Echelon (1)
Before the summer heat arrived, I was on my way to Alexander Valley, accompanying Armando’s family. It was clear that Armando couldn't handle the decision to move over a million dollars in capital entirely on his own.
We parked our car in front of a small winery building perched above the vineyard. A sign with crooked, hand-painted lettering read: Laguna Creek Winery. Laguna Creek. The name sounded friendly enough.
"This place... it looks better than I thought, doesn't it?"
Armando let out a low breath—a sound that was a mix of anticipation and nerves.
His father, Jean, a man with broad shoulders and graying hair, stepped out from the driver’s seat and raised an eyebrow quietly.
"It always looks fine on the surface. The real problems are the ones that don't show."
Armando’s mother, Rosa, who was closing the door behind us, chuckled softly.
"Don't be like that already. Brian is here with us, so he'll be able to give us a good assessment."
The two of them were relying entirely on my opinion rather than Armando’s. Having heard through their son how Redwood Winery had transformed since Armando started working at our farm during his high school years, they placed a great deal of trust in me.
Perhaps because we had called ahead, the door to the house attached to the vineyard swung open as if they had been waiting for us. A man with silver-streaked, chin-length hair and a neatly trimmed beard appeared. I could feel the exhaustion weighing down his eyes, and his shoulders slumped with a lack of energy.
The man, who looked to be in his early forties, approached us with a forced smile.
"I'm Thomas Green. You're the ones who called...?"
"I'm Armando Cortez. I’m the one who reached out."
Thomas’s gaze lingered on Armando’s youthful face. His expression stiffened for a brief moment, but he quickly smoothed it back into a smile.
"Sorry for the long trip. Do you have any experience?"
"Yes, I do."
Armando answered confidently, but Thomas just nodded, looking unimpressed.
We walked through the south-facing block where the rows of vines were lined up. Thomas pointed his toe at a disconnected drip hose.
"That should have been replaced last month, but we were short on hands, so it got pushed back. Before summer hits, you have to check the pressure for every line and swap them out... if you do it alone, this much work takes a whole week."
His bitter smile carried the weight of his exhaustion.
"How is the soil condition?"
"The soil? It's good."
That was all he said. It was too much to expect an answer about what fertilizers or composts he used, what kind of environment he had cultivated, or how he was managing it.
"I take it the wildfires missed you, then?"
"That's right. Last year, the fire came down the mountainside from the north, but it didn't reach us. So, the location itself is excellent."
Armando’s eyes lit up. Rosa carefully touched the bark of a nearby tree, looking relieved.
While the two of them examined the land, I looked at the state of the grapes. They weren't bad overall, but I could see grapes eaten by insects here and there, and some vines showed signs of berries failing to ripen properly.
On the way back to the house, I asked him casually.
"Is there a reason you're putting the farm up for sale?"
He looked at me, a young Asian man, with a puzzled expression, wondering why I was part of this group. But seeing that Armando and his parents respected me without question, he shrugged and replied.
"I want to escape. When I first started farming, I fell in love with the peaceful scenery of the countryside. Look at that—the Russian River flowing in the distance and the overwhelming landscape. Just looking at it was healing. I was running away from a life where I woke up to an alarm, rode a stinking subway to work, and slept while hugging an Excel file at night."
I realized from his answer that he was just as exhausted by life as I had been. The only difference between him and me was that I knew the hardship and grueling labor of running a farm.
"I see. That must have been very difficult."
"Haha, exactly. Then I took a vacation, traveled here, and drank a glass of red wine at a winery. The astringent texture that clung to my tongue... strangely, it felt like comfort. Yes, let's do this, I told myself. There was romance in it. At first, everyone praised me. They said I was brave, that they were envious. The glasses sparkled on social media, the comments were filled with applause... but... being a farmer was far from the romance I had imagined."
He reached the winery next to the house and threw the door open. Inside, stainless steel tanks stood in silver rows, and the scent of quietly fermenting wine mixed with the smell of old oak hung in the air.
"The reality starts with waking up and pulling weeds. Weeds here are the real devil. They say you use a tractor every week, but a week after you use it, they grow back to the same height."
It seemed he didn't know about planting cover crops every winter. If you plant rye, barley, or clover in the winter to cover the ground, it reduces weed growth, and you can till them in during the spring to use as organic matter.
And looking at the ground, he wasn't doing any mulching—covering the soil with rice straw, wood chips, or compost to block the light and suppress weed germination.
His complaints continued.
"Water? There's never enough water. I didn't know the water and electricity bills would be this high. When it comes to harvest, you drain all your energy just trying to find people. Even if you manage to find someone, it doesn't end there; two days later, they don't show up because something came up. Haha, farm work is no joke."
The fact that water was always scarce and the bills were high meant that even though he was using drip irrigation, he wasn't using SWP (Stem Water Potential) to manage moisture levels. It was clear he was struggling due to a lack of knowledge in viticulture.
On the other hand, even though these were things that could give a bad impression of the farm, he spoke honestly without hiding anything. When I looked at him with surprise, he seemed to read the meaning in my expression and chuckled.
"My words sound like lies, don't they? It's the truth. You might wonder why I'm talking about such negative things, but this is 1.1 million dollars. I don't want to sell it by filling someone's heart with dreams without telling them the reality. That's exactly what happened to me."
"Ah..."
"But it's not all bad. Because the fantastic wine I wanted so much is right here. Sometimes, when a large batch sells, I forget all the hardships I've been through."
"I suppose that's true."
"The unfortunate thing is that good wine requires time. Both time and money, at the same time."
He looked between Armando and me and asked.
"Who will be the one actually running the farm...?"
"Me."
When Armando stepped up again, he asked in a skeptical voice.
"How old are you?"
"I'm just over twenty."
"Doing this at that age... do you even know what you're getting into? You have to work all year round, not just take a break in the winter. When it rains, you worry the soil will wash away, and when the wind blows, all the leaves flip over."
He warned Armando like a preacher delivering a boring sermon. But Armando, while he might have been scoffing on the inside, didn't show it on the outside.
"Yes, I already know because I've worked on a farm. This friend of mine has a farm in Napa Valley."
"Is that so?"
Only then did Thomas open his eyes wide and look at me for a moment. Then, he probed a little.
"What's the name of the farm?"
"Redwood."
"Oh... I don't know it well, but I'm sure it's a good place. If you have experience, I have nothing more to say."
He closed his mouth as if he had nothing left to add, and I checked the state of the winery. Even if his skills were lacking, he had been consistently using the winery's equipment, so there didn't seem to be any major problems. Even if there were, I would have to have a contractor visit once to clean everything out and fix any issues anyway.
"Think it over, and let me know once you've decided."
He said it comfortably, as if he had done this a few times before. But Armando met my eyes, then turned to Jean and Rosa and said.
"I'll do it."
At the look of firm determination in his eyes, Jean and Rosa looked at me. Their eyes asked if this was really okay. I felt a lot of pressure, but I told them it seemed fine, thinking that as long as it didn't all get wiped out by a wildfire, there wouldn't be any major problems.
The contract date was set, and a thin smile traced the lips of Thomas, who had put the farm up for sale. Just seeing that, I could feel his desire to get it over with quickly.
In the car on the way home, Armando spoke with a face that had hardened, unlike when we were heading to the farm.
"You'll help me a lot, right?"
"Of course. You already know a lot, though. Why do you think that guy failed?"
"He had almost no knowledge of farming. The fact that he said he only rests in the winter when he should be laying down cover crops... I didn't see many pheromone traps for pests, either. Looking at the state of the grapes, it didn't look like he fertilized at the right times. And when you asked about the soil condition, he just said it was good..."
"Right."
"He didn't seem to measure SWP with a pressure chamber, and there didn't seem to be anything special about his winemaking process. He was just... someone who bought it without knowing anything because the winery looked nice."
"You saw that well. If you can see that much, I can't really call you a beginner farmer anymore, can I?"
"Really?"
Armando, looking a bit brighter, let out a sigh of relief and said.
"It's a bit of a burden, but I think it'll be fun."
"It is fun, it definitely is..."
Armando and I returned home, looking at the beautiful scenery from the car, carrying both worry and excitement at the same time.
On the day Armando acquired the farm, we held a party at the newly acquired winery. As all four of our friends came to own our own farms, we felt a strong, inexplicable bond.
The Silveroak farm grounds changed as rapidly as the money invested and the sweat I poured into it, Chloe increasingly transformed into a true cherry farm owner, and Armando clung desperately to changing his newly acquired farm just like Redwood.
Time flew by, and when September arrived and Jacob’s distillery, Golden Grain Soju House, was finally taking shape, the time had come.
A tasting event was held ahead of the launch of the Cabernet Sauvignon-based blended wine we had been waiting for for so long.
As the door to the winery’s aging room opened, cold air and the scent of wood flowed out simultaneously.
"It's been a year since I've seen you all."
At the appearance of my father, wearing a black shirt and an apron with the winery logo, the people who had come to the tasting event lit up with anticipation. Many of them were familiar faces.
From Theodore Goodwin of Blaze Bistro to Joshua Lumpkin of La Fiorentina, André Leclerc of Le Jardin, Owen Hall of Vineyard Table, and even Daniel Roca of Lumière, who had worked with me at the Winkler Dinner before.
They had all gladly attended this tasting event after receiving a call from Redwood. Having tasted the shocking debut of Serasia, our cherry wine, they couldn't miss this tasting event where they could see the true potential of Redwood.
"I am very happy to see you all again at this tasting."
My father held a bottle of red wine in his hand. He was deliberately covering the label with one hand, causing the curiosity of the attendees to explode.
"The wine we are presenting to you today is the first red wine Redwood Winery is releasing in Napa, a blend centered on Cabernet Sauvignon. I believe this wine is the starting point that shows where our Redwood is headed in the future."
Expectation filled the eyes of the people.
"Redwood Winery’s first blended wine—we introduce it here, right now."
All eyes in attendance focused on my father’s hand, holding their breath.
"It is Echelon."