Chapter 85: The One (3)
TL: Hanguk
On an afternoon when the winter rain that had poured all day briefly let up, the inside of Golden Grain Soju House was filled with the scent of damp iron and the subtle aroma of grain.
On the table, the bottles that were like today's protagonists stood demurely. 'Echelon', 'Sylphide', 'Cerasia', and 'The One', filling its white glass with a transparent clarity.
Journalist Miriam Ross set her recorder in the middle of the table and smiled. The notepad she pulled from inside her light dress jacket bore distinct creases from being folded over.
"Alright. The photo shoot's all wrapped up, so now I just need to hear your stories. Don't be nervous, just talk the way you usually talk to each other."
Jacob drew in a breath and elbowed me lightly in the side.
"Don't get nervous."
The most nervous person in the room was Jacob himself. Even now he was sitting bolt upright and staring straight ahead.
The most relaxed person, surprisingly, was Armando. The guy was wearing a confident smile and gazing lovingly at journalist Miriam Ross. Miriam Ross, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, was, objectively speaking, pretty.
"How did the four of you first meet? It feels like four different paths leading in the same direction."
The answer came from Armando, of course.
"It was fate."
"......"
At the sight of Armando staring fixedly at Miriam, the three friends who knew him exchanged glances of disgust. But Armando pretended not to notice and went on, lavishing his attention on her.
"All of us went to Vintage High School in Napa, and we were all interested in farming. Except Chloe."
"I was interested too, you know?"
When Chloe glared at him wide-eyed, Armando laughed and waved his hand.
"Sure, let's say so. Anyway, we all gathered around Brian here. Brian's got a genius for farming. Jacob, as you can see, is strong, and Chloe's family is loaded. As you saw when we filmed at the farm, they own a lot more than just the 200-acre cherry orchard in Brentwood."
"What about you, Armando?"
"Me... I'm a romantic."
All of us either turned our heads or hung them low.
"Oh my, really?"
"But there's one thing. About farming, I'm dead serious. The vast vineyards, the grapes ripening with the seasons, and the work I repeat every day to grow them. From one angle it might seem boring, but when you look down at the farm from above, it's a feast for the eyes. The view of the Russian River from our farm is like a painting. You saw it during the shoot, didn't you?"
"I did. It was breathtaking."
"You know what's funny? When I first thought about doing this farming thing, I figured it'd be incredibly boring. But it turned out to be nothing like boring. There are tasks set for each season, and you have to constantly study and take in the latest research. Fall behind, and you can't pull ahead."
"Ahh..."
The amazing thing was, while my friends and I were mortified by the whole situation, journalist Miriam Ross was listening to Armando with sparkling eyes, as if she were hearing the most fascinating story in the world.
At first I thought it was just journalistic professionalism, but as time wore on, she really did seem to find Armando's story genuinely interesting.
"But if there's one downside, it's that it's lonely. Farming is a lonely thing. The fact that the farmer has to bear every outcome entirely alone is what makes it lonely."
"Oh dear..."
With her eyes shimmering as if, were there no one else around, she might just take Armando's hand, Chloe couldn't take it anymore and cleared her throat.
"Ahem... Anyway, we met in high school, and each of us had been helped by Brian at one point. That's how we got close, and we got even closer when we all went to UC Davis together."
Snapped out of it, perhaps by the change in mood, journalist Miriam Ross moved on to her next question.
"Fascinating. Now let's dig a little deeper..."
The interview stretched on for nearly a full hour, and we talked about farming, alcohol, and our individual lives.
Eventually, Miriam said as she switched off the recorder,
"That's plenty. This will probably run with a big headline near the front of the January issue. It was a pretty impressive story."
"Thanks for your hard work."
"Mind if I reach out to you at this number? I think I could share a lot more with you about new farming techniques, or about liquor."
Armando, flirting right up to the very end. Even Chloe shook her head at his relentless efforts and muttered under her breath, "I want to kill him." But what left us even more stunned was journalist Miriam Ross's response, nodding bashfully back at him.
In any case, although Armando had made the interview unexpectedly sticky, we were more than satisfied with how it had gone.
The eventful year of 2005 came to a close, and 2006 dawned.
Not one of us was taking it easy just because it was winter. I, who should have been the busiest, was actually the one with the most free time, while Armando was preparing for next year's farming and had taken out an additional loan to age some of the vinegar he was producing in oak barrels, all for the sake of quality.
Jacob was running his distillery nonstop because of 'The One', which was steadily making a name for itself, and Chloe, on top of her existing cherry orchard, was stabilizing the freshly tilled soil where she planned to convert her tomato fields into a pear orchard.
Then,
"Brian! Look at this!"
Chloe had barged all the way into our house, waving a magazine in her hand and shouting.
"Oh my, Chloe~ you're getting prettier and prettier."
"Thank you, ma'am. You're getting more beautiful too."
"Don't say things like that. Have you eaten?"
"No. Make me something delicious."
"Sure, have a seat. So what's that you've got there?"
"Well, we're in a magazine!"
"The interview you did before?"
"Yes!"
When I came downstairs, Chloe had already claimed a seat at the dining table and was waving the magazine around.
"Come over here! We're in it."
The January 2006 issue of Blender had Britney Spears on the cover. Below it, past the table of contents, in the third section, 'Fresh Faces', there we were.
The headline read in big letters [The One, Four Young Farmers of California], with a smaller line tucked beneath it: From Vine to Spirit, A Generation's New Taste.
The photographs were varied. Me sitting on a tractor, gazing out over distant fields. Armando gripping a valve beside a stainless steel fermentation tank. Chloe leaning between cherry trees. Jacob holding 'The One' up to the light beside a still. Below the photos was a short caption.
[They are not making alcohol. They are making a future.]
"Not bad."
At my reaction, Chloe instead opened her eyes wide and gave me a strange look.
"That's all? It's Blender."
"Aren't you the one getting too worked up? You were so unfazed during the interview I thought you were finding the whole thing a chore."
"That was... all because of Armando. He was hitting on the reporter so blatantly I couldn't keep a straight face, it was disgusting. Anyway, look, I came out well, didn't I?"
In her cowboy hat, Chloe looked exactly like a female model doing a farmer-themed photo shoot.
"Looks good."
"Pfft, that's it?"
"I'm saying it's good."
Mom, who had brought out the food, took Chloe's side.
"He's just naturally a bit blunt. When he says 'good', that's actually high praise, it means pretty. And the way I see it, you're much prettier than this woman on the cover."
"Really? Prettier than Britney Spears?"
"I don't know what her name is, but in my eyes, Chloe is much prettier."
"Thank you. I'll enjoy the meal."
After expressing her thanks, Chloe shot me a look that said, "Did you hear that?"
"I wasn't saying you didn't look good either."
Avoiding Chloe's sparkling gaze, I studied the magazine more closely. Looking at Jacob, beaming brightly while holding up 'The One', I started to wonder whether Korean-style distilled liquor might find its place in America more easily than I'd thought.
"Mom! Take a look at this!"
At the same hour Chloe was barging into Brian's house, Jacob was charging into his own home with the magazine in hand.
"What's this? My goodness... my son is in here like this?"
Maggie ran her fingers over Jacob's face in the magazine her son had shown her.
"You came out well. You look just like your dad when he was young."
"Yeah? Anyway, the liquor should sell well now."
After signing with Unity Spirits, aside from the 500 cases they'd taken initially, no additional shipments had been requested yet. They were probably distributing that first batch to key supermarkets and bars and waiting to see the reaction.
"Mom believes in you. And it makes me so happy to see you in here looking close with your friends. People who have lots of money and success but are lonely are unhappy. I don't want you to become someone like that."
"Don't worry. I have a really good relationship with these guys. And they're all friends I have a lot to learn from, so I wouldn't dare treat them carelessly."
He hesitated briefly when Armando came to mind, of course... but he let it slide, figuring even Armando had things worth learning from.
"That's right. When you treat close ones carelessly, you end up hurting them. Always be careful and treat them well."
"Got it."
Then, a week after the magazine came out, a call came in. It was Malcolm Lee, the Vice President of Unity Spirits.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Jacob. You see the magazine? What did I tell you? The One, this thing's gone absolutely wild."
His voice already carried that distinct, exuberant energy of a Black man.
"I saw the magazine. So what else is going on?"
"We're already getting reactions. Clubs in LA are tripping over each other to put in orders. The big places, twenty cases. Even small bars, five cases each. It's already past 300 cases combined, I'm telling you."
"Really?"
"The reaction I was hoping for is rolling in. You go to a club, everyone's holding up the bottle for photos, going wild. The DJs shout 'To The One!' before they drop a track. Your liquor is flowing right alongside the music, wahaha!"
It was astonishing news. Jacob couldn't hide his excitement and clenched his fists tight.
"Is that really true?"
"How much stock you got in the warehouse right now?"
"I've got 500 cases made for the moment."
"That's not enough."
"Huh?"
"You know the magazine didn't only ship in California, right? Right now the response is coming mainly from clubs in LA, where there are a lot of Asians, because the magazine called it Korean-style liquor introduced by your Korean friend. But it'll spread out gradually. I need 1,000 cases right now. Can you swing it?"
"Y-yeah, I can."
"Okay, bro. Fill that warehouse up with 'The One' right now. My guys are gonna come tearing through to clear it out."
"Got it."
After hanging up, Jacob clenched his fist and let out a silent cheer.
A thousand cases meant revenue of over $120,000 even by a rough estimate. Considering rice was the largest single ingredient by share, the net profit had to come out to nearly half of that at minimum, which meant a huge chunk of the financial troubles he'd run into while running the farm would be resolved.
"I can do it, I can do this..."
While Jacob was reaching the threshold of success like that,
[Redwood Vineyards]
I had changed the name on the fence of what had originally been Ironwood Cellars. Adding a portion of the Silver Oak farm property to this place, the farm now stretched to about 60 acres. It was respectable enough now to be considered a mid-sized operation.
"Phew... it's huge."
Gazing out at the farm spreading on as if it had no end, I smiled faintly. There was still plenty of work to do on the soil, but in 2006 a full 100-plus tons of Cabernet Sauvignon were on the way to being produced.
Echelon alone was set to pour out at more than triple last year's volume.
"Last year was just the trial run."
The Echelon to be made now would be produced through the latest equipment, fitted with temperature sensors, dissolved oxygen (DO) sensors, and CO₂ sensors for fermentation. Even though I'd still be coaxing the flavor out in just a year, the same as before, it was bound to be a different wine from the last.
Last year it had taken Double Gold. What about this year?
I was already starting to look forward to it.
*****
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