, who had treated him well up to now, and he figured the partnership with Malcolm wasn't a bad one either.
"Thanks. I'll come find you before this time tomorrow. Oh, could I take a little more with me?"
"Of course."
Malcolm took about 200 ml of the Ruby Quartz sample Jacob had given him and slipped out of the brewery as though fleeing. He was in such a hurry that Jacob could see him through the window, running toward his parked car.
He reappeared at the same time the next day. Wearing a supremely confident expression, Malcolm drew a deep navy document envelope from the inside pocket of his suit and set it on the table.
"Started on it last night and wrapped it up exactly one hour ago, a preliminary contract. A dedicated deal, just for 'Ruby Quartz'."
With the tip of his fountain pen, Malcolm traced down the numbers on the document one by one.
"Go to the dinosaurs of liquor distribution, somewhere like Southern Glazer's, and Ruby Quartz is just one item among tens of thousands. They'll take 40% of the wholesale price as commission, call it standard practice, then bill you another 10% for promotion, warehousing, and the rest. So what ends up in your hand is a mere few dozen dollars a bottle. I know labor costs are killing you these days. I know that even with strong sales, the costs are just as high, so it's rough."
"...I know people who hear that would say I'm complaining about a good problem to have. And honestly, I am happy, even now. Just being able to keep working because the fruit soju is selling well, I count that as a blessing. It's only that I have to keep raising wages, so it weighs on me a little."
"Don't worry about it. My offer's going to blow that worry away in one shot. We set the recommended retail price for Ruby Quartz at 599 dollars a bottle. And Unity Spirits will buy up the entire supply from your brewery at 350 dollars a bottle."
"Three hundred and fifty dollars?"
Jacob's eyes went wide with shock. Every spirit Jacob had sold up to now had gone for less than 20 dollars a bottle. This time he'd be getting more than ten times that.
"What? You think it's too expensive?"
"No... it's just, if you price it like that, will it sell? It's not like I don't know whiskey, but selling it at the price of a whiskey aged for decades, I'm not sure that's right..."
Malcolm smiled and went on explaining, calm as ever.
"Jacob, people aren't paying for the number that says thirty years of aging. They're paying for the 'specialness' those thirty years represent. When a traditional brandy is aged thirty years, that wait is there to kill the harsh taste of the impurities left over from distillation."
"Hmm..."
"We skipped that tedious thirty-year wait with technical brilliance. Precisely because it hasn't been aged, the cherry aroma is more radiant, more devastating... this is a scent those old whiskeys couldn't produce if they came back from the dead. You think putting 599 dollars on that rare sensation is a con? No, this is charity."
At being told that 599 dollars was, if anything, cheap enough to call charity, Jacob nodded blankly.
"I see..."
"Say the production cost is 150 dollars a bottle. Then every time you sell one, you net 200 dollars in pure profit. That's the same money you'd only make selling 100 bottles of the soju you're moving now. Out of that, you send 60 dollars for the Redwood stake, and you're still left with 140. Ship just five bottles a day. That raise for the workers you've been fretting over, a whole month of it, solved right there. Well, take out the 3% royalty owed to Warren and it drops a little, but it won't make much of a difference."
Malcolm sank deep into his chair and added,
"Unity Spirits will slash the distribution commission to something unheard of, and in exchange we take the exclusive distribution rights. Marketing costs? Calling New York and Hollywood VIPs personally, throwing private parties, I'll cover 100% of that. All you do is hold the quality of the spirit exactly to that precise data Warren designed. And I'll turn this spirit into a medal that sits in the study of every man who's made it."
Jacob stared at the numbers written on the document. Malcolm's offer didn't sound like signing on one more liquor brand; it sounded like a declaration that he'd change the very weight class of the Golden Grain Soju House.
"So these are pretty extraordinary terms, then?"
Malcolm answered with a grin.
"Of course. The moment I made this, I was certain. Go ahead and hear out offers from other distributors if you want. There won't be anywhere that beats us."
"Hmm..."
Malcolm's offer really was good enough to justify coming on this confident. He added, expression brimming with self-assurance.
"In case you have any doubts, let me explain. There are a few reasons we can put terms this bold on the table.
First, because Warren Winiarski's name is stamped behind this spirit. A legend's endorsement can't be converted into dollars. Second, because of Brian Choi, who holds 30% of your stake. I'm watching in real time the kind of monstrous things that guy is pulling off in Napa Valley. I want to be standing in the path of the massive storm called Redwood before it hits. Ruby Quartz is my ticket into that storm."
Malcolm tapped the Ruby Quartz bottle on the table with a finger.
"You want to be one of the tens of thousands supplying Southern Glazer's, or do you want to build a new standard of luxury together with Unity Spirits? Jacob, choose. I want you to become a young titan of the distilled spirits industry, not the owner of some little brewery."
Jacob read the businessman's conviction in Malcolm's eyes. He picked up the fountain pen lying beside him.
"All right. Malcolm, I'll trust that nerve of yours."
When Jacob finished signing, Malcolm extended his hand, looking satisfied.
"A wise choice, partner. Let's do something about this little brewery first. You're not seriously planning to add brandy with the facility exactly as it is, are you?"
"Of course not. I already called in the contractors a while ago. I'm planning to spend every bit of the funds I've saved up."
The Golden Grain Soju House, once a small brewery, was now steadily making its way toward becoming a mid-sized company.
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