EXCLUSIVEHow I escaped the rat race, bought a corner of paradise in France and found love... by learning to make wine the VERY old fashioned way
Peter Hahn lives very simply. He rises with the sun, bakes his own bread, works all day on his 25-acre vineyard in the Loire – mostly bent double with a pair of secateurs in his hands – and never, ever, takes a holiday. Or, for that matter, a shortcut.
Each year, he makes about 10,000 bottles of Vouvray. But not the way most people make wine in the modern world.
Instead, Peter harks back hundreds of years. When he can, he uses horses to plough his vineyards – ‘so much gentler than a tractor’.
He uses neither herbicides nor pesticides.
All 24,000 of his vine plants are manually pruned – by him – and the tonnes of Chenin Blanc grapes he grows, all harvested by hand.
He and his wife Juliette – a stylish beauty in bright red lipstick who gave up a life in the Paris art world for all this – hand-press it all in a century-old vertical wooden basket.
Later, as the wine slowly matures in a row of traditional oak barrels, deep down in his dusty cave, he plays music. Partly for the wine, he says, but also for the ‘angels’ who live in the cellar and watch over it. For each vintage, a different composer – this year it’s Bach.
‘The Brandenburg concertos!’ he beams.
Peter Hahn and his wife Juliette (pictured) hand-press 24,000 vine plants in a century-old vertical wooden basket
‘There’s something mystical in the cellar and I love the idea that the wine listens to music as it develops,' he says
All of his vine plants are manually pruned – by him – and the tonnes of Chenin Blanc grapes he grows, all harvested by hand
‘There’s something mystical in the cellar and I love the idea that the wine listens to music as it develops. It’s just a little bit of craziness, a gentle madness, but wine is alive so who knows, it might help.’
There is plenty of gentle madness in Peter. And also much to admire.
As we chat in the sunshine, standing on a thick carpet of buttercups, daisies, dandelion clocks and flowering clover, with the sound of fat bumblebees and the sweet scent of blossom drenching the crisp April air, it is hard to imagine anywhere more at one with nature. Or anyone more rooted to their land.
He tells me he has a visceral connection to the terroir – the flora, the fauna and its cycles and seasons.
He can scent the weather, how ‘the earthy smell of wet soil and foliage’ signals ‘an impending storm, even before the first drop falls’.
And he can feel the layers of the past in the land and generations who’ve worked it.
‘It makes me feel connected to humanity, to history, to nature.’
Which is odd, because Peter, a very youthful 60, is not from here. He’s not even French, for goodness’ sake. He’s American – known to some as the ‘Indiana Jones of Vouvray’, due to a passing resemblance to Harrison Ford. And he’s only been living here in Le Clos de la Meslerie winery since 2002, when a breakdown cleaved his life apart and changed everything.
His old life was rather different.
The former investment banker rises with the sun, bakes his own bread, works all day on his 25-acre vineyard in the Loire and never, ever, takes a holiday
Peter and Juliette met on the internet a couple of years after he’d bought the vineyard
Peter says he has a visceral connection to the terroir – the flora, the fauna and its cycles and seasons
An investment banker on a vast salary, he jetted around the world, partied hard, went on expensive holidays, lived a relentlessly peripatetic urban existence, rarely slept or paused to catch his breath and never noticed a season, other than to escape from it to a luxury beach resort.
‘I was burning out. Burning out fast,’ he says.
Until one Thursday, after working for 48 hours with no sleep, he was in a black cab on the way to Heathrow, laptop open on his knees, Blackberry in hand, and had an episode.
‘My fists were in tight balls, my body rigid. I felt a floating sensation’, he says. ‘You alright mate?’ asked the worried cabbie. No, he was not. And wouldn’t be for a few years.
Not until – after ditching his job and his fast life, getting married and divorced in a bit of a rush, and seeing a therapist – he realised that he needed a totally different life. A life working the land – despite never having lived in the countryside.
‘I knew I needed to grow something – I don’t think it really mattered what. I just needed to get back to nature.’
And so, one day he found himself standing in the overgrown driveway of Le Clos de la Meslerie, a 25-acre plot near Tours, in the Loire, with ten acres of vines and a huge, decrepit farmhouse.
‘It was more profound than love at first sight. A lightning bolt,’ he says. ‘This is where I’ve always belonged. This is my place.’
A brave thought. Because there are few people less welcoming to outsiders than the members of France’s rural community. Particularly to those with big flash watches and American accents.
But Peter either didn’t notice, or didn’t care – ‘there were a few dirty looks’ – and instead threw himself into learning all he could about wine.
Today, Peter calls himself a wine grower, rather than a winemaker. 'We just get what the earth gives us,' he says
One day Peter found himself standing in the overgrown driveway of Le Clos de la Meslerie, a 25-acre plot near Tours, in the Loire, with ten acres of vines and a huge, decrepit farmhouse
He went back to college and was an apprentice on neighbouring farms, and crucially, was taken under the wing of two local and highly respected winemakers, Vincent and Damien, who quickly realised that Indiana Jones wasn’t just playing at it.
‘I thought I came here to grow wine, but really it was about living again. Living properly,’ he says.
Which is why he decided to ignore many of the scientific developments that have taken place in the wine world since the 1950s, and get back to basics.
‘Farmers managed to make wine perfectly well for 8,000 years before that,’ he explains. ‘So I decided to do it their way.’
Which meant a lot more work. He refuses even a pair of powered secateurs to take the strain off pruning, because it changes ‘the feel’. And he almost always works in silence, with just the birds and bees for company.
‘I work like a dog, but for me it’s not work. It’s meditative, it’s a kind of therapy,’ he says, simply.
‘I never thought that, after 20 years, I’d be so excited to get up and mend some rusty wire. But it’s who I am now. I don’t need stuff. I don’t need holidays. I don’t need to ever leave here. I just need to be in nature. We all do.’
Now he has written an exquisite book – Angels In The Cellar, Notes From A French Vineyard. It is not about a rich banker who buys a vineyard. Or even, deep down, about making wine. But a nature book – light, lyrical and full of love for the land, the soil, the wonder of seasons and how the earth can nurture the soul.
‘Homo sapiens have lived for 300,000 years and, for 295,000 of those, we were living in nature on the land. It’s innate. We all need that connection.’
‘Farmers managed to make wine perfectly well for 8,000 years before that,’ he explains. ‘So I decided to do it their way,' he says
Juliette runs the enormous and now very stylish house -plus a couple of holiday lets and wine events
Today, Peter calls himself a wine grower, rather than a winemaker.
‘I grow the grapes, but they make the wine. It is not me – we just get what the earth gives us.’
So when it comes to harvesting, he does it by gut and instinct – ‘I touch and taste the grapes and try to listen’ – unlike his peers who scientifically track the acidity levels in the run up to harvest.
And he wouldn’t dream of adding a bit of sugar here, a blend of grapes there, as most do to even out the flavour and acidity levels.
He just harvests, presses and then pops it in his cellar in handmade oak barrels to listen to a bit of Bach (this year) and mature.
‘A bit like a handknitted sweater’, each vintage is different. So in a hot sunny summer it’ll be sweeter and less acidic, and tighter and less generous in a cooler year.
Amazingly, his very first vintage – in 2008 – was a total triumph. ‘Not my doing – just what the earth gave us.’
One well-known American importer was so blown away that he bought the lot and soon his wine was winning prizes and popping up in some of the world’s finest restaurants.
Meanwhile, Peter continued to hoe and prune and press and pick, and time took on a different dimension – measured not in minutes and hours (his flash watches have long gone) but dawn and dusk, summer and winter.
Seasons became something to lean into – long calm nights in the winter. Hot July air, thick with pollen. And perhaps most excitingly, the frosty old guard in the local commune started drawing him and Juliette into the fold. Inviting them to family parties. ‘Now we belong.’
Of course, nature isn’t just sunrises and buttercups. It can be capricious.
In 2018, he lost 80 per cent of the crop to frost. Last year, disaster struck again – mildew this time – and he lost more than half.
‘I work like a dog, but for me it’s not work. It’s meditative, it’s a kind of therapy,’ Peter says
Bloody hell. After all that tender cherishing.
‘It is heartbreaking. I go and sit somewhere very quietly,’ he says.
Until the brilliant Juliette mops him up.
They met on the internet a couple of years after he’d bought the vineyard – ‘where would I meet someone here,’ he laughs – clicked immediately and, instead of moving to London or New York, as she’d planned, she moved down here, married him and had their daughter, Celestine.
Peter is quite certain that Juliette not only saved him, but made his dream possible.
‘She is everything,’ he says.
And, I suspect, very patient. Because while Peter is an utter delight, I wonder if he might not always be the easiest to live with. Doggedly driven, a teeny bit of a pessimist and, even after 20 years, still relentlessly focussed on his beloved, 90-year-old vines.
‘Look at the incredible tender beauty coming out of these gnarly old things,’ he cries as he points at the emerging spring shoots.
The couple make about 10,000 bottles of Vouvray each year and offer wine tours and tastings
So while he’s out all day, pruning and mulching and eulogising about the ‘quiet calm’ of winter, or how spring ‘pulsates with energy and life’, Juliette does everything else.
She runs the enormous and now very stylish house. Plus a couple of holiday lets. Organises wine tours, tastings and the food and wine pairing events – she is an exceptional cook. Welcomes his two older children and extended family to stay. And somehow makes it all fun and doable. But even she can’t take Peter’s swirling mind off the future.
The worry of climate change – ‘winemakers all over the world are panicking’. And what will happen to this magical place in the long run.
‘How long can I go on. Can I keep at it?’ he worries.
The thought of living anywhere else makes him visibly blanche. So his plan is simply never to leave.
‘My dream is to keel over dead in the vineyard with a massive heart attack, hopefully when I’m very old. And, ideally, in the spring – my favourite season; so full of promise.’
But first, let’s hope that he and the wonderful Juliette get to enjoy another 40 years in this extraordinarily beautiful place. But perhaps with a pair of automated pruners.
