Ruby Quartz (2)
The Sacramento plain stretched so wide its edges seemed to vanish into the distance. At its very center stood Golden Grain Soju House, still crackling with tension even late into the night. Jacob stood before the low-temperature vacuum distillation equipment Warren had taught him, staring fixedly at the numbers on the monitor.
The vacuum gauge held exactly at 78 torr, and the temperature of the heating jacket sat at 34.8 degrees Celsius without trembling by so much as a tenth of a degree. To recreate the brandy Warren had made—unlike anything else in the world—Jacob had forsaken sleep for the past three days.
His matted hair and the sour smell rising from his body made plain just how rough a state he was in.
“Please… just once…”
When Jacob’s cracked voice broke the silence, a change was finally detected at the outlet pipe of the still. A liquid as clear as if diamond itself had been melted began to drip, then soon poured forth in a thin, steady stream. The moment the pre-prepared low-temperature pigment extract was introduced through a precision pump, the transparent spirit was instantly dyed a luminous ruby-brown.
Jacob held out a tasting glass with trembling hands and caught the raw spirit.
“It’s done… It’s done!”
As he stood holding the glass, steeped in joy, the thick iron door of the distillery opened and heavy footsteps approached. A man in a deep gray suit with a gold tie pin—Jacob’s reliable distribution partner, Malcolm Lee, vice president of Unity Spirits.
“Hey, Jacob. You look like hell. Did you get into a fight with the workers and take a trip inside the still?”
Malcolm approached with his trademark hearty smile. The elastic mid-low register characteristic of his voice and the Patek Philippe watch glinting at the cuff of his expensive coat announced his standing without a word.
Having secured substantial sales and bonuses from the vodka and fruit soju produced at Golden Grain Soju House, he went around saying he loved Jacob more than his own wife.
“Malcolm, perfect timing. Come over here. This might just be the thing that changes your life.”
Seeing the glass Jacob confidently offered, Malcolm’s eyebrows twitched. As a distribution expert, he read color and texture before contents.
“What’s this? Brandy? But why’s the color like that? For oak aging, that red is way too vivid. You didn’t use artificial coloring, did you? We can’t put that kind of thing on our list.”
Malcolm’s tone was gentle, but the content was sharp.
“Just try it first. You’ll be surprised.”
Malcolm brought the glass to his nose with a skeptical expression. In that instant his upper body visibly stiffened.
“……!”
He fell silent and drew the aroma in deeply once more. Then he moistened the tip of his tongue with the smallest amount. After the impact of the spirit—well over forty percent alcohol—had passed, the fragrance of a fresh cherry orchard still wet with dawn dew exploded through his nasal passages.
Malcolm stood holding the glass in silence for a long while.
“Malcolm?”
“Jacob, you crazy bastard. What the hell did you do? This is… brandy, right? But how is the aroma still alive? It feels like you crushed freshly harvested cherries right there on the spot and condensed them into alcohol. How can a brandy have this kind of vitality?”
Awe rose in Malcolm’s eyes. He held the glass up to the light, continually voicing his admiration.
“Obvious, right? Technique I learned from Redwood.”
“Of course… it was them again.”
Knowing that every spirit from this distillery was made with techniques learned from Redwood, and that they held a thirty-percent stake, he nodded in understanding.
“You might not know, but a legendary winemaker named Warren Winiarski joined my friend’s Redwood. This is the technique he developed. Low-temperature vacuum distillation—extracted at temperatures lower than body heat, so the fruit aroma stays completely alive in the brandy.”
“Any spirits distributor who doesn’t know that man might as well be a fraud. But Warren Winiarski making brandy… that’s truly astonishing. When this launches, not just California—every spirits lover will come running. Have you settled on a name?”
“Yes. Ruby Quartz.”
Malcolm pointed at Jacob as if the name had pleased him.
“Very good. Excellent name.”
Malcolm turned the glass slowly while rolling the name over in his mind. Already thousands of distribution channels and marketing strategies were whirling rapidly through his head.
He pulled a notebook from his pocket and began sketching bottle shapes with a pen. Rough lines took form under his fingertips.
“Let’s make the exterior different. Forget ordinary brandy bottles. Round and classic will only kill this revolutionary color. We need a crystal-decanter style—not the smooth, rounded shape of a typical wine or vodka bottle, but something angular and elaborately cut like a high-end whiskey, cognac, or perfume bottle—that can trap the aroma while refracting the ruby light as brilliantly as possible. With many faceted surfaces like a perfume bottle, the color of the spirit will look different every time light hits it. Just placing this bottle on a table has to seize the gaze of everyone around.”
Malcolm’s eyes glittered with business fervor. Then he drew another picture on a different page of the notebook. From beside him, Jacob could tell he was making a label mock-up and spoke up.
“Ah, since Warren made this spirit, we need to put the phrase Crafted by Warren Winiarski on it.”
“Is that so? Got it. Then… instead of the center of the label, let’s put Warren’s handwritten signature in gold foil at the bottom. Background in matte black with a very rough-textured paper. That way the ruby liquid will shine even more brilliantly against it.”
Malcolm’s suggestions were concrete and meticulous. He was already imagining this spirit being served at rooftop bars in New York.
“How do you plan to handle distribution? I sincerely hope Unity will distribute this spirit. If not…”
Malcolm couldn’t miss Jacob’s deliberate trailing off—the pressure that if he wanted the contract, he had to give it his all.
“Hey, Jacob. You know how much I care about you, right? So give me a chance first.”
“Huh? How do you mean?”
“Twenty-four hours. I’d like exactly twenty-four hours. Don’t contact any other distributors until then. I’ll go into the company, get every strategy lined up, and come back. How about it?”
“Hmm… alright.”
For Jacob as well, continuing the contract with Unity Spirits, who had treated him well so far, was convenient, and he didn’t think the partnership with Malcolm was bad either.
“Thanks. I’ll be back by this time tomorrow. Oh, can I take a little more with me?”
“Of course.”
Malcolm took about two hundred milliliters of the Ruby Quartz sample Jacob gave him and left the distillery as if fleeing. He was so impatient that Jacob could see him running toward his parked car through the window.
He reappeared at the same time the next day. With a confident expression, Malcolm pulled a deep navy document envelope from the inner pocket of his suit and set it on the table.
“This is the provisional contract finished just one hour ago, starting from last night. A dedicated contract for Ruby Quartz.”
Malcolm pointed to the numbers on the document one by one with the tip of his fountain pen.
“If you go to the dinosaurs of liquor distribution, places like Southern Glazer’s, Ruby Quartz will be just one of tens of thousands of SKUs. They’ll take forty percent of the wholesale price as commission as a matter of custom, then charge another ten percent for promotion and warehouse fees. What ends up in your hand will be just a few dozen dollars per bottle. I know labor costs these days are killing you. I know sales are high but costs are just as high, so it’s tough.”
“…I know that anyone who heard would say I’m having a happy problem. And honestly, I am happy even now. Just being able to keep working because the fruit soju is doing well is a blessing, I think. It’s just that I have to keep raising wages, so it’s a bit of a worry.”
“Don’t worry. My proposal will blow those worries away in one go. The recommended retail price for Ruby Quartz is set at five hundred ninety-nine dollars per bottle. And Unity Spirits will purchase the entire production from your distillery at three hundred fifty dollars per bottle.”
“Three hundred fifty dollars?”
Jacob’s eyes widened in shock. Until now the spirits he had sold hadn’t even reached twenty dollars a bottle. This time he would receive more than ten times that.
“Why? Think it’s expensive?”
“No… it’s just, if you price it like that, will it sell? It’s not that I don’t know whiskey, but selling it at the price of whiskey aged for decades… I’m not sure if that’s right.”
Smiling faintly, Malcolm continued his explanation calmly.
“Jacob, people don’t pay for the number ‘thirty years of aging.’ They pay for the specialness those thirty years confer. Traditional brandy is aged for thirty years to kill the harsh taste of impurities left over from distillation—that’s the waiting.”
“Hmm…”
“We skipped that boring thirty-year wait with technical specialness. Because it isn’t aged, the cherry aroma is even brighter, even more lethal… this is an aroma old whiskeys could never produce even if they came back from the dead. Do you think charging five hundred ninety-nine dollars for that scarce sensation is a scam? No, this is charity work.”
At the claim that five hundred ninety-nine dollars was so cheap it was practically charity, Jacob nodded blankly.
“I see…”
“If production cost is one hundred fifty dollars per bottle, you clear two hundred dollars net profit every time you sell one. That’s the money you’d make selling a hundred bottles of the soju you’re selling now. From that, you send Redwood’s sixty-dollar share and I’m left with one hundred forty. Just ship five bottles a day. The monthly wage increase for the workers you’ve been worrying about is solved right there. Well, if you subtract the three-percent royalty you have to pay Warren, it’ll shrink a bit more, but it won’t make a big difference.”
Malcolm sank deeper into his chair and added,
“Unity Spirits will take exclusive supply rights in exchange for drastically lowering the distribution commission. Marketing costs? I’ll cover one hundred percent of the cost of calling New York and Hollywood VIPs directly and throwing private parties. You just maintain the quality of the spirit exactly according to the precise data Warren designed. Then I’ll make this spirit a medal that sits in the study of every successful man.”
Jacob stared fixedly at the numbers written on the document. Malcolm’s proposal didn’t sound like simply adding one more liquor brand to the contract—it sounded like a declaration that he would change the very weight class of Golden Grain Soju House.
“That’s quite an exceptional set of terms, isn’t it?”
Malcolm grinned as he answered.
“Of course. After making this, I was certain. You’re free to go hear proposals from other distributors. There won’t be anywhere that offers better than us.”
“Hmm…”
The proposal was good enough for him to come out this confidently. He added with a self-assured expression.
“In case you’re doubtful, let me explain the reasons we can put forward such exceptional terms.
First, because Warren Winiarski’s name is stamped on this spirit. A legend’s guarantee can’t be converted into money. Second, because of Brian Choi, who holds your thirty-percent stake. I’m watching in real time what kind of monstrous things that friend is doing in Napa Valley. I want to stand in the path of the massive typhoon that is Redwood ahead of time. Ruby Quartz is my ticket into that typhoon.”
Malcolm tapped the Ruby Quartz bottle on the table with his finger.
“Do you want to be one of the tens of thousands shipping to Southern Glazer’s, or do you want to create a new standard of luxury together with Unity Spirits? Jacob, choose. I want you to become not the owner of a small distillery, but a young giant in the spirits industry.”
Jacob read business conviction in Malcolm’s eyes. He picked up the fountain pen lying beside him.
“Alright. Malcolm, I’ll trust your guts.”
When Jacob finished signing, Malcolm extended his hand with satisfaction.
“Wise choice, partner. Let’s see what we can do starting from this little distillery. You’re not thinking of adding brandy with the facilities as they are, are you?”
“Of course not. I already called the contractors. I’m planning to pour every bit of capital I’ve saved into it.”
What had been a small distillery, Golden Grain Soju House, was now advancing toward becoming a mid-sized enterprise.