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

Episode Date: June 2, 2015

Benjamen and Mathilde continue exploring the intersection between France and China over wine. In this installment they traverse China talking with winemakers, wine enthusiasts and drinkers to find out what the emerging middle class of China, one of the most powerful forces on Earth, wants from a bottle of wine.  Plus Your host is forced to defend his working methods and his beliefs in the art of living well. ******Click on the image for the whole story about this week’s installment******* Thanks to our sponsors http://www.parachutehome.com/theory and http://www.squarespace.com offer code: theory

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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 of Vivre, part two. Oh, you're still my line now. Previously, you heard Mathilde, my wife and I, traveling around France, talking with Chinese people who've embraced the French way of life. Or at least a version of the French life. Well, all of the people we met were transformed in some way by wine. And I have this idea. Actually, it's more a mad hope. But as the emerging middle class in China gets wine fever, perhaps they will trade in their obsession with hyper-capitalist or American ideas about how to live for French ideas about life. This, I believe, would be a great thing.

It turns out that Benjamin is not the only one who thinks this. To invade a new country with a French wine and French culture is not too bad for the rest of the world. Christophe Salin is the executive director of the most famous vineyard in France, Les Domaines Baron de Rothschild Lafitte. Lafitte, first of all, made France on the map. Lafitte is also putting France on the map in China. With a local partner, they're developing a vineyard in the Shandong province.

The goal is to make a wine for the next generation of drinkers in China. It should be drinkable by a young population. The goal is to make a wine for the next generation of drinkers in China. Many French producers have their eye on this growing new market. I understand that 300 millions of Chinese right now have the standard of life which we have in Europe. So it's enormous and tomorrow there will be 500 millions. That's Bertrand de Villa. He owns the Domaine de Chamira and Mercury Burgundy with his children. His daughter Aurore, who is in charge of the Asian market, told us that China's wine culture is developing at super speed. Five years ago, no Chinese would have tasted some white wines.

They only wanted to taste red wines. And something like six months later, people said, oh, okay, I'm going to try. But they didn't like it. Six months later, they tried it and they liked it. And last time I went over there, people would rather taste white wines than red wines. So the way it goes is just amazing,

because when they want to learn they really do everything to learn quickly we decided to go to china to continue our story this was my first visit and i was curious to witness the speed everyone talks about when they talk about china what will the culture of wine which requires so much time and patience, be like there? There was a building on our street in Beijing that was being demolished the day we arrived. And there was a brand new house when we left ten days later. This is the first time that Mathilde and I have made something together and she was not impressed with my working methods. What method? There was no plan. We got to the hotel, we had no interview scheduled and Benjamin said, oh let's walk around and see

what happens. Well, in less than a half hour of walking in the Dongcheng district, we stumbled upon a French wine bar where an actual French wine tasting was taking place. Imre Toth is a Frenchman who's been in China for almost two decades now. I worked with the Airbus for more than 15 years, so I really cooperate. But on the side, I always loved those old traditional courtyard houses of Beijing, and I personally bought a few of them, renovated them, so I'm really attracted by this traditional art and this architecture. Eventually, now that I rent my houses, I have a decent income,

and I thought that it would be fun to just stop being in the corporate world and try to have fun with products I like, like wine. And the Xiaozhu Wine Bar is where all of the things Imre likes come together. With a few friends, we set up a company importing wine, and because we knew about those courtyard houses, we could rent this place, which we loved, and so, oh, we import wine now, why don't we do a bar? So unfortunately, it's not out of expertise.

It's not like I've really been an expert on bar managing or even wine per se, but it's more by love of the courtyards and wine. This is Ben. He works with Imre and he helped us with translation at the tasting. I have a bottle of wine in my place and I'm thinking that if I open the wine, I should be again married or open the wine. At the tasting, one of the women told Ben the wine tasted like wood. Si on ouvre le vin, il devrait être marrant. À la testée, une des femmes a dit que le vin goûtait comme de la mouche. Elle a aussi dit que boire du vin est bon pour la amitié.

Le vin français, elle pense, ne goûte pas comme il le semble. Et la France, elle cro, is something pricey. But French wine is very expensive. After the tasting, we sat down with Ben to talk. He's from the Hunan province, where his mom had hooked him up with a good government job. But one day, a girl he knew announced that she was moving to Beijing, and Ben decided to go with her.

He wanted adventure. But he did not tell his mom that he was going. My ex-girlfriend chose to come to Beijing, so she asked me if you want to come to Beijing with me. So I said, OK, let's do it. So I quit the job. I didn't tell my mom I'd come to Beijing. And I come to Beijing,

but I realized I cannot find a job here because I know nothing about it, you know. So I started to become waiter. I had some part-time job and I work every day because we rent a place very expensive. As a waiter in Beijing, Ben met all kinds of strange international characters, including a Scottish artist who wanted to paint him. And he wanted to paint my face or something. I don't know, he said I look very real or something. I don't know.

I have no idea, but I'm not sure I look very real, you know. So he told me, you should study a wine course. So I borrowed some money and I started to learn wine. The international WSET Wine Spirits Education Trust Program is very popular in China. These days, thousands of people like Ben have taken the afternoon class that provides a level one certificate. When we visited, there were only around 20 Chinese nationals who had made it to level 4. After I finished level 1, he recommended me to work here. Ben really likes working at Emre's bar, and his mom isn't angry anymore.

I make more money than working in my hometown. So my mom, now she's happy, but she's a very, how to say, very strong personality. She would never say, OK, you are right, I'm wrong. Now she's OK because I send wine every month from the delivery, give them the wine. They like wine and they think I got a good job. One of the things Ben likes most about wine culture is how different it is from the hard-drinking culture of Bai Zhou,

or rice wine. If you drink Baijiu, you have to toast with every wine, and we don't talk to each other. The Chinese government is actively promoting the consumption of grape wine. It's part of a plan to wean the population off of rice wine. And it's working, especially with young people. In China, the young people know they try to accept the wine, and it changes them.

After you start drinking wine, you don't drink bad, you start to talk with your friends, they make you become closer. I will have wine in my life forever. Hi. Okay, the shiatsu bar was a lucky find for Benjamin. But I didn't come to China to drink French wine. You can tell they use oak staves.

You can use oak barrels, oak staves, or oak chips. You guys aren't going to try it? We met up with Jim Boyce, who brought some Chinese wines for us to taste. My name's Jim Boyce. My main claim to semi-fame in China is as a blogger and founder of grapewallofchina.com. I think it has a very strange smell. Strange smell? Something like, I never smelled that. According to Jim, France should stop fretting about its place in the wine hierarchy in China. I've been

writing about wine for eight years and every year I hear about how China is moving away from Bordeaux and France. But the fact is France has a bigger share now than it did five years ago in a much bigger market. So there will always be cachet with French wine. I mean, most people don't think about wine. They don't have time to study it. So they just go after brands. There's just a certain default cachet with certain products.

And with France, it's wine. But on the grape wall of China, the spotlight shines only on the best Chinese wines. And Jim has his own criteria for judging what is the best. I have a thing called the 5A system for determining whether a Chinese wine is good or not. A number one is available. That means it's in the universe of what we can buy in China. The second A is authentic. That means it's made with Chinese grapes, not imported bulk wine or any foreign substance. It's made with local grapes. The third A is appetizing. It tastes good. The fourth A is affordable because a lot of Chinese wines taste good, but they cost $100 or $200.

So for me, my breaking point is about 20 U.S. dollars. And the fifth A is accessible because there are so many nice wines in China, but we can't find them. Jim also hosts a number of tastings and contests, but he's distanced himself from the WSET crowd. He calls this system Cabernet colonialism. In fact, a WSET certificate is sure to disqualify you from participating in one of Jim's Grape Wall of China challenges. I want people who work 60 hours a week and drink wine maybe twice a month, and they like it, but they don't know anything about it. We sit them down, and with each wine, they have to circle, I love it, I like it, I don't like it, and I hate it. And then they have to write one line about the wine.

It can be, you know, it smells like my grandpa, you know, it reminds me of strawberry jam. And then we do that for 20 wines, and then at the end, we talk about the wines. And a lot of people think we're trying to find the best wine, the winner. We're actually not trying to do that. What we're trying to do is to show these guys that they can taste 20 wines and make up their own mind, and they don't need any expert to guide them. I want to take it from that level that intimidates people to something that should be fun.

I always tell the judges before we start our contest, you guys have no problem arguing to the death over who makes the best Peking duck. You don't need any direction or any expert to tell you which one's best, and it's the same with wine. The first chapter of the wine in China story featured the wealthy and the elite. The next chapter does not.

So one of my favorite places for wine for consumers is Cheers. They have 16 branches, and they're targeting young professionals, I'd say about 20 to 35 years old, who make 500 to 1,000 US dollars per month. And I remember once I was at a place called Bar Veloce, which is the spinoff of Veloce in New York. And the manager and a master of wine were relentlessly making fun of this place saying, how can you have wine culture in a place that sells

a bottle of wine for 40 RMB or about $7 U.S.? And I just thought, you guys are assholes. Seriously, because the thing is, these guys are choosing wine over baijiu and beer, and that's the first step to getting people interested in wine. And they're also buying wine they can afford. Not everyone can afford to buy Lafitte. And I think that's the big problem in this market, is that we ignore a huge number of people

that don't have a lot of money now, but that will have money someday. And we have to get them on the right road at the beginning to get them up to better wines instead of starting at the top. And I think that's what Cheers does. It really gets people who maybe only have five US dollars to come in, buy a wine, drink it on site,

watch a video, friendly staff, friendly colors, and it gets them engaged at a very entry level. And since the time that happened, Cheers has risen to have 16 stores and Bar Vellacci has gone. And I think that's a real testament to who is really serving consumers in Beijing. I think the problem is that most people work in wine, work in wine because they love wine, and thinking about the business of wine is kind of a bad idea. Like they don't want to hear about it. There's this idea that maybe if your wine is good, you're going to be able to sell it. But there are just so many other wines out there that it just doesn't work like that anymore. When Ellen Ponty moved to

Beijing three years ago, she decided to use her marketing expertise to see if she could sell her family's border wine in China. So the first thing I've done is that I started saying like what we're pushing is not our Chateau name, it's our winery name. So we are the Ponty Winery, which in Chinese is Kangting. And what we're pushing is the name Kangting. We're not saying we have Chateau Grand Renouille and Chateau du Pavillon and Clovis Hall and blah, blah, blah. Because why would we try to make them remember five names when they can remember only one? So just making it very simple was, I think, the first step. A next move was to focus on packaging.

That's something I feel pretty strongly about. And I think being in China, it's pushing this to the extreme right I go to meeting with my clients and all they're going to tell you about is like how your label needs to look like this and you need to put something on the cap because that's what people like and the packaging is so important and packaging and packaging and packaging. Ellen's father never put much thought into packaging his was, if the wine is good, it will sell. So you can imagine the tension every time Helen called him to discuss her marketing ideas. Every time I would talk to my dad before about changes in packaging or in marketing, he would say, yeah, but that's for

China. And like, that's only good in China. Helen has built a strong brand in China. But opening her father's mind, she told us, is the real accomplishment. So now he's always calling every week. And he's been really great because he's let me do whatever I want, even though it's very different from what he's used to doing. But he's being very open-minded and he understands the long-term goal and where I'm trying to go. So have you convinced him to stop saying just for China? Have you won that battle? I have. He has not said that for a long time, so I guess I have.

Before Hélène went to China, the future of the family business was really uncertain. There was even the possibility of closing up after her father retired. But thanks to China, the globalised world was transformed from a threatening, ignorant beast into a friend in a playground full of new opportunities. Now the Ponte family is invigorated and is making big plans for the future. The Chinese market is so big and people have shown so much interest in our wine

that it's just really like made the company more dynamic because now we have to ship containers to China two or three times a year so it's just a different you know like when we work with France or Belgium a few boxes here and there now we're like shipping, so we're thinking expansion, we're thinking buying new vineyards, and I am not giving my dad anyelier, I did a lot of events for other things than wine. I did for a woman pants or whatever. I did it, really. It's crazy things, but for cars, you sell cars. They make believe the people that you are the owner of a big company in France.

Okay, I did it. But okay, they use foreigners for that. Nicolas Carre is another Frenchman we met who's been living in Beijing for many years. And like many old China hands, he's played the part of the foreign businessman on TV and at fairs. Now he's starting a wine school, but he is going to teach wine the French way. Every people now working in the wine industry in China, they have the WCT1 or 2, but these people, they claim they are sommelier. They are not. Nicolas is unconvinced that the Chinese desire to learn Art of Yves. They want more the art de la table à la française.

You know, in China, the image is very important. And the image of being served by someone is make you very great, make you very high. And it's more, in China, it's more that. I feel it. I feel that way.

I don't think it's really something with the wine. Most of Nicolas' students are servants, sent by their wealthy bosses to learn the art of French table etiquette. You know, when I say how to serve, it's not only how to get the bottle in your hand and to serve the wine. It's you have a table with 20 people. Which one you start with? Do you serve on the right side, on the left side? When do you serve the wine? Do you serve the wine before the dish arrives, after the dish arrives? All these kind of things. They want to know now. I asked Nicolas what he thought about my idea that wine might be a gateway to new values

for China. He looked at me like I was a raving lunatic. Bien sûr que non, ambitieux, he said. looked at me like I was a raving lunatic. We can say whatever we want about wine in China, that they have more and more education, that they like it and so on, but it's not in their blood. It's not in their culture. They just, I will say, just fake it a little bit. I heard a fucking tabla. Are you kidding me?

Is this guy for real? Benjamin was really upset that Nicolas popped his hot air theory balloon. It was probably not the best moment to visit the Changyuan Park. This is the worst. I am so depressed. We are in the postcard. It's true. When you walk through the gates of Chengdu Park,

you enter in a postcard version of provincial France. As you walk up the hill of the estate, you see an imitation of Chateau de la Loire with stone walls and sledge roofs. But instead of moat and a drawbridge, there is a large green lawn. As we pass by, a group of photographers was taking pictures of a bride and a groom. Every year, thousands of couples pay to take their wedding photos here.

Training the fucking servants. Is that really what's going on here? Changyu Pioneer Wine Company is the biggest and oldest Chinese winery. It has built eight European-style wine parks and chateaus all around China. And this one comes with a French village. Who couldn't believe it? There was a fake boutique, a fake cafe, there was even a fake church. I want to say this is the worst, but then they'll probably start blasting Vian Rose from the speakers in the grass over there. I tell Benjamin to keep his chin up.

The show must go on. Of course this is not France, but it's so over-the-top fake, it has become real. This place definitely has something. All of these photographers, they are not just taking pictures. As Johann Didion says, a place belongs forever to whoever claims it artist, remembers it most obsessively, branches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.他恨这种恶意他就把这种恶意重复在自己的画面中 最后,一个年轻的女士带我们到在城堡里的会议室

与Wen Xiong Yang见面 是Shang Yu的柴极山的一位经理 2009年,应该说在葡萄成熟的八九月份 我们要知道如何保持酒量 我们要知道如何保持酒量 我们要知道如何保持酒量 我们要知道如何保持酒量 我们要知道如何保持酒量

我们要知道如何保持酒量 我们要知道如何保持酒量 我们要知道如何保持酒量 我们要知道如何保持酒量我们要知道如何保持酒量 This is the wine that Obama used. The American president, Obama, when he arrived in Shanghai, at lunch he drank the best level of our red wine. And he liked it too? Yes.

I've been working at the Zhang Yu company for 17 years. When Sheng Yong told us that in order to get the taste of cream and fruit, they used traditional French methods at Sheng Yu. But when we asked him if he could talk about how these tests related to the Chinese terroir he works with, he had no faith that his assistant could translate this highly technical information correctly for him. You can't translate this? Yes, I can't translate it.

This question is very professional and I can't translate it. The original plan was to travel to the Ningxia province and visit some wineries there. But the idea of going to a small village with no plan was just too ridiculous for me. So we stayed in Beijing. We tracked down a few of the winemakers we would have visited on WeChat, the Chinese voice chat platform. First, we spoke to Emma Gao of the renowned Silver Heights Winery in three languages, English, Chinese and French. Emma started to work with her father a few years ago

and she learns more about her terroir every year. Currently she's tasting grapes like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, grapes probably better suited for theertée de Ninsha. Et pour obtenir de meilleures fruits, elle a changé le taille des vins. Emma et son père sont en train de créer du vin de qualité. Pour Emma, un vin de qualité

permet de montrer les fonctions de la terre et plus important, il permet de transmettre les émotions. A quality wine is able to show the features of the land, and even more importantly, it is able to transmit emotion. Quality is a major criteria for Ema's customers, but it's not the only one. The new drinkers of China also want affordable wine. People like the wine that is carefully made, not just a supermarket product. Also, people really care about price. We select best grapes for the civil-height ones, so naturally we left some medium-quality grapes,

so we use these grapes to make some entry-level wine, but still we use old oak to barrel them, barrel aging for nine months. And now this wine is the best-selling wine. But the strategy to reach out to these new drinkers goes beyond winemaking. For example, this WeChat platform we use to talk to her is also being used as a storefront for all sorts of things in China, from knock-off bags to medicine and wine. So we have to study this to attract new consumers. And we have to use some online system like WeChat.

They have already had some successful examples in China with the WeChat selling system. We also spoke with another Ningxia winemaker on WeChat, Wu Hongfu, who works at the Liren Xiao winery. He told us that he used to mimic French wine, but one day he realized that he was ignoring the potentials of the grapes on his land. His wine lacked soul. For Hanfu, grapes are just like humans.

They have to be fed well with healthy food, and they also need to be given challenges in order to live full lives. This, he says, is how you make great soulful wine. Hanfu believes that pampered grapes cannot produce great wine. We did make it to an actual vineyard, though, Chateau Bolingbao, which is about 100 kilometers southwest of Beijing. Here, we met Fei Xu, who's the French-trained winemaker of the domain. Fei Xu studied the traditional techniques of winemaking in Burgundy. This experience abroad deeply impacted his work.

At Chateau Bolingbao, he still follows the French philosophy, but it is difficult to apply the same techniques. The Cabernet Sauvignon grapes that were planted in this area have trouble surviving the dry cold winters and humid hot summers. So sometimes he has to invent his own rules. It seems crazy that a vineyard that makes organic wine could exist so close to Beijing. But on the day we visited, the sky was bright blue. Perhaps the beautiful towering mountains keep the pollution at bay.

There were a few cigarette packages, though, lying in the vines. As Mathilde and Faye talk, I start to daydream. I imagine myself judging a wine tasting contest, trying to articulate my preference for the wine from this vineyard with a detritus over the wine from the grand French-style estate. But when it comes to world-changing wine, there isn't much you really need to say. So I just raise my glass to the audience and I take another drink. to world-changing wine, there isn't much you really need to say. So I just raise my glass to the audience and I take another drink. Faye told us that it will take one to sweet generation

to find the type of wine that fits this land, to identify the characteristics that are stable one year after the next. Finding the terroir is a long-term project, so he doesn't believe he can call the Bolong Bao a terroir yet. But when he gets the domain on track, his dream, he told me, is to traverse China and to find a little plot for a small production

and make the best wine in China. We also met Liao Jingjing. She does marketing for Bolingbao. She told us that since 2012, the wine has gotten many prices, and her next step is to focus on marketing

and getting more people to know about the brand. Our biggest challenge is this new consumer group has misconceptions of wine. They think important wine is better and they think Chinese wine is expensive. In the past, Bolingbao sold mostly to people around Beijing. But now they're trying to find more distributors

around the country and around the world. She recently went to Chengdu to the big wine fair distributors around the country and around the world. She recently went to Chengdu to the big wine fair and she found that many people knew about the vineyard. She even scored a new distributor who only represents carefully crafted original products. Before we left Bolingbao, Fei invited us out back to try a few of his wines. Some of his friends showed up. One of his friends, Lily Hong, turned out to be an elusive WSET level 4.

You were level 4? Only 20 level 4 in China. W-S-E-T, level four. You're level four. I can't tell us if one is doing two or three. Only 20 level four in China. You are one of 20. Yes. That's great. So can I get you? Obviously, we couldn't resist getting her thoughts about Faye's wine.

When I drink this wine the first time, I'm very impressive because I don't know what's inside and after I asked him what's inside he said there's a Chardonnay, Petit Manson, and Ho-Song and the Viognier and you know in in France it's totally different area and you you can grow in this area and it's very impressive and because and I asked him why he pressed everything. And he said, we only have a limited amount. So he chose to mix them together and press. But the wine is pretty good and works very well.

And for the color, it's pretty nice. And maybe Chinese consumer not really And for the color, it's pretty nice. Maybe Chinese consumers don't really understand what the style is, but they pretty like this kind of style, and we want to look for new things. The wine tasting area was not designed with much care. It was just a table underneath a plastic tent, a sad barbecue in our corner and a few tools left on the ground. The land around us looked dusty and thirsty.

But sitting with Benjamin, Lily and Fay, hearing the sound of the bugs, feeling the sunbeam embracing us, talking and laughing while drinking, made me feel comfortable. I almost felt home on a late afternoon in Burgundy. Fay handed me one of his bottles and I examined the label. I was no longer in a Chinese fabricated dream of France, but in a Chinese dream of good life. This episode was produced by myself, Benjamin Walker, and Mathilde Biot, with help from Celeste Lai. Special thanks to all of the people we heard from in this episode,

especially Aurore and Bertrand de Villars from Burgundy, and Ben at the Xiaoju Wine Bar in Beijing. Visit toe.prx.org for show notes, links, and pictures. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, the world's greatest podcast network. Check out all the other shows

in our tribe. Everything you need to know is at radiotopia.fm. Radiotopia. From PRX.