Astra Vale (5)
A heavy silence hung over the conference room at the heart of Napa Valley’s Stags Leap District.
Outside the windows, the vineyards stretched peacefully as harvest drew to a close. Inside, the air was stretched taut, ready to snap at any moment.
At the center of the table sat a single bottle of wine, its label bearing the image of a star-strewn valley. Astra Vale. Redwood Winery’s controversial new release, the one they had unveiled in a glittering debut before VIPs from every circle.
Brad Duncan, vice president of Michelle Wine, flipped through a stack of documents with a rigid face. A classic elite white man in his mid-forties, he had carried the same suspicion ever since Stag’s Leap had been acquired: that once Warren left, the secrets of Stag’s Leap might leak to the outside world.
“Warren Winiarski has been at Redwood for less than half a year. And something like this shows up? That speed is physically impossible.”
Brad’s voice was cold as he spat the words. Across from him sat Alessandro Bellini, president of the historic Italian house of Antinori. Dressed in an elegant Italian suit, he carefully turned the glass in his hand.
“It’s certainly suspicious… but Warren knows the contract clauses cold. The idea that he’d blatantly use Stag’s Leap’s proprietary blending recipes—he’s no fool.”
“But without that, there’s no explanation. This is the old man who protected Stag’s Leap’s identity for over thirty years. A cult-level wine coming out of a new winery like Redwood can only mean they cleaned out our vault.”
Brad’s gaze shifted to the man at the far end of the table: Robert Vance, Michelle Wine’s retained counsel and intellectual-property specialist.
“Robert. Are the chemical analysis and the legal response documents ready?”
“They’re ready, Mr. Vice President. If the analysis shows that key chemical markers and the blending ratios match by seventy percent or more, we can file for an immediate injunction on trade-secret grounds and freeze Redwood’s logistics. Seventy percent is the decisive threshold the courts recognize as intentional imitation.”
Alessandro raised a hand lightly, cutting him off.
“Before we start swinging the legal sword, we confirm the essence. Whether Warren’s hand is in this—my tongue will know first.”
Enzo, Alessandro’s head winemaker, carefully drew the cork. With a dull pop, the wine poured into the decanter. As the deep ruby liquid slid smoothly down the glass walls, the conference room door opened quietly. A researcher handed Brad Duncan a thick document envelope and vanished.
It was the freshly printed Astra Vale Precision Chemical Analysis Report, just pulled from the lab. But Brad did not open it. He wanted to test his own senses before the data.
Everyone in the room held their breath. Enzo courteously presented glasses to Alessandro and Brad.
Brad Duncan swirled the glass roughly and sniffed. He knew Warren Winiarski’s style better than anyone. Restrained acidity, elegant structure, a long finish. Expecting that classic fragrance that had built Stag’s Leap’s glory, he took a sip.
In that instant, Brad’s eyes widened sharply.
“What… is this?”
He focused on the sensation at the tip of his tongue, too startled to even swallow. Beside him, Alessandro’s brow furrowed as well. Sensing something was wrong, Enzo poured himself a separate glass, smelled it, and held it in his mouth. His brow immediately knotted, but he did not dare speak first.
At last Alessandro murmured in a hollow voice.
“Brad. This… is not Warren’s way.”
“That’s impossible… It should have Stag’s Leap ratios mixed in…”
“You felt it too. It’s different.”
Alessandro muttered again, still hollow. Only then did Brad sense that something had gone wrong. He snatched up the document envelope he had tossed on the table and tore it open.
“Robert! Check the numbers! How much overlap with the Stag’s Leap recipe?”
Attorney Robert Vance hurriedly flipped to the first page of the analysis. His face drained of color as he pointed to a single spot with his finger.
“Mr. Vice President… the key chemical markers match ours by less than forty percent. The tannin polymerization values are more than double our flagship wine, and the pH was designed differently from the ground up.”
Brad seized the report as if he could not believe it. The modern perfection he had tasted—something he could not name—was now laid out before him in numbers. Enzo leaned over Brad’s shoulder, scanning the phenolic compound graph at the bottom of the page, and spoke softly.
“Mr. Winiarski would never have made this choice. Look here. With Columbia Valley Petit Verdot in the blend, the tannin structure itself follows a completely different trajectory from Stag’s Leap’s. His stubbornness and orthodoxy could never have accepted this kind of boldness…”
Enzo kept his eyes on the report as he continued.
“This was not made by looking at a leaked recipe. It’s a fortress built from the start under entirely different physical laws. Legally, there is not even one percent of grounds to claim copying—let alone seventy.”
Brad Duncan stared blankly, the hand holding the report trembling. If the shock on his tongue had been a descriptive critique, the analysis just delivered felt like a student reading a failing grade.
The air in the conference room chilled in an instant. Unable to contain his rising fury, Brad slammed the desk.
“Then what the hell is Warren doing over there? Just sitting around like a prop?”
“No, Mr. Vice President.”
Enzo swirled the remaining wine in his glass and answered quietly.
“If you recall the magazine interview Mr. Winiarski gave when he joined Redwood… he may be learning.”
“Learning? That legendary old man—from whom?”
“From Redwood’s Brian Choi. At the time, Mr. Winiarski said he joined Redwood because he was captivated by Brian Choi’s vision and new perspective, and that he had recovered a passion he thought he had lost forever. Looking at this wine, it seems to show exactly what that vision and new perspective were. Perhaps Mr. Winiarski layered this young genius’s precise technical power on top of his own seasoned palate. And the result may be this very ‘Astra Vale.’”
Alessandro sank deeper into his chair. He felt the philosophy the Antinori family had guarded for centuries—“wine is a gift from God”—begin to crumble.
“Brad. Drop the legal action. If we take this wine into court, we’ll only end up advertising Redwood’s genius for them.”
“So we just take the hit? The big players in New York and London are already moving. Rumor has it Viktor Karlov, who attended yesterday’s tasting, paid on the spot for a hundred cases. Our flagship’s position is shaking!”
Crisis filled Brad Duncan’s voice. Four hundred fifty dollars a bottle. The wall Warren had spent decades carefully building to raise Stag’s Leap’s brand value—Redwood was trying to vault it with a single release.
No. Looking closely, they had already cleared it. That was why even Alessandro, now certain Warren had done nothing wrong, still wore a hardened expression.
“……”
“CASK 23, Stag’s Leap’s top wine, ships at three hundred dollars. Redwood’s Astra Vale ships at four hundred fifty. At this rate we may soon see something at the thousand-dollar level of Screaming Eagle or Harlan Estate.”
Both Screaming Eagle and Harlan Estate sat in Oakville’s To Kalon zone and were ranked among Napa Valley’s finest. Screaming Eagle’s owner, Stan Kroenke—also famous as the owner of Premier League club Arsenal FC—was a true giant in the wine world as well, a tycoon who held endgame-level wineries in multiple regions.
“So what do we do?”
“We pressure the distribution network.”
Brad’s eyes flashed as he continued.
“We contact the major wine distributors and threaten them: any house that takes Redwood’s allocation loses its limited Stag’s Leap allocations. And we find the Columbia Valley Petit Verdot source and buy out the vineyard contracts ourselves.”
Alessandro looked out at the peaceful vineyards beyond the window and smiled bitterly. It felt like watching the limits of Michelle Wine, the house that had conquered the American market with bottles under thirty dollars.
“Brad, you still don’t understand. A man who can make wine like this won’t stop because you block one or two suppliers. Leave it.”
He drained the last of the Astra Vale from his glass. The taut tension filling his mouth, the silken texture… it felt like the herald of a coming storm.
“Just prepare for the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. It’s going to be a battlefield.”
As Alessandro rose and left in irritation, Brad Duncan—who had led the acquisition of Stag’s Leap—bit his lip hard.
At the same hour, Redwood Winery.
I was in the middle of the chaos of launching Ceracia when I took a call from Christopher. Joy poured through the receiver.
“Brian! It’s already chaos. Hedonism Wines in London is going crazy wanting to pre-pay for five hundred cases. Macy’s in Hong Kong has been calling too. We’re limited to ten cases each under the allocation rules, and it’s almost painful. Word has already spread big among the wine lovers with real money!”
I turned my head and watched Warren walking out of the aging room. Sipping a freshly drawn brandy sample and smiling the way he was, anyone who saw him might have mistaken him for a drunk.
“Still, ten cases sounds like a lot…”
“Absolutely. Giving a hundred twenty bottles of a wine like this to one place is practically a privilege. You don’t need to worry, Brian.”
“Right. I trust you’ll handle it. And please take good care of the San Francisco Chronicle this time as well.”
“Of course. Hahaha!”
I hung up on his hearty laugh just as Warren ambled into the office.
“Hey, Master. From what I hear, it’s pretty noisy outside. The new owners of Stag’s Leap seem to think I leaked something and are furious. Legal action this, legal action that.”
“There’s nothing they can pin on you.”
“Hmph. Exactly. Your blending method with a bit of my advice on top—how are those stiff-headed people supposed to understand that? By now they’re probably wondering if their own tongues are broken.”
He took a sip of the brandy in his glass and narrowed his eyes.
“But the kid who’s supposed to inherit this—why isn’t he here yet?”
“Haha. He’ll be here soon.”
As if on cue, a gray pickup truck appeared in the distance beyond the farm.
“Here he comes. The one who’ll take over your secret weapon, sir.”