The Vignerons of Bordeaux

I have little time to write this sitting here in a local library while mes amis drink beer impatiently in a local bar (I assume they have found one). Bordeaux is a remarkable place, famed for its wines and its great natural beauty. I’ll have more to say on that later. But there’s something interesting I’ve found in our travels here that I first read about in a book called Voltaire’s Bastards by John Ralston Saul as we flew to Paris.

I forgot to take the book with me when we left today, so I will have to paraphrase the part from memory:

Vignerons in Burgundy live close to an ideal life. They must be talented chemists, good businessmen, effective salesmen, accountants and farmers. Their work takes them indoors and out. Their small plots of land – about 30 hectares, or 60 acres – are enough to make them millions. Some years will be good and others disastrous, but the stock of aging wine in their cellars provides financial stability. But year after year, their children leave home and forgo the vineyard life in favour of becoming teachers, civil servants and corporate employees, even for the promise of less money. To be an employee is desired. To work for yourself is looked down upon.

Burgundy is one of the other famous wine-producing regions of France. As we have travelled to various chateaus to taste the local wines, I have talked to our hosts about what their children do or plan to do.

A couple nights ago, at the closest vineyard to where we are staying, we enjoyed a few hours in an ancient farmhouse. The distinctive look of the houses here, with their white walls and orange roof tiles, comes mostly from the stone they use to build here, which ranges from pure white to light tan. The room had a large open fireplace for warmth. Light came from a single bulb clumsily wired into an old oil lamp which hung from the ceiling. Our host’s purple-stained hands cut cheese for us as we tried the wines and talked to him and his wife.

They have two sons. One works for Airbus, engineering aviation instrumentation. The other son still lives at home. We met him, a quiet young man maybe 15 or 16 years old. His dream is to move to New York. Who knows whether this dream will come true, or if at some point he will realize that happiness might lie here in the vineyard of his parents.

French agriculture is a sore spot in France’s international relations. French farmers are heavily subsidized. I don’t know if these subsidies extend to wine-makers, whose product is in heavy demand across the world, although I did hear they pay no tax. But just like in Canada, France is being pressured to remove their subsidies and compete on a level playing field with other countries, including developing countries with significantly lower standards of living.

This means certain developed countries may end up relying on other countries for their food supply, because they cannot produce food as cheaply as these other countries. If food were bags of marbles or sports socks, this might not be a problem. But the idea of handing your food production – which all will agree is an extremely important part of life – to other countries seems dangerous.

The same goes for other industries such as steel. China can produce steel more cheaply than Canada. We are told this is a good thing and that our steel industries ought to be able to compete head-on, in spite of the fact we are fully aware Chinese workers do not have the same protections that ours do. But what happens if at some point we no longer have friendly relations with China? Or something happens to their steel industry? If Germany was the cheapest place to make steel in the 1930s, and the US allowed their steel industries to close as a result, what would Americans have made tanks and aircraft with in 1942?

Some industries are too important to give up. And some lifestyles are too rewarding for us to allow them to slip away. Those who produce our food, whether it is essential staples or fine wines, ought to know how appreciated they are. Working with soil is an honourable and rewarding profession. It doesn’t mean forgoing the pleasures of access to high technology and the latest trends either, as our hosts’ three computers, MP3 players and digital cameras showed.

There is more to life than moving to the big urban centers like Toronto, Rotterdam or Paris. The traditional way of life has as much or more a chance of providing happiness. Unfortunately, difficult financial situations because of agricultural policies that make no sense combined with the siren call of the elusive big money urban lifestyle means that fewer and fewer young people see things that way. We might want to consider what we could do to change that.