“One would think.”
“But there are some who don’t get it.”
Crystal slid her chair closer to the desk and leaned her forearms on the glass surface. “Our pricing power is contingent on us hitting certain volume goals. So if you have some who don’t want to get onboard, it can cause some . . .
Dixon pursed her lips and nodded. “Of course. So who in the AVA didn’t want to get onboard?”
“A very small minority didn’t want to renew the contract we have with Superior. They thought we should invest in building a few custom trailers of our own, that would then move from each of our wineries and do our bottling. But that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. There’s the initial build-out cost—five hundred grand to a million dollars apiece—and you’d still have to park them somewhere in the off-season. Not easy to find parking spots for sixty-five-foot trucks.”
“And it puts you back in the business of maintaining and owning bottling facilities.”
“Sort of. You don’t have permit issues, which is a big deal nowadays. Trying to get permission to build out new space to expand your bottling line is tough, if not impossible. So if we built trailers, we’d get around those issues. Still, there are other things that wouldn’t make sense if we were to own our own trailers. Like some of our members have restrictions on the roads that lead to their wineries, so they’d need to have smaller trucks, which, obviously, have less bottling capacity. Superior takes care of all that for us. They have trailers that can accommodate all our members’ needs.”
Vail swallowed the strawberry she’d been chewing and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “What about the issue of natural versus fake?” She was trying to be nonchalant with the question, hoping to place less emphasis on it. Because she didn’t really know what she was asking, should it involve something significant, she didn’t want Crystal to feel the weight of the question and attempt to snowball them.
Crystal leaned back. “Well, that was another thing that led to intense debate. I’m not sure that got resolved. I guess we’ll find out where we are at our next meeting.”
“Why such disagreement?”
“What do you know about corks?”
Vail and Dixon shared a glance. Vail’s look said, This is about corks?
“I don’t know a whole lot,” Vail said. “Wineries stick them in wine bottles to seal them. But my guess is there’s a lot more to it than that, isn’t there?”
Crystal smiled again—but this was not her promotional smile. It was a one-sided smirk that conveyed depth and irony. “Your guess is correct. It’s sparked quite the debate in the wine community, and our board is no exception. There are those who are fervent supporters of natural cork, to the point of being fanatics. They claim that not using cork is breaking with centuries of wine-making tradition.”
“What alternatives are there?” Vail asked.
“Synthetic corks or screw tops.”
“Screw tops—like a twist-off on a bottle of soda or tea?”
“Yes. We don’t like that model, for that reason. Screw tops solve a lot of the problems that come from natural or synthetic corks, but they’re cheap looking. They fit more with a cut-rate label than the quality of a Georges Valley wine. There’s something about a twist-off top that just doesn’t fit with a fine bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, or a highly regarded blend such as ours.”
Dixon nodded. “Same could be said about those synthetic corks, right?”
Crystal’s face firmed. “No. Not right. Not in my opinion. You still have the feel of opening the bottle with a corkscrew. The only difference is that the good ones are made of thermoplastic elastomer.” She waved a hand. “That’s not entirely true. There are other differences. Cork comes from tree bark, a very specific oak tree grown in the Mediterranean and Portugal—and the trees can’t have their bark stripped until they’re twenty-five years old. After that, they can only be harvested once every ten years or so. But there are nearly twenty billion bottles of wine produced each year. There just isn’t enough natural cork to go around.”
“So it’s a supply and demand issue.”
“On the surface, yes. But there’s much more to it.”
Dixon leaned back and placed a hand on her chin. “Doesn’t cork allow some air to get into the bottle, which promotes natural aging of the wine?”
“It also allows TCA into the bottle, which causes what’s called
“TCA?” Vail asked.
“Trichloro-something. It’s a fungus that grows because of naturally occurring chemicals found in cork. Depending on who you believe, between 3 and 20 percent of bottles are ‘corked.’ Basically, those bottles are ruined by TCA contamination. The winery can avoid that by using the thermoplastic elastomer, or synthetic, corks that I mentioned. Some synthetics aren’t as good, and they actually let more air into the bottle than natural cork. But the ones Superior uses are, well, superior. They don’t have that problem.
“Then there’s also the issue of cost. With our volume pricing, we can get these synthetics at about four cents apiece, compared to fifteen to seventy-five cents for natural cork. Add it up over the millions of bottles our members produce, year after year, and you’re talking real money.”
Vail hiked her brow. “So it seems like the synthetic would be the way to go.”
Crystal grinned—that same deeper-meaning half-smile. “One would think. But there was considerable debate over whether to renew that three-year contract with Superior.”
Dixon shook her head. “What does Superior have to do with the cork issue?”
“They only have one trailer that’s still equipped to handle natural cork. They’ve refitted the rest of their trucks to synthetic-only because they’ve developed custom machinery that allows them to bottle faster with the synthetic.”
“So,” Vail said, “there are a couple people on the board who didn’t want to renew the Superior contract. Did Superior know this?”
“Absolutely not. The business of the board and its member wineries is confidential and we don’t discuss it outside the boardroom. We each sign confidentiality statements preventing us from discussing board business with anyone who’s not a board member.”
Vail wondered if Crystal had herself signed one of these statements—here she was telling them all about the board’s deliberations. But she wasn’t complaining. Still, it made her wonder who might also have thought it was okay to tip off someone at Superior that their contract renewal was in jeopardy.
“Who usually deals with Superior?”
“Our Contracts VP. Ian Wirth.”
“And who’s the board’s contact person at Superior?”
Crystal hesitated. Her eyes moved between Vail and Dixon. “Why?”
“Same reason it was five minutes ago,” Vail said. “We’re investigating something and this information may or may not be germane to the issue we’re looking into.”
“I’m not sure—”
“This isn’t confidential board business,” Dixon said. “It’s just someone’s name at a company. We can call Superior and ask them the same question, but you can save us some time and effort. And we’d appreciate that.”
Crystal reached to the right corner of her desk and removed a file folder from a standing portfolio. She opened it and traced a finger across a page. “Cesar Guevara. He’s their CFO.”
Dixon pulled a spiral notepad from her inside jacket pocket and made a note of the man’s name.
Vail sensed they were reaching the end of the interview. But there was one more piece of information they needed. “Who on your board,” she said, “has the initials TN?”
“Todd Nicholson. Why? What—”
“Active investigation,” Dixon said. “Can’t say.”
Crystal looked to be getting increasingly frustrated by their refusal to answer her questions. Vail didn’t care —truth is, that’s the way it was with the police. They asked the questions, the interviewees answered them and didn’t get the opportunity to ask their own. Crystal clearly didn’t understand the relationship. But she was getting the idea.
“And who on the board has a last name that begins with W?” Dixon asked. “Would that be Mr. Wirth?”
