Traveling through 70's wine

After the Spring Festival, all walks of life resumed work. Wen Qing first went to several companies to deal with the backlog of work, then asked for leave from Xie Yang and Gu Qicheng, handed the child to Mrs. Liu and Qiao Dali, explained her arrangements to Yang Jiesheng, and then went to Shanxi Province with Liu Quan.

The two men first took a train to Taiping City, and then took a long-distance bus to continue south. The winery they wanted to acquire was in Min County, 80 kilometers southeast of Taiping.

This is a county town with a population of about 10. The distillery has been producing strong-flavor liquor since the 30s, but stopped production for more than ten years in the 6s and 70s. It resumed production in the late 70s. The craft is inherited from the family, and it was popular for three or four years at the beginning. However, people here mainly drink light-flavor liquor, so the distillery has been surviving in the cracks. Now that there is an opportunity to sell the distillery, the factory director is quite happy.

Factory director Zhang Dongqi took Wen Qing and Liu Quan to visit the winery and introduced that this winery was passed down from his great-grandfather. In the 80s, he turned the winery from a small brewery into a winery. When business was at its best, there were 7 or 80 workers in the factory, but now there are only more than 20 people.

The winery has 485 wine cellars, a koji-making workshop, warehouses, wine cellars, etc., covering an area of ​​more than 30 acres. The factory director comes from a wine-making family and has rich experience in winemaking. He was reluctant to sell the winery, but his wife was very dissatisfied with the winery that was continuously losing money and had to invest money every year. She didn't want to invest any more money, so the workers' wages have not been paid since December last year. Fortunately, the workers have worked in the winery for many years and they still trust the character of the factory director, so they didn't come to ask for wages. So Zhang Dongqi said that if Changxia Winery bought the winery, the first thing he would do was to pay the employees' wages.

Listening to his slightly bitter words, Wen Qing looked at Liu Quan and nodded slightly. Liu Quan said, "Director Zhang, how much do you want to sell it for?"

Zhang Dongqi said, "Director Liu, the winery is the result of the hard work of several generations. There are still 50 vats of liquor in the wine cellar. The winery covers an area of ​​30 mu. It should be worth 300 million yuan, right?"

The purchasing power of 300 million yuan in the 50s was quite amazing. Liu Quan thought it was too expensive and said, "To be honest, your 10 barrels of liquor are only worth 5 yuan, and the land is not worth much. Now even the land in Taiping City is only 30 yuan per mu, and 150 mu is 5 million yuan. What's more, the land in your county is worth at most 60 or 150 yuan, and the equipment in the factory is not worth much. How about this, we pay million yuan to take over the winery."

Director Zhang thought what he said made sense and said he would go back to discuss it with his wife.

Wen and Liu left the winery. Director Zhang didn't know that Wen Qing was Changxia's boss and only thought that she was Liu Quan's subordinate.

Wen Qing and Liu Quan rented a car and went to the countryside to find a suitable place to build a vineyard.

The southern part of Taiping is Jinzhong and Fenyang. The two drove along the eastern side of Luliang Mountain. Within two days, they passed through Qingxu, Jiaocheng, and Wenshui counties. These places are backed by mountains, and there are mountains and plains in the area.

Wen Qing got out of the car from time to time to check the land and found that some places had soil with a high sand content. What she was looking for was land with a high sand content and deep soil. These lands are breathable and fertile, which is conducive to the growth of grapes.

At the agreed time, they returned to Min County to meet Zhang Dongqi. After discussion between the couple, the winery was transferred to Changxia Winery for 180 million yuan.

The two parties signed the transfer agreement and shook hands to congratulate each other. Liu Quan asked him if he was willing to continue working in the factory. Zhang Dongqi hesitated for a while and nodded in agreement.

Afterwards, Wen Qing sent Xue Wenhui, a backbone of the technical department, to serve as the factory director, and Zhang Dongqi as the deputy factory director. He also sent the chief of the infrastructure section to participate in the transformation of the third factory in Jin Province. Wen Qing's idea for the transformation of this winery was to expand the scale of production and adopt mechanized and automated production for some auxiliary links.

The third branch factory covers an area of ​​30 acres, which is actually not small, but their factory area is small and the land utilization rate is not high. Now they need to build a workshop to increase the number of wine cellars to 1000. After measurement, Wen Qing thinks it would be better to expand the third branch factory. Zhang Dongqi is a local native and has a good relationship with the county government. The location of the winery is close to the edge of the county town. To the west and north are mountain slopes, and to the south is a road. He reported the plan to expand the winery to the county government.

There were no industries in the local area, but when they heard that a large factory in Beijing was investing and building a factory here, they expressed 100% support and sold 2.5 acres of land in the west near the mountains to Changxia Wine Industry at a price of 30 yuan per acre. In this way, the three-branch factory has 60 acres of land, and the number of wine cellars can be greatly increased to 1500. The annual output in the future will reach more than 6000 tons.

After buying the land, Xue Wenhui started to build the factory and renovated the old factory at the same time. Changxia Winery allocated 400 million yuan for the renovation. After Wen Qing explained the work clearly, he and Liu Quan went south again to negotiate with the governments of Qingxu, Jiaocheng and Wenshui respectively about contracting land to build a winery.

The history of grape cultivation in Qingxu can be traced back to 300 years ago, and the vinegar brewed here is very famous; Jiaocheng is located on the eastern foot of the Luliang Mountains, and the red dates produced here are well-known throughout the country. Compared with Qingxu, there are more mountains here; Wenshui is located on the western edge of the basin and the eastern foot of the Luliang Mountains, with half of it being mountains and half being plains.

Wen Qing wanted to build a winery on a gentle slope, which required 500 acres of land. After negotiating with three county governments and taking comprehensive considerations, he finally decided to contract 500 acres of land in the western part of Wenshui County. The annual contract fee for each acre of land was 500 yuan, and the contract period was 30 years.

After the agreement was signed, Wen Qing paid a one-time 15-year contract fee of 375 million yuan to avoid future disputes. At the same time, it was agreed that if one party breached the contract, a sky-high penalty would be required.

The soil in the area she contracted was deep and high in sand, but it was a little water-scarce, so the yield from growing crops was not high. The government was happy to have someone contract it, so they offered the best conditions and the strongest willingness to cooperate. Wen Qing asked Dawson, a classmate in the discussion group at Davis University, to design the winery.

After graduation, Dawson went to Los Angeles and started a wine service company with a friend. The company mainly engaged in business related to the wine industry, such as designing wineries, selling winemaking equipment, oak barrels, and wine pest control services.

During these three years, Dawson also wrote her several letters. It was he who introduced the intermediary that Wen Qing found when she went to the United States for the second time to buy CNC machine tools, although Wen Qing told him that her relatives in Southeast Asia wanted to buy one.

Wen Qing wrote to him about Wenshui County's environment and her own ideas, and invited him to bring his team over for a detailed discussion. After the letter was sent, Wen Qing found a local construction team and began to put up iron mesh in the vineyard, mainly to mark the boundaries of the land, indicating that the land in this area has been contracted out, to prevent it from being occupied by others and causing disputes over time. She was mainly worried that if a dispute arose, the local government would favor the local people, and she did not want to resort to legal proceedings.