Empire of the Ring

Morning came, and Youngho awoke to the boisterous sound of the people in the house. As he headed towards downstairs, Kim In-hwa’s face was flushed as if she had just come back from a morning walk.

Leon, who just woke up, giggled as he leaned toward Kim In-hwa.

Suh Min-seok was the last one to wake up. He went outside to look around and came back with an astounded expression on his face. He was surprised by the size of the farm. Since he came to the farm late last night, he was not able to get a good view of the farm at that time.

“Is this really a vineyard? How much wine would a vineyard of this size produce in a year?”

“Hey, are you here to take a census on my house and farm?”

“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t get over how big your farm is but I’m still curious. Any salesperson can’t let go of things until their curiosity is resolved.”

Suh Min-seok said boldly although he was merely a newly hired salesperson at his company. It made Youngho laugh.

“Well, we produce a little less than three million bottles. I’ve got a smaller factory too, and it produces about 500,000 bottles.”

“…”

He did not seem to get a huge number of bottles.

“What’s wrong? Are those numbers too small for you?”

“I only know how many soju bottles are in each box. It’s hard for me to estimate how many bottles those are.”

“My vines produce 400 gallons of grape extract per each acre. I heard that vines from Australia and California produce 500 gallons per acre, but the taste of the wine made in the Caucasus is the best in the world.”

“Sir, I heard wines made in France and Italy taste the best.”

“You have no idea that Georgia had been producing wine for thousands of years. The Caucasus is the hometown of wine.”

“I searched about this region last night but I still have so much to learn.”

Anything on the Internet about this region was either from a traveler’s blog or a simple information from the encyclopedia. If one really wanted to learn about a country, he would have to live there for several years. There were still a ton of things that Youngho did not know about the regions of Central Asia. There was no way for Suh Min-seok to know everything overnight.

“So, how would you like to take a look at the farm from the sky?”

“You mean with a drone? I guess that’d be amazing!”

After finishing their breakfast, Youngho left to the airfield on the farm with his guests.

“I feel like we’re on a farm in California or Argentina since we have to use a car to look around the farm.”

“I haven’t been to those places. Have you traveled to many places?”

“I’ve overdone myself because I wanted to make my profile look good. I made money through working part-time jobs and went backpacking to several places.”

He seemed to be a responsible and sensible person since he made money for what he set out to do. He must have worked for more than a year to collect that much money to travel to foreign lands. It seemed that young people in Korea still struggled to get a job and to build a great-looking resume. It was true that getting employed in Korea got even more difficult these days.

Youngho felt sorry for the young fellas in Korea. Although they were hired by S Corporation, which was one of the top companies in Korea, it was a little harsh and reckless that the company sent them to follow Youngho around. It seemed that their superior wanted to move Youngho’s heart through the company’s young recruits. The young recruits would have had no other choice but to comply with what they were asked to do.

He did not want to blame the young followers. Regardless of what their superior must be thinking, it was Youngho who decided to help them at the airport and made the acquaintance of them.

“I’m telling you this is totally safe. Just get on the plane. It’s equipped with parachutes and I can assure you that this is the safest airplane ever.”

“…”

He should not have mentioned ‘parachutes.’

The young fellas were reluctant to get on the four-seater Cessna airplane.

They did not trust Youngho that much yet to entrust their own lives to him.

“We’ve got two more safety features. On top of having parachutes for each person here, there is also a parachute for the whole airplane and a lifeboat. Isn’t that perfect? If we ran out of gas, we can also make a downhill landing safely.”

Kim In-hwa’s face turned pale at Youngho’s last comment.

“Excuse me, Mr. CEO. We think it’ll be enough to look around the farm on a car.”

Suh Min-seok suggested another option.

“Alright. Then, I should take an assistant pilot with us just in case I passed out.”

Now, Kim In-hwa looked like she was about to cry.

She could not reject Youngho’s offer because if she went back to the company now, she would have to go back to Korea for good.

Thinking that he teased her enough, Youngho began explaining his flying experience.

On the airplane, the group took a tour around Zeynep Farm, the Charles Farm, and the Serbian ranch. It took only about 15 minutes.

As Youngho was going to return to the farm, Suh Min-seok and Kim In-hwa now wanted to fly more. They wanted to go look at the city area of Baku. However, Youngho could not fly over the city area since flying routes were strictly arranged and limited by the government for even a light airplane. So, he showed them around a part of the Caucasus Mountain Range and came back home.

“How do you like this now? Isn’t it more comfortable than a large airplane?”

Kim In-hwa responded to him with a bewitching face.

“Mr. CEO, I have never seen such an amazing view in my entire life. Thank you so much for showing us around.”

“Okay. Now might be a good time for you to send pictures to your supervisor at the headquarters and report that you’re working hard.”

They busily took pictures of the view inside the airplane. Youngho then asked why they needed to have evidence to show to the company.

“Of course, we should. My supervisor’s going to be exuberated to see this.”

“Great. Why don’t we call it a day for now? I’ll introduce both of you to people who are about your ages, and you can enjoy your weekend with them. They’ll guide you around downtown.”

Youngho was getting tired of spending time with the guests.

He was about to lose his voice from talking too much. The new recruits of the security service company would be happy to meet new friends. They would gladly take the guests around the city.

***

Youngho left the new recruits of S Corporation with the security company’s new recruits and went to the wine factory.

The factory was operating normally even though it was Saturday. It was because of the fermentation process of grape extracts. Since freshly picked grapes needed to be crushed and fermented as quickly as possible, the factory workers had to come to work even during weekends after the harvest season.

The aging process was important in order to make great-tasting wine, but the fermentation process should also be strictly managed. In each step, the right amount of additives should be added in order to make the right taste.

For factories that mass-produced wine bottles, natural fermentation was an old story. As soon as the grape extracts from crushed grapes entered the fermenting room, sulfurous acid gas was injected to sterilize toxic bacteria. The toxic bacteria were the cause for wine to taste bad. As the sulfurous acid gas dissolved, pure culture wine yeast was added to the extracts.

The extracts would be fermented for 15 days at about 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the sediments were removed from them, they would be ready to be stored in stainless tanks for aging. The ones that went into the stainless tanks would be aged for two months and bottled to be sold as low-priced wine.

A year’s worth of farming effort would be wasted if the factory failed to maintain the right temperature and humidity because of these complicated steps.

Knowing this already, Youngho did not go into the fermenting room and aging room but went to the packaging room where the bottling process was done.

Youngho watched the bottling process. After the empty bottles were filled with wine, they were moved by the conveyor belt and automatically closed with cork tops. Throughout the whole time, the factory was filled with the clanging sound of bottles. The sound of bottles clanging could be noisy to some, but it sounded like beautiful music in Youngho’s ears.

As Youngho was about to leave the factory after walking around the factory, Andrey, who had been checking emptied oak casks came out to greet him.

“What brings you to the factory, Mr. Lee? I wasn’t able to meet you in the past few days since you seemed so busy lately.”

“I’ll be grilled by Leon if I stayed home, so I thought I’d look around the factory.”

“I see. Prince Leon could be a handful.”

Andrey was the nicest person, but even he shook his head because of Leon’s unruly energy.

“How is the supply and demand of the oak casks these days?”

“The oak casks in our factory could be used one more time, so there’s nothing wrong with them. I was worried because I thought we would run out of casks but because of increasing demand for premium wine, we’ve got empty casks now.”

“Factory manager, you should take it easy if you think about your age.”

Andrey was an old wine artisan. Without his existence, Zeynep Wine would have not made it this far. He used to have a small-scale vineyard that was handed down to him by his family. Youngho was introduced to Andrey by Gerhardt. Andrey had been working for Youngho since the beginning of the Zeynep wine factory.

His artisan spirit was so great that one time, he had dumped out a whole tank of wine because something went wrong in the fermentation process. Youngho felt bitter because of what he did, but he surely made great-tasting wine. He was the one who made Zeynep Wine popular. In appreciation for his work, Youngho built a house on the farm for his family to live in. His daughter was also helping out with the factory’s bookkeeping work.

Come to think of it, it had been five years since Zeynep Farm began producing wine. Youngho was blessed that his wine gained popularity in such a short period of time.

It was all because of the great seedlings and the best climatic conditions. Without an artisan like Andrey though, it would have been impossible.

“Factory manager, what year of wine do you think we should distribute in the domestic market?”

Youngho only wanted to distribute a limited quantity of wine in the domestic market for a test. He was thinking about 10,000 bottles.

“2014 wine would be great. The weather that year was the best. We had the greatest daily temperature range. You should look at this calendar.”

Andrey showed Youngho a desk calendar. On the 2014 calendar, each day and night’s temperatures and weather conditions were written in small print.

“You didn’t have to go through the trouble. You can check this on the national weather service website.”

“You can check the Baku city area’s weather, but you can’t find out the weather of our farm which is located in a hilly area. You know the weather can be unpredictable here.”

He was quite impressive.

He had picked the best year that had the best climatic condition for high-quality wine.

It was the vintage of Zeynep Farm. Vintage wine indicated the best-quality wine produced in a certain year from a well-known winery. Vintage wines were a limited edition and they could be distinguished from the year they were produced.

“Wow! So, we didn’t distribute yet any of the wine that was produced in 2014?”

“There’s no reason to do that. We can only have such weather conditions in several years. I put every grape extract produced in 2014 in oak casks. What was sold to Russia was covered with wine produced in 2013 and 2015.”

He meant that the wine produced in 2014 were all put into oak casks even the ones that were supposed to go in stainless tanks. It was because such high-quality wine would be wasted if sold at a low price since it was still a short-period-aged wine.

Being an Islamic country, Azerbaijan did not have a high demand for wine but because there were so many great-tasting wine brands, regular wine would not be able to survive.

“Then, the wine we gave to the presidential palace was made in 2014?”

“Ah, you finally noticed.”

Youngho remembered people whom he met at the presidential banquet all gave him a thumbs-up. It was because his wine was too good.

“I should give you a piggyback ride, factory manager!”