Chapter 98: Cult Wine (4)
TL: Hanguk
After my visit to Christopher's White & Company Wine Trading in LA, October rolled around and I started the grape harvest alongside the Sylphide bottling. The harvest itself was done by workers picking by hand, so all I had to do was keep checking the condition of things, and the bottling was much the same.
Inside the aging cellar, a strange heat hung in the air, a mix of metal and fruit aromas. Each time a valve on a stainless steel barrel opened, a stream of red liquid poured out, and the conveyor belt on the bottling line turned at a steady pace.
The clink of bottles knocking together and the sharp hiss of the pneumatic valves releasing echoed through the cellar.
"Keep the speed steady. Too fast and we get foam."
I could see the workers tense up at my voice. Redwood had become a fairly well-known winery in Napa Valley by now, so the workers we had on hand were a little better at their jobs than before.
Part of it was that the existing staff had grown more skilled with their hands and learned the routines and work patterns specific to each winery, but a bigger factor was that the environment had shifted: people now wanted to work here, which meant we could hire employees with strong experience and skill.
Not every winery worker was an immigrant. There were plenty of young people who were just genuinely interested in wine, eager to learn, and willing to work at a winery for relatively modest pay.
On that front, Redwood was the kind of workplace young winemakers who really understood the industry wanted to join, but even after they were hired, we didn't share the core know-how of our winemaking with them. That was probably true at any winery. What they could learn was viticulture and the basic processes of actual winemaking.
In any case, thanks to those employees, I was able to lay out my workflow efficiently and focus only on the tasks that really mattered.
"But this, is this something the other wineries don't use? When I went for training before, no one mentioned anything like this."
Dad was studying all the various sensors attached to the aging stainless steel tank, asking the question. We'd installed them quite a while ago, and at the time I'd just told him this was something we obviously had to do, so he'd taken it at face value. But recently he'd been taking wine production classes at UC Davis, and apparently it had piqued his curiosity.
"It's definitely better to have them. And there are probably other wineries using these too, they just don't show them off externally the way we don't."
"Huh, makes sense."
UC Davis offered specialized instruction to winery owners and vineyard managers, not just undergraduate students. Dad had signed up and started taking those classes this fall semester.
"With temperature, CO₂, and dissolved oxygen sensors attached like this, you can know exactly what state the fermentation is in, so you can pull the maximum potential out of what the grapes are carrying."
"But what numbers are you supposed to be aiming for?"
I glanced at the tablet in my hand. The fermentation temperature in each barrel was locked in to within ±0.1℃, and the CO₂ concentration was falling at a uniform rate. The DO (Dissolved Oxygen) graph was holding steady in a straight line.
But trying to explain this required so much foundational knowledge that he didn't yet have.
"That depends on the situation... heh heh..."
There was still too much to explain given where Dad's knowledge was at.
"Lots more to learn, huh."
"You're taking classes at the university now, so you'll get there in no time. Does anyone in the class look at you funny?"
When the owner of Redwood Winery signed up for a winemaking course, they'd put him through verification several times during registration. Imagine how flustered they must have been when the owner of a winery that had already taken two Double Golds at once enrolled in a winemaking program.
"At first, yeah, but I just sit quietly through the lessons and leave, so nobody really looks at me strangely anymore. If I had to guess, I think they suspect our previous wines got those Double Golds out of luck."
"Hahaha, that figures."
Someone else might worry about whether this would hurt the Redwood brand, but I didn't care. Sure, it was important to drive wine sales and build Redwood's reputation, but I couldn't bring myself to pass up a learning opportunity I should rightfully take just for that. And if I had to sit Dad down myself and teach him winemaking, it would take far too much time.
"So which ones are going into the limited edition?"
"These."
I pointed at two large oak barrels and stuck labels on Selection Barrel #3 and #7.
"Those are the best?"
"Yes. This is the best Sylphide we have this year."
Even with the same grapes and the same conditions, each barrel ended up tasting subtly different. At this level of quality, I wasn't embarrassed to release it as a limited edition.
A few days later, Christopher White himself came up from Los Angeles to visit Redwood Winery. He showed up dressed sharply in a suit, as always, and spoke in his usual courteous manner.
"I came for a final check before shipping."
Christopher had pre-purchased a massive order of 3,000 cases of wine, so it was only natural for him to verify the quality before taking delivery.
"All right. Let's go."
I led him into the aging room and opened a barrel valve. Red wine poured into the glass and the aroma spread through the air. The cherry and raspberry notes characteristic of Russian River Valley, with that faint underlying earthiness of damp fallen leaves, were noticeably cleaner and deeper than in years past.
Christopher took a deep breath of the aroma and closed his eyes.
"...... This is different. The aromas are more refined than last year. How should I put it... the air itself feels different?"
I just smiled silently as he slowly tilted the glass. The smoothly flowing liquid coated his tongue. The first taste was a delicate cherry. Then the floral notes characteristic of Pinot Noir unfolded, and finally a subtle minerality lingered at the tip of his tongue.
"How can the acidity be this clean..."
His eyes went wide and he couldn't hide his astonishment. The previous Sylphide had already been a high-quality wine that had taken a Double Gold, no less, and now this year's felt even better than last year's. He was thrilled and also somewhat dumbfounded.
"I minimized oxygen exposure. That suppressed the micro-oxidation, so the structure came through clean."
He understood what I was saying, but it wasn't as if the other wineries didn't know about it, that wasn't why they weren't doing it.
"This... 150 dollars a bottle would still look cheap. It holds up against any decent cult-tier wine."
"If that's how you see it, I'm grateful."
This was a wine I was selling at 70 dollars a bottle. Clearing all 3,000 cases at once meant 2.5 million dollars in hand in a single stroke. Considering the cost of bringing in over 40 tons of grapes from Hart Farm in Russian River Valley came to just over 100,000 dollars, the profit was enormous.
That said, Redwood wasn't the top-earning winery in Napa Valley. Three thousand cases was a small figure compared to the other large wineries in the region, and there were cult-tier wines out there that went for hundreds, even thousands of dollars a bottle.
"When I first met you, I just thought you were a lucky newcomer, but I don't anymore. I realized it had been calculated perfection from the start. How someone your age can do this is beyond me, but the world has its share of things I can't understand."
He swirled the red wine in the clear glass once, taking in its deep, complex aroma, and spoke earnestly.
"This wine will have its name spoken for a long time to come."
"Haha, I'm glad you're happy with it, but praise that effusive makes me uncomfortable. I just think of it as finishing this year's wine, that's all."
At my casual brushing-off, Christopher hesitated for a moment, then pulled a silver envelope from his bag. An invitation sealed with a red wax stamp.
"Actually, I was invited to an event recently. It's called the Hollywood Humanitarian Gala 2006. It's a wine sponsorship partner event that I'm hosting personally."
"Hollywood?"
I opened the invitation and saw a name written in gold lettering.
[Redwood Winery, Sylphide 2006 / Official Sponsor Wine.]
"I know you don't usually enjoy events like this, but for this one, I really hope you'll come yourself."
"Me, there?"
"As you're aware, the global wine competition show Wine Masters is currently a massive hit, and interest in Napa Valley wines is climbing even higher because of it."
That program, which Redwood Winery hadn't been invited to, had drawn considerable attention thanks to its novel concept of wine duels. In particular, because the duels came packaged with explanations designed to be accessible to consumers who didn't know much about wine, some analyses even suggested that overall wine consumption had risen in the wake of the show.
Naturally, the wineries that had participated in the program were enjoying significant sales increases even if they didn't finish in the top rankings, which was exactly why Christopher was so eager right now.
"That's true, but... we're not in any danger of failing to move 3,000 cases without it, are we?"
It was a brazen thing to say for most wineries, but coming from Redwood, which had already sold through every bottle of Echelon and Sylphide last year, it wasn't entirely groundless.
"True. To be honest, even when I previously laid out the distribution strategy, it wasn't because I was worried about not selling 3,000 cases that I set up that arrangement. It was meant to build long-term brand prestige for Sylphide and Redwood... but the sales bump from Wine Masters has been far stronger than expected, and having a winery actually show its face at an event like this has a very positive effect."
"......"
"And it's not as though this is a low-tier event, so you wouldn't just get a lot of exposure, it would genuinely help the winery's reputation."
He was telling me not to look down on it just because celebrities would be there.
"Hmm..."
The reason I didn't care for events like these was that I wanted to stay grounded in the fundamentals: tending the grapes well and making the wine well. But it just so happened the harvest was finished, and Echelon was scheduled for bottling at the end of the month.
In the middle of an otherwise busy season, this was about the closest thing to a lull. There wasn't really a strong reason to skip it.
"Let's go. If Redwood ever launches a cult-tier wine going for hundreds or thousands of dollars in the future, these people will be your biggest customers."
I'd been hesitating, but Christopher's last line decided it for me.
"All right, let's go."
I'd already been thinking about producing a cult-tier wine for the next release anyway, so his pitch landed perfectly.
"Thank you!"
Having wrapped up that conversation, Christopher returned two days later and loaded up the 3,000 cases of 2005 Sylphide stacked in the warehouse. Of those, 500 cases including the limited edition meant for auction were sent straight to New York by air freight, and from the remaining stock still in LA, 10 cases of Sylphide were dispatched to the Hollywood Humanitarian Gala 2006 venue.
A week later, the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Called the heart of Hollywood, the place was buzzing with excitement beneath golden chandeliers. Flashbulbs popped from the entrance onward, and actors, directors, and suit-clad businesspeople strolled slowly along the red carpet.
[Hollywood Humanitarian Gala 2006]
It was an annual charity event held around this time every year, but I couldn't help feeling somewhat tense. Not because attending an event like this made me nervous, but because Sylphide was one of the two main wines featured at this gala.
I was confident in the wine itself, but it was going to be evaluated by some seriously high-profile people, so it was fair to say I was a little jittery.
Christopher White, immaculate in his black suit, looked utterly natural and dashing, but dressed like this myself, I felt a little out of place.
"I'll handle most of the conversation, so you just greet people and explain the wine when asked. It's perfectly natural for luxury brands to participate in charity events like this to promote themselves, so just act naturally, build some rapport with the Hollywood crowd, and that takes care of everything."
"All right, got it."
But the first person I ended up greeting at tonight's event was someone I'd never expected.
"Oh? You're here too! Was Redwood one of the mains tonight?"
The owner of that vaguely irritated voice was Elowen from Silveroak.
"Ah, good to see you."
"Good to see you too."
Whether he was actually pleased to see me, I couldn't tell, but at the very least, confidence was radiating off his face. And it had reason to: Silveroak had finished outside the top ranks at 9th place in this Wine Masters, but with the program's popularity, they'd picked up significant name recognition.
"I saw the TV show. It was really unfortunate."
For a moment his face stiffened, then he forced a smile.
"It was just bad luck. We were matched up against Château Smith Haut Lafitte, after all."
Château Smith Haut Lafitte, the winery Daniel Cathiard had acquired in 1990 after making his fortune in the sporting goods business and had since improved in quality, was certainly a fine producer, but by no means an absolute titan.
"I'd imagine. Drawing a strong opponent... Anyway, what's the wine you brought tonight...?"
"A new one we just released. Everyone's going to be surprised, you'll see."
"Looking forward to it."
"And yours?"
"Ours is a new vintage of Sylphide, the wine we released last year."
"Is that so... Still, our wine is premium-class, while Sylphide is a bit further down the scale, isn't it? It'll get compared, I'd think."
Before I could say anything, Christopher answered for me.
"Ah, this year's Sylphide retails for 150 dollars, so it's not in any way out of place at tonight's event."
A faint crack ran across Elowen's expression at once.
"150 dollars? That wasn't the price last year."
"It went up."
"Hah, raising the price by that much? You think the market will take that?"
"That's for the consumers to decide."
"Well... so that's why you came to tonight's event? If the celebrities approve, even 150 dollars will draw less scorn."
This was a guy who measured everything by his own yardstick.
"Well... looking forward to your wine, in any case."
"Looking forward to yours too."
As Elowen turned and walked off, it was Christopher who muttered, somewhat dazed.
"Is he always like that?"
"He's got something against me, so he gets a bit emotional."
"Sss... He's in for a shock later... tsk, tsk, tsk..."
Christopher clicked his tongue, looking almost sorry for him.
*****
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