Chapter 68: Echelon (1)
TL: Hanguk
It was still before summer, and I was on my way to Alexander Valley with Armando's family. After all, Armando alone wasn't in a position to make a decision involving over a million dollars.
We pulled up in front of a small winery building perched above the vineyard. The sign read 'Laguna Creek Winery' in uneven, crooked lettering. Laguna Creek. The name had a friendly ring to it.
"This place... doesn't look bad, actually."
Armando let out a low breath. A sound mixed with anticipation and tension.
His father Jean, broad-shouldered with white hair, stepped out of the driver's seat and quietly raised an eyebrow.
"It always looks fine on the outside. The real problems never show themselves."
Closing the door behind her, Armando's mother Rosa gave a small laugh.
"Don't start with that already. Brian came along, so he'll take a good look for us."
The two of them were relying entirely on my opinion rather than Armando's. Having heard through their son, who had worked at our farm since his high school days, about how Redwood Winery had been transforming, both of them placed considerable trust in me.
Perhaps because we had called ahead, as we approached the house attached to the farm, the door swung open with a clatter as if they had been waiting. A man appeared, with silvery short-cropped hair and a neatly trimmed beard. His eyelids were heavy with accumulated fatigue, and his shoulders sagged as though drained of strength.
The man, who looked to be in his early forties, approached with what seemed like a forced smile.
"Thomas Green. Are you the one who called...?"
"Armando Cortes. I'm the one who got in touch."
Thomas's gaze lingered on the young face. For just a moment, his expression stiffened slightly. But he quickly mustered up a smile.
"Thanks for coming all this way. Do you have any experience?"
"Yes, I do."
Armando answered confidently, but Thomas only nodded with an indifferent expression.
We started walking from the south-facing block where the rows of grapevines were lined up. Thomas pointed with the tip of his toe at a severed drip hose.
"That should've been replaced last month, but we were short on hands so it got pushed back. Before summer hits, you've got to check the pressure row by row and swap them out... doing it alone, this much takes a week."
The weariness of the work came through in his bitter smile.
"How's the soil condition?"
"Soil? It's good."
That was the extent of his answer. There was no chance of getting a response about what kind of fertilizer and compost he used, what kind of environment he had built, or how he was managing it.
"Fortunately, it looks like the wildfires passed you by?"
"That's right. Last year the wildfire came down the mountainside from the north, but it didn't reach our side. So the location itself is excellent."
Armando's eyes sparkled. Rosa carefully touched the bark of the surrounding trees and looked relieved.
While the two of them were inspecting the land, I studied the grapes. Overall they weren't bad, but here and there I could see grapes that had been eaten by insects, and some vines whose berries weren't ripening properly.
On the way back to the house, I slipped in a question.
"Is there a reason you're selling the farm?"
He had that look in his eyes, wondering why a young Asian guy was part of this group, but seeing that Armando and his parents treated me with unspoken respect, he shrugged and answered.
"I want out. When I first moved out to the countryside, I was smitten by the peaceful rural scenery. Look at that, the Russian River flowing in the distance, the overwhelming views. Just looking at it was healing. I'd run away from a life where I woke up to the alarm every morning, commuted on a piss-reeking subway, and fell asleep clutching Excel files at night."
From his answer, I realized he had been worn down by a life much like my own. The only difference between us, I suppose, was that I had already known what farming's exhaustion and backbreaking labor really meant.
"I see. That must have been rough."
"Ha ha, yeah. Then one time I took vacation, traveled around out here, and at some winery I had a glass of red wine. That tannic grip on the tongue... strangely enough, it felt like comfort. Right, this is what I'll do, I told myself. There was romance in it. At first everyone praised me. Said I was brave, said they envied me. On social media the glass sparkled, the comments poured in with applause... and then... being a farmer turned out to be a far cry from the romance I'd imagined."
When he reached the winery next to the house, he flung the door open. Inside, stainless steel tanks stood in silvery rows, and the quietly clinging smell of wine mingled with the scent of old oak, hovering at the tip of my nose.
"Reality is getting up and starting with pulling weeds. The weeds here are real devils. I run the tractor every week, but a week after I use it, they grow right back to the same height."
This guy apparently didn't know cover crops had to be planted every winter. Sowing rye, barley, or clover in the winter to cover the ground would reduce weed growth, and in spring they could be tilled under and put to use as organic matter.
And looking at the ground, he should have been doing mulching, covering the soil with things like straw, wood chips, or compost to block out the light and suppress weed germination, but he wasn't doing that either.
His complaints went on.
"Water? Water's always short. I had no idea the water bills and electricity bills would be this steep. At harvest, I run myself ragged trying to find workers. And if I do happen to find someone, that's not the end of it, two days later something comes up and they don't show. Ha ha, farm work is no joke, I'm telling you."
The fact that water was constantly short and the bills kept piling up meant that, even though he was using drip irrigation, he wasn't regulating moisture using SWP. In various areas, it was clear that his lack of knowledge about grape cultivation had landed him in trouble.
On the flip side, even though what he was saying could plant a bad impression of the farm, he spoke openly without hiding anything. When I looked at him as if surprised, Thomas, seeming to catch the meaning in my expression, let out a small laugh and said,
"Sounds like I'm making it up, right? It's all true. You're probably wondering why I'm going on about all the bad stuff, but we're talking about 1.1 million dollars here. I don't want to keep all this hidden and just pump people's chests full of hot air to make the sale. That's what was done to me."
"Ah..."
"Still, it's not all bad. The fantastic wine I wanted so badly is right here beside me. Every now and then, when a big order goes out, all the hardship I've been through gets forgotten."
"I can imagine."
"The unfortunate part is that good wine needs time, I suppose? Time and money, both at once."
Looking back and forth between me and Armando, he said,
"So the person who'll actually be running the farm is...?"
"Me."
When Armando stepped forward once again, Thomas asked in a skeptical tone,
"How old are you?"
"A little over twenty."
"Doing this at your age... do you even know what it involves? The only break you get is a little bit in winter, otherwise you're working all year round. When it rains you worry about the soil washing away, when the wind blows every single leaf flips over."
He lectured Armando like some tedious preacher delivering a sermon. But whatever Armando might have been scoffing at inwardly, he didn't let any of it show.
"Yes, I've worked on a farm before, so I know. My friend here owns a farm in Napa Valley."
"Oh, really?"
Only then did Thomas's eyes widen, and he looked at me briefly. Then he fished a little.
"What's the name of the farm?"
"Redwood."
"Oh... I don't really know it, but I'm sure it's a good place. If you've got experience, then I don't really have anything else to say."
He closed his mouth as though there was nothing more to say, and I checked over the state of the winery. Even if his skills fell short, he had been using the winery's equipment consistently, so there didn't seem to be any particular areas of concern. And even if there were, a contractor would have to come through at some point anyway to clean everything out and fix up the problem spots.
"Think it over, and let me know once you've decided."
He spoke with ease, as though this had happened a few times already. But Armando met my eyes, then turned to Jean and Rosa.
"I'll do it."
Seeing the firm resolve in his gaze, Jean and Rosa looked over at me. Their eyes asking whether this was really all right. The pressure truly weighed on me, but thinking there would be no problem as long as a wildfire didn't sweep everything away, I told them it should be fine.
And so the contract date was set, and a thin smile traced across the lips of Thomas, who had put the farm up for sale. Just from that, I could feel how much he wanted to wrap things up quickly.
In the car on the way home, Armando, unlike on the drive out to the farm, spoke with a tense expression.
"You're gonna help me out a lot, right?"
"Of course. You already know a lot yourself. Why'd that guy fail?"
"He barely had any knowledge about farming. You're supposed to lay down cover crops in winter, but hearing him say winter's when he gets to rest... I didn't see many pheromone traps for pest control either. Looking at the state of the grapes, it didn't look like he'd been doing proper fertilization at the right times. Just the way he said 'it's good' when you asked about the soil..."
"Right."
"It didn't look like he was measuring SWP with a pressure chamber either, and nothing about the winemaking side seemed particularly special. He just... looked like someone who bought a winery because it seemed nice, without knowing anything about it."
"Good eye. If you can see that much, it's hard to call you a rookie farmer anymore."
"Yeah?"
Armando, looking a little brighter, let out a sigh of relief and said,
"It's a bit nerve-wracking, but I think it's gonna be fun."
"Yeah, it's fun alright, fun it is..."
Armando and I rode back in the car, gazing at the beautiful scenery, carrying both worry and excitement at the same time.
On the day Armando took over the farm, we threw a party at the newly acquired winery. With all four friends now owning our own farms, there was some inexplicably strong sense of camaraderie between us.
The Silver Oak farm property transformed as quickly as the money we poured in and the sweat I shed; Chloe was gradually coming to look more like a real cherry farm owner, and Armando threw himself desperately into turning his newly acquired farm into something like Redwood.
Time flew by, and when September came around and Jacob's distillery, the Golden Grain Soju House, was gradually taking shape, the moment we had been waiting for finally arrived.
A wine tasting event was being held in anticipation of the release of the Cabernet Sauvignon-based blended wine we had waited so long for.
When the door to the winery's aging room opened, cold air and the scent of wood spilled out together.
"It's been a year since I've seen all of you."
At the appearance of Dad, dressed in a black shirt and an apron embroidered with the winery's logo, the eyes of those who had come to the tasting lit up with anticipation, and a good many of them were faces I already knew well.
From Theodore Goodwin of 'Blaze Bistro', to Joshua Lumpkin of 'La Fiorentina', André Leclerc of 'Le Jardin', Owen Hall of 'Vineyard Table', and even Daniel Rocane of Lumière, who had worked alongside me at the Winkler Dinner before.
All of them had answered Redwood's invitation and gladly come to this tasting. Having tasted the shocking debut of our cherry wine Cerasia, there was no way they could have missed this event, which would let them see Redwood's true face.
"I am truly delighted to see all of you again at this tasting."
In Dad's hand was a single bottle of red wine. And he was deliberately covering the label with his other hand, which sent the attendees' curiosity through the roof.
"The wine I will be presenting to you all today is Redwood Winery's first red wine released out of Napa, a blend centered around Cabernet Sauvignon. I believe this wine is the very starting point that shows where Redwood will be heading from here."
Anticipation welled up in everyone's eyes.
"Redwood Winery's first blended wine, I will introduce it here and now."
Every gaze in the room zeroed in on Dad's hand, and the room held its breath.
"Echelon."
*****
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