Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Art De Vivre (I of II)

Episode Date: May 26, 2015

The voice of the ToE episode announcer revealed! (her name is Mathilde)  and she joins our host for this two part series about the intersection between France and China and wine. The story of the red obsession of Wealthy Chinese has been told many times, but what is going to happen when China’s elusive emerging middle class gets wine fever? Can wine transmit cultural values? Can it transcend consumerism?  In this installment Benjamen and  Mathilde traverse France to discover this vino nouvelle vague. Thanks to our sponsors http://www.parachutehome.com/theory and https://casper.com/theory *********Click on the image for the whole story about this week’s installment**********  

You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. At Radiotopia, we now have a select group of amazing supporters that help us make all our shows possible. If you would like to have your company or product sponsor this podcast, then get in touch. Drop a line to sponsor at radiotopia.fm. Thanks. episode. Why is there something called influencer voice? What's the deal with the TikTok shop? What is posting disease and do you have it? Why can it be so scary and yet feel so great to block someone on social media? The Neverpost team wonders why the internet and the world because of the internet is the way it is. They talk to artists, lawyers, linguists, content creators, sociologists, historians, and more about our current tech and media moment. From PRX's Radiotopia, Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet.

Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called Art de Vivre. Art de Vivre, part one. Art de Vivre, part one. I get a lot of emails from listeners asking me who that voice is at the beginning of the podcast. It's actually Mathilde. Hi. My wife. And she is the podcast. It's actually Mathilde. Hi.

My wife. And she is from France. Yes, I'm French. For the past few years now, we've been spending our summers in Paris and Burgundy, where Mathilde is from. And I've totally and completely fallen in love with the French way of life.

Of course, it's unfair to pit France against America, because America doesn't even have a decent rail system or universal health care. But I can't help it. Bicycle-friendly roadways, rolling green hills, long afternoon lunches. One afternoon, I was picnicking alongside a canal in Paris,

struggling to open a bottle of wine, when I was startled by a police officer who was rushing towards me. But he did not hogtie me and toss me into the back of his van. No, he offered me his bottle opener. I mean, let's face it. When it comes to life, France wipes the floor with America. Non mais c'est tellement cliché. T'as vraiment regardé trop de films français, Benjamin. Tu crois vraiment qu'en France, on passe notre temps à boire du vin?

What? This is such an embarrassing cliché. Okay, there is one slight problem with all this. I can't speak French. I don't even want to tell you how many years I've officially been trying, but... Shameful. Yeah, it's shameful, I know. But I am trying.

I've taken a lot of French classes. Exercice 20, page 40. The problem is, I keep getting distracted. Un. Il y a un problème? Deux. Like last year, when I signed up for this intensive French class at the Alliance Francaise, there was this Chinese woman from Shanghai in my class. She said she needed to learn French because she wanted to work in wine back in China.

But then, after the second day of class, she dropped out. A headhunter, she claimed, had contacted her with like five job offers. Now, there's been tons of press coverage about the red obsession of the wealthy Chinese. But according to this woman I met, the media has completely missed the real story. The people who are doing most of the drinking now are China's elusive emerging middle class.

And, she said, they are now traveling to France in droves to work in wine and learn more about Art of Vivre. This seemed to me like a pretty great opportunity for a show. You mean a distraction? for a show. I could do a podcast about this exchange between China and France and test out some of the theories I have about the magical powers of wine. And I could do this story with Mathilde. That's Mathilde's father, Gilles. Her whole family comes to Burgundy for the summer, and they're all passionate and expressive when it comes to wine. Wait, what did you just say?

I asked if Beaujolais wine is part of Burgundy and everyone made fun of me. Mathilde, I realized, might not be the right partner for the story. Just because I'm from Burgundy doesn't mean I should know what the best wine is or how to make a delicious boeuf bourguignon. I'm bored of these touristic simplifications and it's terrible to see how easy it is to believe in them. But there is something about Bourgogne that I feel deeply in me and I would love to transmit it correctly. When I see the golden color of the houses in Cluny or the vineyard slopes burning under soleil de Mercurey,

je ressens ce que le poète Jean-Christophe Bailly appelle une révélation de la part de l'intérêt. J'ai décidé de m'aider à l'histoire de Benjamin, de le rassembler à ce qui est vrai et authentique et de s'assurer qu'il ne confie pas les cartes postales avec la histoire. Pour s'assurer qu'elle est vraie et authentique, et s'assurer qu'elle ne confie pas les cartes postales avec la réalité. D'abord, je nous suis emmené à une magasin de vin populaire à Beaune, la capitale du vin burgundy. Pour que Benjamin puisse obtenir des livres en anglais.

Notre magasin est très célèbre car c'est le magasin magasins de vin en France. Nous avons beaucoup de visiteurs du monde entier, surtout des Chinois, qui cherchent des magasins de vin. C'est Vincent Clément, un ami de famille.

Il est le propriétaire du magasin Athénéum de la Vigne et du Vin. Il vend des magasins, des cartes et maintenant du vin. Il a ouvert une bouteille pour nous tester. Nous, on boit. Benjamin ne sait pas comment faire. Quoi?

Tu dois... Oui? Tu dois parler. Je dois parler, d'accord. Comme moi, Vincent vient de Burgundy. Il a été immergé dans la culture du vin toute sa vie. En tant que enfant, un de ses jeux préférés était le nez du vin, Burgundy. He's been immersed in the culture of wine his whole life. As a child, one of his favorite games was the nose of the wine, where you have to match up smells with flavors.

But it was not until he was living abroad that he realized how lucky he was to come from such an exceptional place. When he returned home, he decided to go into the wine business. He wanted to share his passion with people who also appreciate French wine. And most of the real passionate drinkers, he says, are foreigners. People from abroad that come here, most of the time they pay interest to wine. So it means the ones we see, they are quite educated. Vincent was especially impressed by a récent de Hong Kong. On a le cuvée Christiane, car sur cette plage, les Malkonsoeurs, ils ont un très petit cuvée, appelé cuvée Christiane, qui est à deux fois le prix de celui-ci, très très limité,

et le gars, il savait qu'il existait et qu'il était beaucoup meilleur que celui que nous lui présentions. Je ne suis pas sûre que je pourrai raconter la différence entre Domaine de Monti, Les Malconceurs, Vosne-Romanée, Premier Cru, and Cuvee Christiane, but I can recommend you something very good, that my brother rides his bicycle up the hill to buy every summer. It's a 8 euro Givry red wine. Most of Vincent's Chinese customers are wealthy, like that guy who wanted to buy that bottle of Vosay Romney Premier Cru Les Malcovants Cuvée Christian du Montain des Montils. But, he told us, that's changing.

Last week, in fact, we were nearly closing the shop, and five Chinese girls arrived. They wanted to taste wine or buy wine, and we started to try to advise them and in five minutes there were 30 people from China in the shop asking to buy all the same bottles and they were a group coming here so with not evidently not really wealthy people, middle class normal people and just very crazy to buy a bottle of bourgogne, more maybe like a souvenir, if we could say,

than with the proper expertise to say, I want this one or this one. That's the first time you've seen that? Yes, yes, it's really starting. It's really starting. Even the president of China, we learned, is a part of this vino nouvelle vague. On his March 2014 visit to France, Xi Jinping met with many politicians, businessmen and winemakers, and not just the Grand Cru producers like Chateau Lafite-Rothschild.

At the CTO in Lyon, the president came around my table. Dominique Piron is a producer of Beaujolais wine. We represented his region at a food tasting during Xi Jinping's official visit to Lyon. I have presented the Beaujolais, the region, the landscape. We had a few photographs. And I told them that we are not in a luxury market. We are right in the heart of the range with wines of strong identity, wines that are not difficult to understand.

He seemed very interested. He seemed very interested. Just after the leave, a few minutes after, Mr. Fabius, the French minister, took me by the arm with a smile and told me, oh, good shot. After this visit, Piron's China sales exploded. When we met at his winery in the village Villemogon, he was packing his third container of the year.

They have discovered it and they love it. And when they saw that it was not an expensive wine, they loved it more. Xi Jinping is famous for his crackdown on corruption. So Chinese officials are no longer allowed to give or accept expensive bottles of French wine. He's also trying to wean the Chinese population off of rice wine, Baiju. Grape wine is just much healthier. You know, the French paradox.

So you can see why Xi Jinping would find Dominique Piron's modestly priced Beaujolais so interesting. Which leads me to my theory. As more and more Chinese people start drinking wines like the ones Dominique Piron is producing, they're also going to discover French ideas

about life. And my hope is that they will embrace these ideas with the same passion and fervor that they now have for hyper-American ideas. So they'll reject the 80-hour work week. They will reject the idea that money equals success.

And they will reject the idea that bigger logos convey greater status. But can you learn this from wine? Wines are made for drinking, not for thinking. We mustn't forget this. Wine is for pleasure. I think it's five years ago we have a big increase in Chinese students. Two-thirds of the program are Chinese. This is Joelle Brouard. She teaches wine management and business, both in English and French, at the École Supérieure de Commerce in Dijon.

We have many case studies that can illustrate the marketing, the branding. But it's not just label design and marketing campaigns. Joëlle's students spend time in the fields. During holidays, they share also a family life with other students. It's also a way to discover the real way of living. We spend a week in Cahors, which is in the southwest of France. And during this week, they live in a winery by also a wine grower. So it was very funny

to see the way the students share the life of people. Sometimes the French life can appear bizarre to the Chinese. So I can also give you a little story. Two Chinese were living in a domain in Kaohsiung, but it was a very ecological family. And so they want to stop the Wi-Fi during the night because they want to protect also children. And they have also a cat. And the name of the cat was Free Tibet. And so for the students, it was so difficult to explain why the name of this cat was Free Tibet. But the challenge for Joël's Chinese students is reconciling the friends of their dreams with the real thing. For Chinese students, especially from girls,

they dream from finding a prince in France with a castle, who can buy all the brands they love in their country. So it's an imaginary, very important, which is a way of living, but a way of living with luxury, a castle, a princess, but a way of living with luxury, a castle, a princess, and romantism. Did anyone find a prince?

No, she hoped to find a prince, but she found more frogs than princes. But in Burgundy, it's quite normal. Sadly, we had to leave the Bon Vivant of Burgundy. It was time to go to Bordeaux. Bordeaux is the biggest wine region in France and from where China imports most of its red wine. Bordeaux is also where many Chinese investors are buying vineyards and chateaus. You're not afraid by the bats? Bordeaux is also where many Chinese investors are buying vineyards and chateaus. We visited the Chateau de la Rivière in Francaque, which was bought by a Chinese group in 2013. Tragically, both the old and new owners, James Grégoire and Lam Coq,

died in a helicopter accident right after the sale. But according to marketing director Thierry Disclin, the plan remains the same. They do not know anything about the wine, but they bought the chateau because they have a project to build a very luxury hotel here. The aim to build this hotel is to share the Chinese culture with the French culture. C'est un hôtel très luxueux ici. L'objectif de construire cet hôtel est de partager la culture chinoise avec la culture française. Et ils espèrent partager plus de leur vin avec les boissons chinoises. Nos vins sont servis sur le plane Air China en classe de business. Pour nous, c'est une bonne façon de communiquer, bien sûr.

Nous avons aussi rencontré Xavier Buffo, directeur technique du château. Si les producteurs français veulent atteindre de nouveaux marchés comme la Chine, ils doivent s'adapter. En ce moment, Xavier m'a dit que les Chinois préfèrent les vins plus sucrés. Quand je lui ai demandé s'il ferait son vin plus sucré, il m'a dit pourquoi pas. When I asked him if he would make his wine more sugary, he said why not. Some analogies he knows who work in large corporatives or negocies are already producing specific vintages for China. The content of alcohol, the content of sugar, have been adapted for the taste of these customers.

This is necessary, he insisted. C'est nécessaire, il a insisté. Peut-être une meilleure question pour ce podcast n'est pas comment la France change la Chine, mais comment la Chine change la France. Les gens chinois, leur destination numéro un où ils veulent voyager, c'est la France. Le numéro un endroit où ils veulent visiter c'est Paris et Bordeaux. want to travel to is France. The number one places in France where they want to visit is Paris and Bordeaux. And their number one hobby is wine. So this is a research that we've done through Christie's. That's Karen Maxwell. She heads up the Christie's International Real Estate Office in the Bordeaux

region. And she told us that the Chinese are keeping her very busy these days. The market for actual wine product in China is growing hugely and therefore makes sense to actually own some of the vineyards so that you've got control of the whole chain of supply. And also they have lots of ambitions to improve the wine and so invest in the properties to improve it in time and make it something even better. Not all of Karen's customers, though, are committed to taking off their shoes and sticking their bare feet in vats of grapes. Some of them just need a ton of wine. One of my early clients that I had some years ago, he just said to me, I'm in the property business. I have to give a lot of gifts to get

to get my deal through and all the rest of it. I actually give 200,000 bottles a year. So he says, I want to buy a property here and I want to produce 200,000 bottles at least so that I can, you know, have my own stock. So that was one motivation. He didn't really mind what the wine was. But of course, no matter what the wine tastes like, a chateau in France, that is a very special piece of real estate. Some of our clients, of course, have made a lot of money in a very short space of time through industry or all sorts of things.

And so they're probably quite attached to, first of all, getting a property with land, but also the history of it, because it's sort of giving them some status, which they can buy, in fact, you know, which they may not have just in their own country. It's difficult to know how important that is, but it seems to be quite important to quite a lot of them is the status that they're getting and the kudos that they're going to be getting at home by saying, I've got a chateau in France. Karen also told us an anecdote about a

wine shop in Saint-Élion. Two Chinese tourists came to the shop and bought a bottle of Petrus. Right after the sale, the Claire closed up her shop and walked down the rampart to get to her car. The two customers were sitting on a low wall in the sun, eating sandwiches and drinking their $2,000 Petrus wine straight from the bottle. For me, this is just another instance of the French gawking at the Chinese. I mean, it's not like they were drinking out of plastic cups. I imagine they were just impatient. They understand that Petrus is a potent elixir. They just wanted the magic to happen. And what happens when you finish a magic bottle of Petrus is a potent elixir. They just wanted the magic to happen.

And what happens when you finish a magic bottle of Petrus? Do you suddenly know how to speak French? Wine is a very important product to show the people we know the life, we know the art of the life. Lily Juan works with Karen Maxwell in the Christie's International Real Estate Office. When she first arrived in France, she says she didn't know much about wine. Before, six years ago, even I drank the white wine, eat my birthday cake. But now I think I won't do it. I will pair with a sautere or sweet wine to pair with my dessert.

And I have different choice because now I know how to pair. I'm not stupid like before. Lily invited us to her home, which turned out to be a chateau belonging to one of her customers. Here is just 10 minutes from my office. And I asked him, I'm looking for a chateau, an apartment. He said, OK, if you want, I give you the key. So this is really why I live here.

Do you take pictures of your selfies to send to your friends in China? No, no, no, no, I never do it. It's so... how do you say it? Slapped. English, how do you say that? Yeah, bling bling. Bling bling, yeah. It's too much, because I prefer low key.

I like my life here right now. It's cool. I play my guitar and to think about the furniture style life. I live in a castle, very cool life. Lily sang La Vie en Rose and made us some tea. Then she invited us to stay for dinner and meet her fiancé, a Frenchman. We couldn't resist. Thank you for having us. Jonathan Ducour is in charge of international sales for his family's winery. The Ducour family business started over a century ago. Today it possesses over 13 chateaus in the Entrée du Maire and Saint-Emilion Appellations.

They produce 2.5 million bottles per year. Even though the wedding is in two years, there are already issues. His mother doesn't want we have people, people wedding. His mother said we don't want journalist. But for me, I have more than 20 Chinese journalists. It's because you have to understand, Lily, that when you arrive in front of my mother and you say,

oh, there are 20 journalists coming to our wedding in France, she gets scared. You know, it's normal. Jonathan and Lily have very different ideas about what it means to live well. China dream is like a simple aim, just you can buy everything immediately. I would like, how do you say, don't save two years my pocket money than to buy a bag. I would like, I saw something, I'm interested in it, I will buy it right now. With Lily we have different view of what is important in life I think once she

will have enough money to feed their needs she will look for more relaxed way, healthy way of life and living in a good environment, having the countryside around you and just being free to do whatever you want. I think that's the most important. For his successful life, it's a simple life. To be happy with the kids, with family, and have a simple job and have time to share with family. For Jonathan, this is the successful life. But for me, I because in China we have too much competition. If you stop to only focus your life with your family, you will lose your way

because everybody, they grown up, grown up, and you still keep your place. It's very dangerous for me. This is the reason why I always started, started, never stopped. I think she's running after more and more success and not building self-confidence,

just getting new success to be sure she's doing good things. But I'm sure she will get on my side at a certain point. Like a couple, I want to change his mind, and he also wants to change my mind. But deeply, I have my Chinese blood. It's very hard for me to 100% agree with that. As we were

leaving, Lily told us about a recent dream that she had about beards. It's barbe in French. One month ago, I wake up and I'm crying. And Jonathan asked me, Hi darling, what's wrong with you?

I said, oh my God, I just did a horrible dream. We have a daughter and she had a big barb. And Jonathan, he laughed at me. He said, oh, come on, baby. don't think about it. Why do you have this kind of dream? But you see for me, I'm scared. To me the bird represents her life in France. Even if she enjoys her untidy and laid-back French style, she still sees it as a threat to her identity. She fears of creating a slow-moving Frankenstein monster.

She might be a little bit afraid of change, but I think the beard represents the wise old man. Chinese people trust older people more than young people, so I would say her dream is an acknowledgement that even though she's on a new path here in France, it is the path up the mountain to the summit of wisdom. I must have drunk lots of grey grey bottles without realising it. Back in Burgundy, we met up with May Hong. Today, May Hong is a wine agent in Dijon, but for many years she was an overworked investment banker. I had very little time to really enjoy the money I earned, for example.

I mean, we work 80 hours a week. This is kind of crazy life as an investment banker. In Hong Kong, in New York, it's the same. It was a budding interest in wine that brought Mei Hong to Burgundy. And even though she was unsure about life in a small town, she discovered and fell in love with the people and their relationship to their terroirs. It's really funny because it's the first time in my whole life I live in a small town.

Well, Dijon is the capital of Burgundy, but compared to New York, Hong Kong, it's really a very small town. And sometimes I feel surprised. How come I could live here for so long? I never lived in a small town in my life before that. And also, Burgundy is so special. It's that what makes this region so charming to many people is that a lot of, we say, vignerons is the domain owners. They're not really a knowledgist who studied the science in school, how science of making wine. A lot

of people make wine with guts feeling. And they were winemakers because they inherited the domain from several generations. And they have an intimate relationship and the feeling, emotion towards their soil, their vineyard. And they make wine with lots of guts feeling. As a Burgundy person, I feel a bit of pride to hear May Hong talk about how easy it was for her to trade in a glamorous, big city, fast-paced lifestyle. And I was pleased that Benjamin met someone who is not from here, but yet understands and appreciates the simplicity and modesty of the Bourguignon. The wine from my region might be very powerful.

It's really a magic product. For me, the person whom I think most experienced this magic of French wine is Yongping Gong. She's also a wine agent, living and working right now in Bonn. In China, everybody studies for something, just for some money. But in France, I found somebody to do something just for the passion. For me, it's the first experience to find the difference. When Yongping came to study in France a few years ago, she wanted to go to business school. But she didn't get in, and she couldn't afford French classes.

So she applied to the Institut Universitaire de la Vignette du Vin of Bourgogne University in Dijon. Here she was exposed to different definitions of success and time, and she discovered her own passion for wine. When she returned home to work in China, she felt out of place. She missed the French way of life, so she took a leap of faith. I stopped my job in China, and I came here and began from zero.

All the Chinese friends can't understand. They said, you're crazy. Her French friends did not think she was crazy, though. They even offered her their couches and canopies. They had faith that Yongping would be able to forge a new life in France. And she's proved everyone, including herself, right. I had founded my passion in my life in wine. This episode was produced by myself, Benjamin Walker, and Mathilde Biot. And we had help from Celeste Lai. Special thanks to all the folks we heard from in this episode, especially Lily Juan and Jonathan Ducour.

There's tons of links and pictures and show notes at toe.prx.org. Also, special thanks to Bertrand de Villa, owner of the Domaine of Château de Chamiret in Mercurey. He helped us navigate in the wine market in France and especially in Burgundy. It's always the same progression. When people get interest towards wines, their final step is Burgundy. Bertrand and his daughter Aurore also gave us a lot of tips for our trip to China.

That's where we're going in part two. The Theory of Everything is a proud member of Radiotopia from the Public Radio Exchange. Check out all the other shows in our tribe. Everything you need to know is at radiotopia.fm.