The Prodigal Son Returns (1)
Leaving Napa Valley behind and heading into Sonoma County, I found myself driving the BMW Z4 with a middle-aged man in the passenger seat instead of Chloe. The whole situation left me feeling hollow and more than a little absurd.
At least I had made him shower at the winery before we set out, so I was grateful simply that he did not reek. The body odor of white men is in a league of its own compared to the smell of an unwashed Korean; if someone has gone several days without bathing, sharing a closed space with them can practically numb the nose.
Farm work often mixed people of every race. Outdoors the wind carried the smell away and it was tolerable enough, but if you ended up hauling inventory together inside a warehouse… the ventilation had better be excellent.
Because of that reality the winery had shower facilities for the laborers. When Daniel suggested we just leave as we were, I had threatened that I would not drive him anywhere until he washed up first. Only after I had turned him back into something resembling a human being did we finally depart.
Daniel Grendel sat in the passenger seat, staring blankly at the scenery sliding past the window as if his soul had left him. I glanced sideways at his profile while I drove, then returned my eyes to the road and spoke.
“I heard you had gone to France. But sous-winemaker at the famous Domaine Leroy… I never imagined that.”
Domaine Leroy was, among wine lovers, a living legend of Burgundy and one of the producers of the most expensive and coveted wines on earth. Its owner, Lalou Bize-Leroy, was called the Queen of Burgundy with good reason. Centered on the village of Vosne-Romanée, the estate held some of the finest vineyards in the region; production was so tiny that a single bottle could run from several million to tens of millions of won. It was the only house ever seriously ranked shoulder-to-shoulder with Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, and in certain vintages it even outscored them.
So a sous-winemaker at Domaine Leroy already stood on a certain tier of the wine world.
Daniel gave a self-mocking smile and pushed his still-damp blond hair back from his forehead.
“I never imagined it either, at first. When Harrington threw me out I even wondered whether I should just die. A winemaker who ruined wine… my career in Napa was finished. And the winery I wrecked just happened to be Harrington, one of the oldest names in Sonoma. That said everything. Everyone probably thought I ran away, but the truth is I left so I could stay alive. There was no place left for me in Napa.”
“I can believe that.”
“So I landed in France… and France was hell in a completely different way. Those stubborn old men of Burgundy spat the moment they heard an English-speaking winemaker. I didn’t speak French then, so naturally the only work they gave me was the lowest grunt labor.”
He pulled a stick of gum from his pocket, chewed it to moisten his dry lips, and went on.
“At first I just pulled weeds in the vineyards. All the thermodynamics and molecular biology I’d learned at UC Davis… I don’t know if you know this, but France is completely different from America when it comes to viticulture and winemaking.”
“I know it well. They treat scientific methods like superstition.”
He snorted a laugh and pointed at me.
“You do get it. Stubborn old bastards… Anyway, most wineries I couldn’t even stand. Then I thought: if I’m going to live like a slave, I might as well be a slave at the best winery there is. So I packed my bag and went straight to Domaine Leroy. By then my French was just good enough that they didn’t throw me out, but for the first three years all I did was sort dirt. I never even saw Madame Lalou Bize-Leroy’s face.”
“Did they at least pay you?”
“Minimum wage of the time… I filled my stomach with the cheap food the winery handed out. Looking back it wasn’t that much worse than American food, so I managed.”
“Ah… American food is what it is.”
He gave me a brief, baffled look for my dig at American cuisine, then continued.
“After those first three years they decided I was reasonably diligent and started teaching me a little. Even though I’d graduated top of my class at UC Davis, that meant nothing. I had to relearn grape growing from the absolute basics. Then one night, long after everyone else had gone home, I stayed alone in the cellar checking and recording the condition of thousands of barrels. Madame Lalou found me asleep on the floor with my arms around a barrel.”
“Oh-ho.”
“From that day she began teaching me about wine herself. In effect she accepted me as a disciple.”
It was a fascinating story.
“And that was how you rose to sous-winemaker?”
“Don’t even start. That was only the beginning. One autumn, when I was still just one of Madame Leroy’s many disciples, temperatures exploded during harvest. As you know, Madame Lalou loathes mechanical intervention. She forbade even a single cooling unit in the cellar, saying it would wound the soul of the wine. And the fermentation tanks started climbing past thirty-five degrees. If it kept going the indigenous yeasts would all cook to death and the wine would turn to vinegar. The head winemaker was literally on his knees crying and praying. I couldn’t believe it…”
“So what did you do?”
“I couldn’t just watch that superstitious praying. In the middle of the night I secretly dug up the cellar floor. There was a cold underground spring down there. I gathered discarded copper pipes from the farm and coiled them around the outside of the tanks. Using only the gravity of the water-level difference and the chill of the groundwater, I jury-rigged a cooling circulation system.”
I was impressed. In that emergency it had been the perfect improvisation.
“That’s the UC Davis spirit! Never give up!”
“Exactly—that’s the UC Davis spirit! It was a gamble that would have gotten me fired on the spot if Madame Leroy caught me. The look on her face the next morning when she came down to the cellar and saw the copper coils wrapped around every tank… I’ll never forget it. She stood there in silence for a long time, then slapped her hand against the cooled tank. My heart was hammering like crazy. Then the old woman looked at me and said just one thing: ‘Sometimes even an American’s little tricks can be useful.’ Do you know what I thought at that moment?”
Something like madness flickered in his eyes.
“What was it?”
“…That these people were still living in a dream. I acknowledge Domaine Leroy is a world-class winery, but I was certain—thinking like that, they could never last forever.”
He folded his arms and turned his gaze back to the window. When he spoke again his voice carried a strange loneliness.
“After that day I sat in the sous-winemaker’s chair. I touched every Leroy vintage with my own hands. The prestige was decent enough, and I made a reasonable living. But from then on, for some reason, I kept thinking of home.”
Daniel drew a long breath and let it out slowly.
“That damp earth smell of the foggy Russian River Valley. Burgundy’s terroir is elegant and perfect, but it wasn’t my land. Even while I was blending Leroy’s Pinot Noir, the cool ridgeline of Grendel Hill kept rising in my mind. I found myself comparing them without meaning to… and Madame Lalou overheard me muttering one day and tore into me. At the time I couldn’t bring myself to argue back… but only recently, after tasting Quiet Hill, did I realize it again—my father’s vineyard isn’t just the best in America. It’s world-class.”
His murmuring grew quieter and quieter; I understood he was no longer speaking to me but to himself.
“I think so too.”
It was not empty comfort.
Burgundy Pinot Noir versus Sonoma County Russian River Valley Pinot Noir…
Of course Burgundy’s Pinot is judged the pinnacle of history, authority, and complexity, yet the pure fruit purity of the Russian River Valley is also world-class—so much so that it is called the king of New World Pinot Noir.
After more than an hour on the road the car had passed Santa Rosa and entered the heart of the Russian River Valley. On both sides, vineyards already harvested and left barren rolled away into the distance.
“We’re almost there.”
Even before I spoke, Daniel—who knew this place better than anyone—was staring out the window with complicated eyes. The faint tremor in the hands resting on his knees told me exactly how tense he was.
He had already gripped the door handle before the car fully stopped. Those hands held none of the precision of a sous-winemaker from France’s greatest estate; they were full of the impatient eagerness of a child about to set foot on home soil.
“Thank you, Brian. For bringing me back to this land. And… for looking after my father.”
The car door closed behind him. He began walking, slightly unsteady, toward the fog-shrouded vineyard. After twenty years of wandering he had finally returned to his own terroir. Yet the moment his foot touched the front yard of the house he had fled two decades earlier, his steps froze as solid as a stone sunk in mud.
Beyond the low-lying fog of the vineyard an old man slowly straightened his bent back. Dust and soil covered the worn overalls of the man who rose. The father who had once seemed mountain-like twenty years ago was now thin and small, like a dry branch at the end of autumn.
Elias Grendel turned his head at the sound of the unfamiliar car. For a long moment he stared at the shabby figure standing dazed with the backlight behind him. Then the old man’s eyes filled with a tremor beyond words.
“…Daniel?”
The weak, dry voice broke the silence. At that single word the last of Daniel’s reason collapsed like a bursting dam.
He ran and threw himself at the old man’s feet. The honor of sous-winemaker at France’s finest winery, the swaggering figure who had once preened before people who admired him in some corner of France—none of it remained.
Only the sinner who had driven a nail into his father’s heart and wandered like a ghost was left.
“Father… I was wrong. Without a word… I’m sorry.”
Daniel wiped the pouring tears with his sleeve like a little boy.
“After that mistake at Harrington I was so ashamed… I felt like I’d smeared shit on the name you’d spent your whole life building. I couldn’t come back. No—I couldn’t forgive myself. I couldn’t admit how worthless I was. So… I was wrong.”
His shoulders heaved violently; tears fell onto the dirt and left dark stains. He believed even begging for forgiveness was a luxury he did not deserve, and he wept in silence.
But what waited for him was neither a harsh scolding nor a cold shoulder. A rough, soil-stained old hand settled carefully on Daniel’s golden hair. It was the warmest hand in the world, callused from a lifetime of touching grapevine canes.
“You’re back in one piece. That’s all that matters. You didn’t get hurt. Your old man gave that unlucky bastard at Harrington a proper payback for treating you like dirt. He won’t be able to lift his head in front of me anymore.”
“…I know. Quiet Hill made from these grapes took Double Gold. Your grapes really are the best in the world.”
Still wearing the tear tracks, the son smiled with pride. Elias took his trembling hands and forced him to his feet, then examined every inch of the gaunt face that twenty years had clawed at. Thick tears fell from the old man’s eyes onto Daniel’s cheek.
“I’m sorry. Dad… I was wrong.”
“What did you do wrong? What crime did you commit? People grow by making mistakes. A big winery can criticize a mistake, but it has no right to destroy a person. Your father just didn’t have the power to protect you. I’m the one who should be sorry. You’re home safe—you’ve got nothing to apologize for.”
Elias pulled his son into his arms. The old man’s embrace was narrow, bones jutting, yet to Daniel it was larger and safer than any splendid château in France.
Daniel buried his face in his father’s chest and sobbed like a child. The heart that had frozen for twenty years in the cold underground cellars of Burgundy finally began to thaw in his father’s soil-scented arms.