How American businessman loses his job and finds himself in an old French vineyard | Wine
One Friday night 24 years ago, Peter Hahn sat at the back of the cab to Heathrow, after another 48 hours of work bend.
“My computer is on my legs,” recalls the American-born organic winery from France.
“My boss was because I wasn’t at work because I didn’t know how many promises we would leave that weekend, and then she called me and yelled because she knew I would miss the flight to Paris, so I promised my French girlfriend.”
A moment later, “I had something inside, just that,” he grabbed the deputy with his right hand—“Closing.” The 36-year-old corporate strategy consultant was paralyzed, unable to breathe, and panicked. This is a moment of breaking, and it is enough to say to the body.
Hahn works as a financial advisor and his severe impostor syndrome “troublesome to me” and doesn’t know why. After all, he is the son of a large business executive. “I have the idea of being a businessman, and that’s my path.”
When he was four, his family left New Jersey. “We popped up around the world – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Sydney,” where he was sent to “one of an all-boy boarding school – sugar cane was not spared.” At the age of 22, he found a job at the Sydney Stock Exchange trader, and there was a trading pit, yelling and a lot of money.
By the age of his 20s, he had completely formed himself as if he was not at home. “I’m one of these international business groups,” he said. Ten years later, “A little bit of a nihilist, I’m swept away in this world of big cars, bigger ships, private jets. I don’t make any sense. And I’m scared because at some point, it’s hard to pack up and do other things.”
He wrote in the magical new book Angel in the Cellar: Notes from the French Vineyard. He was a fan of Proust, and had developed a love for the 19th century, and he realized that he was nostalgic, but it was not poetic. It felt dangerous, he felt “in a dilemma”, uprooted, not even aware of his desire.
“What do you really love?” he asked himself, trying to find out. “It’s a good question, isn’t it?” he said to me, now he knows the answer, smiling now. “I think, ‘Living where you live, working is your life, and loving the extent to which it doesn’t look like work, even if it can be difficult, and where you spend almost every day outside, where you live, where you live, where you live, where you live?
It all stems from his passion for wine, Peter began to take wine classes in Paris and is now his main work base, exploring the cellar, working and walking in the vineyard after the vineyard. He realized that, most importantly, he loved to feel the earth and the soil on land and take care of the vines. So for two years he has studied viticulture and botany part-time (growing grapes and making wine). Here he met two young organic farmers, Damian and Vincent, who taught him about the physiology of vines. Thanks to their guidance and friendship, he decided to look for small farming for organic farming. Now is a new way of life.
In 2002, he discovered a depleted four-hectare farm with a small fuchs vineyard that no one wants – just because the 400-year-old house is carried around and requires “a lot of work”.
Since then, Peter, who is now 60, has been Le Clos de la Meslerieshe lives with his second wife, Juliette, and their 14-year-old daughter. His two older children are frequent tourists who first get married. Avoid machine farming as much as possible, he and his other workers prune the vines and hand-picked the schin grapes. They were crushed on 100-year-old hands and naturally fermented, and his friend Philippe brought a work horse instead of a tractor between the fragile vines of 60-80.
One day, Peter and Philippe were resting under the Judas Tree, pink flowers. Peter ignored his buzzer before checking his message. A friend of his “previous life” sent some photos at Ritz’s business lunch: Peter’s Wine on the wine list (over £100 per bottle), a wealthy sommelier, gorgeous chandelier.
Peter admits feeling short-lived pride, even self-satisfaction – all short-lived. “What shocked me is that at some point I would be very excited about all of this, but now, that doesn’t really excite me.
“I’m not living my life like finance and many corporate worlds where you’re going to get to the next level and you’re trying to get praise from your boss and your clients. It’s a great moment. It’s a wonderful moment, but I realize, God, I really don’t care. It’s a revelation.”
He does care about the socio-economic aspects of the wine industry. “The farmers got the short distances of sticks,” he said, smiling, “The bottle is probably 10 times the price of the price I’m selling for at Liz Island or any three-star Michelin restaurant in the world. It’s also a bit of pain to see this.”
As Peter went through his phone, he just shook his head and smiled and said, “Let’s do this work.”
The physicality of this work allowed Peter’s sense of anxiety to align him with the land he was regenerating. “I no longer feel that nature is separated from me, it is the development of the 19th and 20th centuries of mankind.” Through his largely non-mechanized agriculture and viticulture, he deliberately returned to the turn of time.
“I definitely don’t want to sound like some weird new era master, but Homo sapiens It has been in this world for 300,000 years, right? So, during these years, about 298,000 people live on land and on land. We are hunters and farmers. When you’re sitting on a private jet, doing a deal or working at Burger King, we continue, “We can’t see all of this.”
For him, understanding his land, terrain and the levels of the ecosystems within enables him to learn in time – from the past, live meaningfully in the present, and shape the future for others.
“The deer I saw in the vineyard this morning grazing in the vineyard. The ledge of prayer I found on the pillars. The insects around me were pruning as I knelt on the vines, birds, birds-sounded like a Disney movie. But I was part of it; I wasn’t outside; I wasn’t there.”
The weather may be cruel, but Peter tends to be every season. “I don’t mind raining, calling, or freezing. You know, when nature throws lightning at you – hail damage, such as causing damage, or causing frost damage – it’s not the same as your client or boss in your case, making you feel something is wrong; it’s your nature; it’s not intentional. It’s not personal.”
But his relationship with each year he has created is personal. He loves them (none of them loves their children, they all love them. “When I say that, a lot of people don’t believe me, but it’s true! I don’t have favorites – kids or years – I’ll do anything for everyone.”
Being with a completely relaxed person, a happy person, may be happy person–he almost did it a few years ago, which is unusual.
He sprayed grape vines on a tractor, using minimal levels of copper and vulcanization (less than one-third of what organic grape cultivation allows) to target fungal diseases. It’s a steep plot with a 400kg sprayer shifting the center of gravity.
“I turned my head and felt the wheels lose traction,” Peter recalled. “I could feel the tractor going. I was going to get off. How long did these things last? One second, half a second? The tractor flipped around it once.”
He recorded his multiple thoughts in the book: “I’m going to die. I want to be with my wife and children. Who will finish the spray? … At least I’ll die in the vine.
“I’m very calm,” he now reflects. “It really surprised me. The only explanation I can think of is that it’s because I feel like my life has been in some way intact. I feel like, I’m doing what I want to do, I don’t want to change anything, that’s my life. If I die now, it’s not like I miss the other things I want to do.”
Angel in the Cellar: Notes from the French Vineyard Peter Hahn is published by Little Toller Books for £20. from GuardianBookShop.com £18
