Under a spreading chestnut tree: from IT to winemaking, how my friend made his dream come true, and how you can too.
The financial crisis of 2008 started in the USA but reverberated all around the world. Its ripples eventually reached the small village of Fronsac, in the Bordeaux region in France, a few miles North of the famous village of Saint Emilion, in unexpected ways.
In the summer of 2009, Eric Risser-Maroix, 48 years old, sat under the chestnut tree of his parents’ farmhouse in Fronsac, with his wife, Sarah, drinking wine. He lived and worked in Paris but was on vacations for a few weeks in the house where he was raised. He looked across from the garden at acres and acres of vineyard. Fronsac is wine country. It has been so for generations. It even has the famous label of Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, A.O.C. in short. It means that the wine produced on the rolling hills of the village is unique to the land and recognized as such by the Bordeaux wine industry and the almighty French government which regulates it. No one would ever dare to take some wine from another place and pretend it originated from an AOC region like Fronsac. That would be blasphemy and trigger anathema from the world of winemakers. As such, the AOC is a treasure.
Eric felt grim and frustrated. He had just lost his IT job, working for a US financial institution which had a subsidiary in Paris. Shaken by the market downturn, the Paris branch had been cut off. Eric was worried about his future. That’s when his wife, Sarah, stepped in.
“You know what I think?”
Eric looked at his wife, intrigued. “No, I don’t, but it looks like you are going to tell me…”
“I think that being laid off is the best thing that has ever happened to you. Apart from meeting me, of course.”
They both laughed.
“No argument about that. I mean, finding you. But I am lost about the first part. Why?”
“You know how you always talk about becoming a winemaker, a “vigneron”. This is your chance.”
“What do you mean? Do you know how complex it is to start a winery? You need equipment, authorizations, land, grapevines, and let’s not forget, a diploma.”
It is true that, in France, the wine business is one of the most scrutinized and regulated affairs in the agriculture world. One cannot become a bona fide “vigneron” without the proper credentials. Imagine the chaos if everyone started to grow a vineyard in their garden and produce wine. Non, non, non, non, the government could not have that. There were barriers to entry in the business, and specialized education was one of them.
Sarah kept pressing.
“Well, you got a severance package from the firm. You don’t need to go find another job immediately. So…”
“So what?”
“If not now, then when? You can go back to school. How long would it take you?”
“There are a few vocational schools that hand you a high school diploma with a winemaking specialization. That would be the fastest. But it takes a year at least.”
“We should have enough money to buy the land and the equipment and start, right here, in your family’s farmhouse. Your mother doesn’t live here anymore anyway. We could leave Paris. I could find a job, clean houses, become a waitress, whatever it takes to help.”
Eric is a teddy bear of a guy. At 6 foot tall, with a little belly demonstrating how much he likes good cuisine, he is a nice and even-tempered man, who speaks little but always in a profound manner. He adores his wife and has become a surrogate father for Sarah’s children from a previous marriage. Generosity and meekness combined with a quiet strength.
Eric picked up the challenge. Within a year, he had his high school certificate. He had to travel three hours by car every day, back and forth, every other day, to a school located in the Bordeaux region. He would sit on the benches of a classroom with other would-be winemakers, most of them still in their teenage years. He also learned his trade with a neighbor, a friend of his late father and a winemaker himself, who taught him the ropes in the field when Eric was not in school. Eric acquired 5 acres of land and rented another 4 acres. He got rid of the old vines and planted merlot and cabernet grapes. Traditionally, Fronsac wines are made of 90% of merlot and 10% of cabernet, or 100% merlot. He bought stainless steel tanks, plus the tools of his trade, and transformed the barn into a cellar. Three years after the decision they took under the chesnut tree, Eric and Sarah had their first harvest. It came to 6,000 bottles, all bottled by hand by Eric and Sarah. The official sticker label featured a drawing of the farmhouse. They named the wine after the hamlet where they now lived. Chateau Franc Capet was born.
I remember visiting with them, a few years back. I tasted Eric’s wine for the first time. I looked at him, surprised.
“Eric, this wine is amazing. I don’t understand. I thought it took ten years at least, if not decades, to make a good wine.”
Eric laughed. “No, not at all. It is a myth. See, the secret is in the grapes. If you have good grapes, you can make good wine.”
“How do you get good grapes?”
“Ah!” Eric pondered my question. “Know-how, I guess. Experience, if you want to call it that way.”
I sensed there was more. “What’s your secret?”
He smiled. “I do everything by hand. My neighbors use machinery and intensive methods. I don’t. I spray product at the foot of every vine. I prune every vine. I nurture every vine. You have to invest time and effort into it. It pays off.”
Here was a brave man who dared to pursue his dream in the midst of bureaucratic, old fashioned, traditional rural France and he was thriving. He had a blank year in 2014, like everyone in the village, when the entire crop froze, two weeks before harvest. But he kept going, even taking a part time IT job for a while, until he could recover from the loss.
Eric and Sarah now produce every year 6,000 bottles of first-class Bordeaux wine, unknown to the world. Well, not quite unknown. Wine experts eventually gave Chateau Franc Capet, AOC Fronsac, a rating of 88/100 (If you pass by the Bordeaux region, do not hesitate to stop for a wine tasting under the chestnut tree. Check out https://www.chateau-franc-capet.fr/ ).
Did Eric know that it would work for sure? No, by all means. But he started anyway. Did he have all the resources at hand to launch himself into this adventure? No. But he started anyway. He was not alone. Sarah was his biggest fan. He had a support system. He had friends to show him the way. And he had a vision. I have heard before that there is a level of providence at play when starting a project. It might be scary to do so. But once you are on your way, the universe has a way of conspiring to bring your dream to you.
I felt like I had discovered a secret garden of a place. But more than that, I felt that I had stumbled onto a secret. No matter what you want to do, what your dream is, get started. There is magic in that.
