Chapter 64: 2005 Vintage Cerasia (1)
TL: Hanguk
After driving for over an hour, I arrived at the winery and headed for the warehouse, where my Dad, already notified, was checking the vinegar with Armando.
"You're here?"
"They haven't arrived yet?"
"Nah. What's it called... the Agricultural Extension... you know the place? They said they're coming again for another organic farming inspection slash hands-on visit. They show up like clockwork, practically every two months."
"That's why organic certification is no easy feat. If they come when I'm not around, just handle it the best you can. You can give them a general rundown on the fertilizer side, and for the pest management stuff, feel free to tell them everything."
"Got it."
Just then, a refrigerated truck came into view in the distance. The tractor head was a Freightliner Columbia with a 53ft reefer trailer attached.
The vehicle hauled the trailer up near the warehouse, then backed its rear end toward the warehouse doors and came to a stop.
"I'm a little early, aren't I?"
John Anderson hopped down from the truck and approached with a beaming smile, handing Dad an invoice right away. He had already gone over the order details before coming, but they needed a proper paper trail to keep things official.
"You want all of it?"
Dad was stunned. The invoice listed a staggering 16,500 units. Before the visit, they had verbally agreed on 10,000, but the number had grown since then. He was essentially asking to clean out every last bottle of vinegar in the warehouse.
"It's a hassle to make another trip all the way out here. And on the way over, I got calls from Fairway Market and Safeway too. Apparently word about Redwood Vinegar is spreading fast. They said that even though the price went up, they didn't bat an eye, just wanted to know how much stock was available."
"Ha ha... well, how about that..."
"We're burning daylight, so let's get started."
When they opened the warehouse doors, a rush of cold air hit them first, followed by the sharp, pungent smell of vinegar. On every pallet, twelve-bottle cases tightly wrapped in shrink film were stacked high, and the white labels bore [Redwood Reserve Vinegar] and lot codes in bold print.
Beep-beep-beep-
The electric pallet jack beeped its warning every time it reversed, and John Anderson, already inside the trailer, used a manual pallet jack to stack everything neatly from the back.
There were over 16,000 bottles, but moving twenty pallets didn't take all that long. Wearing a worn-out field jacket, John Anderson loaded the last of the vinegar into the trailer and broke into a wide grin.
"Good work, guys. Here's the check."
John Anderson cut a check for the vinegar payment right on the spot. With this, the vinegar alone had brought in $225,000. It might pale in comparison to wine sales, but pulling in over 200 million won in Korean currency significantly eased the burden of running the farm and rebuilding the Silver Oak property.
When I checked the barcode on the side of a case, John smirked and said,
"Checking the case UPC (Universal Product Code: the barcode used in the US)? Don't worry, no scanning issues. If it didn't match, it wouldn't have been received in the first place."
"Ha ha, yeah... I was just taking a look."
But then, John Anderson, who had been all smiles the entire time, suddenly looked hurt.
"I heard you made something called cherry wine? Apparently it's huge in the restaurant scene? When people hear 'Redwood', they're not talking about the vinegar anymore, they're all bringing up Cerasia."
"Ah... that's right. We made it."
"So why didn't you call me?"
The atmosphere turned uncomfortable for a moment, but I played it cool.
"The cherries didn't come from our farm. We sourced them from the Brentwood farm. Everything made from grapes grown on our property goes through you, Mr. Anderson."
"That may be true, but..."
If the cherry wine was that famous, he could have made far more profit distributing it, so he clearly felt slighted. But that didn't mean I was going to give up the winery's share of the profits for his sake.
"We're planning to distribute the wine around September. There should be revenue then, so don't feel too left out. And a contract is a contract."
From the very beginning, the contract had specified grapes grown on the Redwood farm and processed goods made from those grapes, so there were no issues on that front.
"Ahem..."
"And if you really think about it, distributing vinegar wasn't even on your radar when you handed the farm over."
The contract with him was for exactly two years. From the winery's standpoint, there was nothing to lose.
As if he knew that, John Anderson snapped to his senses, suddenly flashed a grin, and spoke in a completely different tone.
"What are you talking about? I wasn't speaking for myself. I was speaking on behalf of Redwood Winery."
"On our behalf?"
"Since the winery was distributing directly, you couldn't exactly push hard on pricing, could you? If I'd handled distribution, I could've gotten you a much better price. How much did you distribute it for last year? Per bottle."
"Eighteen dollars."
John Anderson flinched. He clearly hadn't expected the cherry wine to have sold at that price point. But he pressed on as though he couldn't let this go.
"I'll get you more than that. Twenty dollars wholesale. How about it? When you factor in the shipping costs and all the headaches of distributing it yourself, you'd actually be coming out more than two dollars ahead per bottle."
Now he was making real sense. I glanced back at Dad, who looked quite satisfied and gave a subtle nod. I shrugged and said,
"Sounds good. Let's do it."
"Ha ha ha! Great. Smart move."
With that, he drove off from the winery in high spirits. Watching the truck shrink into the distance, I muttered,
"Pretty impressive."
Dad let out a dry laugh too.
"I was shocked myself. He must have been upset, but he thought on his feet and turned the whole situation around... That man seemed incompetent when he was running the farm, but put him in distribution and he's a completely different person."
"I guess so. It's wild. I honestly thought he was about to pick a fight with us just now. I figured we'd just ride out the two years and never see him again, but instead he's extending the contract."
"But isn't he overreaching? If he's paying twenty dollars wholesale per bottle, how much margin does he expect to make at retail?"
Personally, I thought he could easily get $25 or more, but objectively speaking, it was a stretch. I didn't even know if he had ever tasted the cherry wine. Still, now that things had worked out this way, I hoped he would manage to sell it for $25 or above and make good money. That would be good for us too.
Lumiere, a restaurant in downtown San Francisco.
Around 5 PM, the peak of dinner prep, the sound of blades hitting cutting boards on stainless steel counters rang out without pause. Chicken stock was reducing in the oven, filling the air with its aroma, while a blender whirred on the other side as someone prepared salad dressing.
In the middle of it all, owner-chef Daniel Rocane carefully gazed down at the small glass bottle in his hand. The clear liquid shimmered faintly as it caught the light. Redwood Reserve grape vinegar, brought from the Robert Mondavi Institute a few days earlier.
He uncapped the bottle, dabbed a tiny bit on the tip of a spoon, and placed it on his tongue.
"... The flavor is unreal."
Just then, his phone rang. It was Jonathan Becker, who ran a restaurant nearby.
"Daniel, what's that vinegar called again?"
"Redwood Reserve Vinegar."
"Ah, here it is. There's a promotion going on right now. Ha ha, it says the vinegar that sold out last year is finally back in stock. Definitely not some mass-produced factory vinegar, I take it."
"No, it's not. Trust me on this."
"Twenty-seven dollars? That's pretty steep for vinegar."
"Twenty-seven dollars? That's it? I would've paid fifty."
"Seriously? Aren't you exaggerating a little?"
"Taste it, and you'll thank me."
"All right. I'll give it a shot."
After hanging up, Daniel smirked. He had already tipped off five owner-chefs at restaurants around San Francisco. Some might wonder why he would share that kind of information, but it wasn't some exotic import. It was a product sold at major grocery stores. Trying to hoard that knowledge would only last so long.
Better to share freely and receive other tips in return. He had learned that lesson over long years of running his restaurant.
After hanging up, Daniel set the bottle down on the counter with a thud.
"How many of these did we pick up today?"
"Redwood Vinegar? The staff said they brought in ten bottles. But isn't Redwood the winery that makes Cerasia, that cherry wine that's been getting a lot of buzz lately?"
Daniel tilted his head.
"Cerasia? How come I never heard of it?"
"Oh, there was some talk about a cherry wine going around before, but at the time, Chef, you..."
"What? Did I trash it?"
"Ha ha, yeah..."
"Ah... I actually did that?"
He had always favored proven recipes and traditional wines, so something like cherry wine, which could hardly even be called wine in his view, was something he simply couldn't accept. He must have heard about it and let it go in one ear and out the other.
"I guess the response was good?"
"Every restaurant that carried it had a positive reception, but they actually ran short on supply and couldn't restock."
"Oh! Now I remember. Wine Review West. It even got reviewed there."
"That's right."
"Huh... I saw that and just passed it over, but that was Redwood's? Now I'm curious."
"It's probably not available at wine shops. Only a handful of restaurants would have it, so it won't be easy to get."
"Can't be helped."
Daniel nodded at the sous chef's response, then called over Joey, the sommelier, and pointed toward the wine cellar.
"There's a lot of Mondavi Private Selection stacked up in there, right?"
"Yes, that's correct. It's a mid-to-low-range line that's been a bit of an awkward sell, so it hasn't moved much."
"Starting today, set up the pairings the way I told you. By the glass, but make sure the temperature and glass shape are spot on."
He had laid out the pairings to match the exact course that the young Asian man had designed at the Winkler Dinner.
"Yes, I'll follow this exactly."
Daniel Rocane, who had been feeling frustrated by the slow decline in revenue lately, felt as though the Winkler Dinner, which he had attended partly just to pick up a bit of extra cash, might have given him the breakthrough he needed.
"Back it up, back it up!"
A massive Volvo VNL with a 53ft reefer trailer pulled into the winery once again. The last time, it had been John Anderson coming to pick up the vinegar stockpiled in the warehouse. This time, it was the opposite. The job was to transport cherries from the Brentwood farm to the winery.
The weight of the cherry crates pouring off the truck thudded against the warehouse floor. Ice packing glinted on every pallet, and the red cherry clusters gleamed so brightly in the sunlight they were almost blinding.
"They said it'll be about five trips of twenty tons each."
Chloe, who had come along personally with the driver to make the delivery, handed over the invoice with a shy grin. It was a staggering volume, a full 100 tons, but this time the feeling was less daunting and more manageable.
"Good."
"Let me take a look at the new expansion."
Even from the outside, the new building added alongside the existing winery was catching Chloe's eye.
"Sure, follow me."
I waved to the workers and led Chloe toward the new building. Until last month, the space had been nothing but a bare steel frame standing alone. Now, gray concrete walls were lined with insulation, and inside, gleaming stainless steel tanks stood in rows.
"Wow..."
Chloe's eyes went wide the moment she stepped through the doorway.
Right in front of her stood five custom-built 5,000-liter fermentation tanks lined up in a row. Their surfaces had been electropolished to a mirror finish, and digital thermometer panels were mounted on their sides. Multipoint temperature sensors attached at the top, middle, and bottom of each tank were connected by cables, transmitting real-time data to a monitor.
"It's like a computer lab in here. This is all for wine?"
"Yeah. With fermentation, small differences change the outcome completely. If the temperature varies between the top and bottom, the flavor changes too. Now we don't have to rely on just our eyes."
A little further in, two towering 10,000-liter tanks rose nearly to the ceiling. Glycol cooling lines ran alongside the tanks, and small lights blinked on a PLC control panel. The system automatically kicked in the cooling whenever the fermentation temperature exceeded the set threshold.
Chloe peered closely at the small valve fitted beneath one of the tanks.
"Do you taste from here too?"
"Yep. We draw samples right from here during fermentation to check the flavor. Sanitized lines, of course."
Passing through the corridor and into the oak aging room, the rich scent of wood filled the air. Eighty newly arrived French oak barrels stood in neat rows, and some already seemed to glow softly, as if waiting for wine.
"New barrels too?"
"Yeah. I mixed French Allier and American white oak. I ordered different toast levels for each barrel, too. I want to compare which ones work best with cherry wine."
Chloe ran her fingertips along the surface of the wood and drew in a slow, even breath.
"The scent alone is enough to make you dizzy."
I smiled and walked between the oak barrels, pointing to the newly built barrel rack.
"Some of the cherry wine from this batch will age here. The rest will finish fermenting in stainless steel."
"So the cherry wine quality will be even better than before?"
"Of course. We upgraded the existing equipment too. Our winery has leveled up."
I ran my hand along the custom 5,000-liter fermentation tank and smiled.
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