Living the Dream - Becoming a Wine Producer
by Mike and Sue Spring

Greetings from Domaine du Garinet - we're a small wine producer near Cahors in south-west France. We came
here in 1994 from England, leaving behind our careers in computer systems and head-hunting.

Why? - because we wanted a change of work, we had a deep interest in wine, we wanted to live in the countryside, we wanted to live in France. Happily all these things can easily be combined here in the Lot département. Combining it with making enough money is quite possible; making a lot is rather more difficult! Visitors often say 'you're living your dream'. Maybe, but it's very hard work - like all businesses there are decisions, stresses and hassles, and in today's competitive marketplace, you have to be constantly on the ball in all respects - vinegrowing, winemaking and marketing.

The hardest part was probably making the decision to come - to leave secure steady incomes, to move house, to decide on a property and to take on a new country and a different language. But once you arrive, you get stuck in because you have to - there are many problems to sort out, but some things turn out to be easier than you'd expected.

We'd done some courses in winemaking and viticulture at Plumpton Agricultural College in Sussex that, combined with our background as wine lovers and extensive travelling in French wine regions, gave us a good basis to start. Because wine is such an important industry here, there's a lot of expert help and advice readily to hand to make getting started more secure - and to provide the means to learn and develop for those prepared to study and to listen.

Why did we choose the Cahors region? For many reasons, not least that a compact domaine with vines could be bought at a reasonable price, but also because we felt Cahors with its distinctive malbec variety was more interesting and potentially more marketable than yet another cab-sav, merlot etc. And personal factors played a part - the region is quiet, very beautiful and possesses wonderful old stone-built farms and buildings, including our own at Domaine du Garinet. It's true that in 1994 Cahors wine was rather in the doldrums, and the vinification techniques used often expressed the strong tannins of the malbec a great deal more than the fruit (to put it diplomatically!). Since then the better wines have improved enormously, the reputation is being rebuilt, and the individuality of the malbec is indeed proving an asset, both for us and for its other main base in Argentina.

You can learn more from our website about how we work - briefly we start with the normal methods used in this area but step outside them when we think we can do better. For example in the vineyard we grow our vines much higher than is usual here to have a greater area of grape-ripening leaves. In the chai, we use
the burgundian technique of pigeage or punching down of the cap of skins to get good extraction of fruit and colour - it's gratifying to see that this has since become a more mainline method here. We also grow white grapes very successfully in this overwhelmingly red area.

We have for long been totally committed to minimising our environmental impact both at work and more generally, so it may come as a surprise that we are not a certified organic operation. Why? - we consider that the rules are not sufficiently based on real evidence or scientific principles and are unnecessarily rigid. We choose the methods and products we use on the basis of the best information available on their environmental impact and their effectiveness. So for instance, we rarely use copper fungicides such as bouillie bordelaise because their environmental impact is more negative than some alternative modern products, and also they're not very effective. But they're the only anti-mildew allowed in organic vine growing! Regrettably, there's a lot of misinformation around in the media and sometimes from organic growers themselves. Examples:

•the assumption that organic agriculture has a monopoly of environmental responsibility;

•comparing organic methods with the very worst (and often well out-of date) non-organic methods to make a point;

•laying sole claim for organic agriculture to methods such as disease prevention which are in fact mainstream for most competent modern vine growers.

We find life in France very congenial, and it seems to us that there remains a good community spirit and identity that has been progressively lost in Britain - but perhaps that's just us going native after 16 years! A more tangible and indisputable benefit is a really first class national health service. There are of course negatives, and the French have irritating habits as much as the British - but they're different ones.

Best advice to anyone contemplating following us - learn to speak reasonably decent French before you come, have sufficient finance for the size of business you plan and have worked out where and how you are going to sell your stuff. What would we do differently a second time around? We'd start younger, search more intensively to find a property more quickly, and we'd invest sooner in more machinery to make the work more efficient, effective and enjoyable - but it's easy to say this last one with hindsight, less easy to invest a lot of cash before you are certain of what the business can earn.

And finally, if this is your dream too, make sure you're fully woken up before you commit yourself!

Mike and Sue Spring

http://www.domainedugarinet.fr/