Eye of the Storm (1)
“Such a method exists? How on earth did you come up with that?”
As the former owner of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, he had naturally taught mentoring classes at UC Davis and maintained close ties with many professors. That meant he stayed theoretically current on the latest agricultural techniques… yet even he had never heard of something called Dormancy Sap Flow Control.
“Obviously it isn’t my idea. I’m just applying what’s already in the papers on Xylem Dynamics.”
The xylem he referred to was the vascular tissue in plants—especially woody ones—that carries water and mineral nutrients upward from roots through trunk to leaves. The practical use of dormancy sap-flow control in real agriculture only began in the mid-2010s, once Internet-of-Things technology produced commercially viable sap-flow sensors that could be inserted directly into a tree’s trunk.
Later, as climate crisis and drought intensified in the late 2010s, top-tier estates in Bordeaux (Château Latour among them) and Napa Valley began employing the technique in earnest to manage moisture stress. Still, the fact that it at least appeared in published research allowed Warren to nod.
“In that case… what exactly does the paper say?”
“The core is hydraulic resistance and osmotic concentration. People think plants shut down completely in winter, but the roots underground keep storing energy as osmotic pressure, getting ready for spring. When the branches are long and the buds numerous, that concentrated energy spreads thin and wide throughout the whole tree. The pressure dissipates.”
I tapped the base of a cane lightly with my pruning shears.
“But if you cut the canes very short and simplify the pathway, everything changes. The energy with nowhere else to go is forced back down toward the roots and condenses there—exactly like closing every sluice gate on a dam until the water level reaches its absolute peak. Then spring arrives and you open a single gate. What happens?”
Warren murmured as if a revelation had struck him.
“…It explodes. That enormous hydraulic pressure locked in the roots surges up through the narrow conduits all at once.”
“Exactly. Same principle as narrowing a fire-hose nozzle to strengthen the jet. Only that explosive pressure can drive the ancient minerals trapped in Coombsville’s sticky clay all the way to the uppermost canopy in one push. We aren’t simply trying to force buds open—we’re forcibly injecting the very essence of the soil into every tip of the vine.”
Warren nodded, then spent a long moment silently looking back and forth between the short canes I had indicated and the deep clay soil beneath them.
“I’ll be damned… You’ve been designing the tree’s blood vessels themselves—ones we can’t even see. All right. We’ll do it your way. Just thinking about what monstrous buds that compressed energy will throw in spring already gives me chills.”
“Then shall we start preparing the real work?”
No sooner had the words left my mouth than the heavy roar of diesel engines rose from the end of the dirt track. Warren turned toward the sound. Breaking through the fog came machines rarely seen in ordinary Napa vineyards: massive excavators and purpose-built trenchers.
“You actually called all that equipment in?”
I checked my watch and nodded.
“Yes. Winter in Coombsville is short. We have to finish the deep ripping before the ground freezes solid.”
Workers in coveralls climbed down from the machines in crisp order. At their head stood Santos, the veteran heavy-equipment contractor I had hired in advance. He approached holding the work order I had sent and greeted me.
“Boss, just like you specified—two rippers fitted with special 1.2-meter steel rip-shanks. But are you really going that deep? This isn’t bedrock; it’s sticky clay. The machines could bog down.”
“Doesn’t matter, Santos. Just slow the speed and drive them strictly vertical. The point isn’t to turn the soil over—it’s only to open fissures. Be careful of that.”
I then handed Warren the work schedule.
“For the next week we’ll concentrate on deep ripping. The moment an excavator passes, we’ll sow the cover-crop seed I ordered. Full winter pruning starts the second week of December. Because every vine has different hydraulic pressure, I’ll direct the pruning myself.”
Warren watched, almost dazed, as the giant steel shanks began biting into Coombsville’s hard surface.
Kuuuung—!
The ground shuddered; hardpan compacted for decades screamed and split open.
“You… you really do operate on a different scale. This isn’t farming—it’s civil engineering.”
“When land is dying, it needs surgery. Once fog seeps into the cracks those machines open and water begins to move, this soil will finally breathe again.”
I stood quietly watching the dust-choked site. The heavy mechanical roar drifting from the distance sounded like the music announcing Lapis Lazuli’s rebirth.
Night in Manhattan. On the Upper East Side, the premium bar Blue Room operated under a strict membership system—a true sanctuary where the city’s real power brokers could disappear. Its bartender, Mark, had guarded the place for fifteen years and handled every great spirit the world produced.
That evening, as usual, Mark was preparing a glass for his regular, Edward—a Wall Street titan. Edward was a fastidious old gentleman who insisted only on fifty-year single malts or Louis XIII cognac.
“Mark, nothing special tonight? I’m growing tired of the usual.”
As if he had been waiting for the question, Mark drew from beneath the counter a crystal bottle whose liquid glowed a deep ruby-brown. In the center of the label, finely worked gold leaf framed a clear name:
Ruby Quartz
Warren Winiarski
“Brandy from Napa Valley. Released less than a week ago.”
Edward raised an eyebrow at the unfamiliar pairing.
“Brandy from Napa? And Warren Winiarski? The legendary winemaker? Hah. Squandering the fortune he made from wine on a little game like this.”
The words were laced with mockery, yet Mark simply broke the seal in silence and poured.
In that instant—when the bottle opened and liquid met glass—a fragrance struck the air like lightning. It was nothing like the musty oak or heavy alcohol usually associated with brandy. An impossibly bright, vivid fruit scent, as if a basket of just-picked cherries had been crushed, flooded the entire bar.
Conversations around the counter stopped; heads turned as one.
“Good Lord, Mark—what did you just open? I can smell it all the way over here.”
“That’s brandy? Smells like rose perfume.”
Edward himself looked thoroughly unsettled. As if magnetized, he brought the glass to his nose. The aromas of cherry and wild berry rising from the deep ruby liquid overwhelmed any cognac he had tasted in fifty years.
He carefully took a sip. Alongside the rough alcoholic punch of a spirit well over forty percent came an endless fruit finish and a precise structure that cleaned the palate completely.
For a long moment Edward could not speak; he simply closed his eyes.
“…This is brandy?”
“I was curious myself, but Food & Wine spelled it out clearly: brandy distilled from wine. The only difference is that it never saw oak, so the cherry character remains pure. Extraordinary stuff.”
Edward set the glass down with a trembling hand and looked at Mark.
“Do you have any left besides this one? If so—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Edward. The entire New York allocation for this month is already sold out. This bottle is the last one we have.”
For the first time, genuine dismay crossed Edward’s face. The man known as the Emperor of New York could not secure a single bottle even with money in hand—and that fact unsettled him deeply.
Yet the scene at Blue Room was no isolated miracle. Word of Ruby Quartz raced across New York. Epithets such as “Warren Winiarski’s final masterpiece” and “the red jewel that toppled cognac’s authority” were more than enough to set spirit lovers ablaze.
At the very hour New York was drunk on the perfume of Ruby Quartz, William Harlan sat in his study at Harlan Estate in Napa Valley, a cup of cold coffee before him, scanning a report. Across the desk his head winemaker, Bob Levy, stared in anguish at a tasting pour of the same Ruby Quartz he had brought.
“So—how does Jacob’s distillery look?”
“Exactly as expected: exclusive supply contract with Redwood. That Brian fellow is far more meticulous than we thought. Everything from the plant retrofit costs to the management of the base spirit is funded by Redwood capital. Jacob is already bound hand and foot to the young Asian.”
At the secretary’s report, deep furrows cut William’s brow. The bottle Robert Mondavi had once presented as a gift was now shaking the American spirits market far beyond Napa, and what William felt had gone past mere irritation into raw desire.
He gazed steadily at the glass of Ruby Quartz.
“That crafty old fox Warren… First he scratched my pride with Stag’s Leap, and now he’s keeping me awake with brandy.”
It was jealousy. Yet beneath the jealousy swirled the fierce curiosity and hunger only a true heavyweight could feel. William instinctively recognized that Ruby Quartz was not merely a novel brandy—it was a cash machine of staggering potential.
“If Jacob’s distillery is Redwood’s lifeline… do we really need to wrestle over the contract itself?”
William’s eyes narrowed. Bob Levy looked up.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“If you can’t take the bowl, buy the entire kitchen that holds it. What’s the distillery worth?”
The secretary answered, flustered.
“Facilities and inventory alone would be covered by five million. But factor in the exclusive Redwood contract and Warren’s recipe as intangible assets, and the picture changes. Industry estimates put the potential value at fifteen million minimum.”
“Offer three times whatever profit Redwood can project. Forty-five million should make even Jacob waver. And tell him this: William Harlan himself will visit. We intend to acquire the whole distillery under the Harlan name.”
It was an assault on an imperial scale—absorbing Redwood’s production base into Harlan territory and thereby binding Brian’s and Warren’s hands for the future.
William extended the glass toward Bob Levy.
“Bob, what do you think? If we get our hands on this base spirit, can we make something even greater under the Harlan name?”
Bob took a careful sip, then spat it out. His expression was that of a man conceding defeat as he shook his head.
“To be honest, this is a revolution in brandy. The aromatic retention is simply… Even if we acquire the distillery and the recipe falls into our hands, fully reproducing this base spirit at a hundred percent may still take time.”
“True… if the process is that precise, a recipe alone won’t let us recreate it overnight…”
“But the value of this spirit is limitless. Forty-five million will never be an excessive price.”
William drank the cherry-laden brandy and nodded. The place that produced this liquid was worth every penny of forty-five million.
Yet when he arrived three days later for the appointment at Golden Grain Soju House, William was not alone.
“William~ William Harlan. To think the Emperor of Napa would grace us with a visit—how surprising.”
The man greeting him with playful insolence was the Jewish-American chairman of Constellation Brands, Richard Sands—the predator who collected wineries and had hostilely taken over Napa’s pride, Robert Mondavi.
Only he could smile so leisurely in William’s face.