#french vineyard

[clown-alchemist]

We all know Scotty's accent is a little silly, a little messy, a little off base...but at least he's trying. Picard is allegedly French.

[mask131]

If you ever want to get distracted with some of the little scandals of France, here's one if you want.

During the 2010s, Chinese investors and fortunes frenetically bought a LOT of the wine estates of France. It is known that China always ha little something for France, and already at the time it made lot of people grumble (the usual saying of "Why are we letting foreigners buy what's typically and traditionally French?"). The Chinese desire to buy or import a certain "French art de vivre", a French lifestyle, wasn't so much the problem, as some of their open and public commercial projects (some clearly announced they wanted to produce 5-euros wine in France to sell it back in their own network in China 100 euros).

Today, the Chinese are selling back the wine estates. Why? Well the most obvious and immediate reason was the Chinese government's decision of regulating more harshly the Chinese investments in foreign countries, and closing a lot of ways through which money went elsewhere than China itself. This resulted in the Chinese owners of these wine estates realizing they couldn't keep up. It becomes too difficult for them: after all, they realized that having a wine estate isn't as easy as just buying it and waiting for results to happen. Not only are Chinese people buying and drinking less and less wine year after year, but wine-making in France became QUITE difficult since the 2010s thanks to the climate change.

Because unlike what Trump and his insane clowns are saying, climate change is real and wine-makers suffered a LOT from it. Between the winters way too hot, the violent thunderstorms and hailstorms, the regular floods in river-adjacent areas, and this year a summer way too gray and rainy... Vines suffered a lot.

But that's not the scandal. The scandal is all what is coming up now that the Chinese are selling the domains. Already the mayors of the towns around were alerting people on the fact the Chinese are fracturing the domains - because typically a wine estate in France is a domain made up of a historical castle and the vineyards, and they always went together for quite some times. The Chinese bought them together, and now are selling the castles separately from the vineyards. That's a patrimonial problem, but not the biggest.

The biggest is the state of the castles... Turns out, after the Chinese bought the castles of the wine-estates, they didn't do ANYTHING with it. They didn't pay to maintain them, to clean them, to keep them up. They hired nobody for them, no one ever came to live within them, host things or even inhabit them. Basically... These castles stood empty and uncared for, for YEARS. The Chinese are selling them back now, at quite a low price... but they won't get a lot of people for them, because now they are filled with the usual problems led to castles left empty under storms, warm winters and rainy summers - fractured walls, broken roofs, mold everywhere, dust and vermin and animals... So whoever buys the castle, even for a low price, will have to pour a LOT of money to make the castle inhabitable again, or even safe. They're on their way to become ruins.

[Ironically, this careless, not to say clueless, handling of the castles and the wine business around them was explained by a Chinese businessman by the name of Hugo Tian as resulting from a different of investment model between Europe and China. In his own words, European people typically invest in estates on the scale of "generations", and that's how they measure time, in "generations", as opposed to China who has a model of buying-and-selling on a scale of usually five years, with no generatonal investment]

And that's not even talking of how the fracture of the wine estates, and the poor managing of the Chinese investors, results in hundreds of jobs being threatened - because now that everything is being sold back, the disastrous handling of the wine businesses. The companies owning them now have absolutely no representative in France, all the decisions are taken in China without anybody actually there to manage things in France, employees haven't been paid in years, and many taxes also have not been paid in years... Already before the re-sales had been announced, these businesses were about to crumble apart.

So, you know... French people are not very pleased.

[fairiencarnate]

The vines at my old fav cafe will be dripping with grapes soon ♡

[postcard-from-the-past]

Vineyards of Saint-Lambert-du-Lattay, Anjou region of France

French vintage postcard

[vintagepromotions]

‘The vineyards of France - vineyards of Bordeaux’

Travel poster featuring a pictographic map of the Bordeaux wine region with illustrations of people in traditional costumes (c. 1960). 

[beautifulfrenchhouses]

745,000 €

410 m² / 4413 ft²

Duras, Lot-et-Garonne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France.

[speakspeak]

Vin de St. Sopery

[rabbitcruiser]

Beringer Vineyards, St. Helena (No. 3)

A LEGACY OF FIRSTS

Beringer is known for establishing many 'firsts' as leaders in the wine industry. We were one of the first gravity fed facilities and among the first to operate using hand-dug caves and cellars. We were the first to give public tours in 1934, starting a Napa Valley hospitality tradition. We are the first and only winery to have both a red and a white wine named #1 Wine of the Year by Wine Spectator Magazine.

Passion has the wonderful power to turn mere objects into an obsession, to transform everyday tasks into art. At Beringer, we have been living our passion for 145 years.

1868 - A NEW LIFE IN AMERICA

Our history dates back to the year 1868, when Jacob Beringer, enticed by the opportunities of the new world, sailed from his home in Mainz, Germany, to New York. However, after hearing that the rocky hillside soil and fertile valley floor of Napa Valley resembled that of vineyards back home in Germany, Jacob made his way to California in 1869. He became cellar foreman for Charles Krug, one of the first commercial winemakers in Napa Valley. A few years later, in 1875, Jacob and his brother, Frederick, purchased 215 acres, right next door to Charles Krug in St. Helena, for $14,500. This parcel of land, known as Los Hermanos (the brothers), became the heart of the Beringer estate.

Source

[nicolesanabriaart]

Bon vin de France

[monkeyssalad-blog]

BOILLY, Louis-Léopold. L'Automné, 1824. by Halloween HJB

[jacquelinep21]

[ailroti]

a tender 6:00am view.

[imaliveiamsoalive]

Traditional Exterior - Exterior Idea for the exterior of a large, one-story, traditional white house with hip roofs and shingle roofs

[hungrytravellers]

Carcassonne And On: Wine, Music, Food, Wine…And More Wine

[mysteryho]

Enclosed San Francisco Enclosed dining room - small farmhouse medium tone wood floor enclosed dining room idea with yellow walls

[soulscursed]

naruhodo's words were nearly lost amidst the racket of the London traffic and crowds. He thought for a moment that he had imagined them... but the smile on the lawyer's face was assurance enough that Barok was of sound mind. All in the spirit of their casual rowing, no doubt, but still — the ever-present furrow of his brow deepened briefly at the comment.

❛ I wish you wouldn't. ❜

— wouldn't what? Spare him? ... for all his honesty, Naruhodo somehow still managed to perplex.

But he hadn't the time to puzzle it. By the time he'd taken his seat in the carriage across Naruhodo, Barok put it out of his mind. It would have been chased out by the sight of Naruhodo shuffling about unnecessarily. Perhaps he found himself stifling a smile.

❛ Courtesy is one thing, Mr Naruhodo, but there's enough room for the two of us. I imagine even a man of your stature could afford an inch or two to breathe. ❜

Though it was a bit of a low blow — though it must be, if he had any hopes of closing the terrible vertical gap between himself and Naruhodo — there was little bite to the words. He moved on quickly enough, considering Naruhodo's enquiry.

❛ There's London estate in Grosvenor's Square; and there is our family home, the country estate in Surrey, in which I spent the most of my years until university brought me to London.... It was to the estate that I retreated during my five years' leave of absence from law.

❛ Some private vineyards in Dorset — and in Alsace, though at times I wonder if it isn't a greater nuisance than it is an investment. ❜ The Alsace vineyards had had the fortune of escaping the first two decades of the great blight that had swept across the Atlantic and wreaked havoc across French vineyards and its wineries. But such luck had to, eventually, run its course. As though the chaos and the confusion of Barok's childhood years were not enough on its own after their father's passing, Klint's franticness and clear upset over his beloved orchards soon sent him scurrying from France and back, a then-small Barok with him. ( Of his own will. Thankfully — loathe as he was to speak ill of his brother, and of the dead at that... Klint could at times be a handful. ) Overseeing the vineyards' recovery was a decades long process that consumed ample time and resources; it had perhaps kept Barok sane in the years after Klint's passing.

❛ Our father owned properties, which he rented out and managed. Klint carried on that work, but I sold the majority. I hadn't the capacity nor the expertise for managing properties — my legal career was my priority as much then as it is now. As for my office, I rent... it once was Klint's as well. ❜

... again and again, no matter the direction he took, his mind and mouth circled back once more to Klint. It wasn't so alarming. This was how he had spent the decade past, after all.

But with company beside him today, regarding him with such bright-eyed curiousity, he could not afford to stew in his own bitter history. He shook his head, casting about for some way to push their conversation forward and elsewhere.

❛ I inherited from them several small homes overseas, though I've not had much use for them. And there are some pieces of land in the Netherlands, too, passed down to us from generations before. ❜

He paused a moment. ❛ ... have you travelled outside London much during your time here? ❜

There was something so much . . . gentler in their engagement, now. In any of their engagements since the conclusion to what had been years upon years of torment and ache for both the prosecutor Ryunosuke had once known as a defense lawyer, and the one striding alongside him currently. An antagonistic air that had previously breathed into every little thing Lord van Zieks did in Ryunosuke’s presence was all but cleared, making room instead for . . . what was this—? A lingering look here, a genuine smile there, a loose and comfortable jest . . . Well, mostly comfortable, on that last one; the manner in which Lord van Zieks hurried forward with a hardly perceptible (to those not paying attention . . . so, perhaps anyone but Ryunosuke) trace of regret swathing his face whispered an awkwardness that was positively endearing.

What was this? Ryunosuke didn’t yet have an answer, but . . . He was eager to find out.

And there, as the conversation coaxed another little quip from his companion, Ryunosuke equally couldn’t help adding, “I wish you wouldn’t.” Boldly. Shamelessly, some might say (and certainly, Kazuma would be proud of him). A reply to the prospect of sparing him, and that which he sneaked into that brief little moment right as van Zieks was ushering him into the carriage; Ryunosuke uttered it over his shoulder through a knowing grin, allowed the prosecutor to do whatever he wanted with the vague claim because perhaps . . . Perhaps even he himself wasn’t entirely sure. (Only that, at this rate—and dangerously so—Ryunosuke had decided he’d be quite content being in van Zieks’s company in any capacity.)

By the time Lord van Zieks joined him inside, Ryunosuke had just managed to pick a seat, a series of embarrassingly long seconds spent contemplating what side he imagined the man would prefer being on (and just as well wondering what sort of rules or courtesies London society had about this too). He’d taken to the position that set him facing backward, and as soon as his company settled in across from him, Ryunosuke shuffled just slightly to give him more room (needlessly, as well; of the two of them, it wasn’t like Ryunosuke was taking up space).

“Right,” he confirmed, all at once becoming too aware of the surprising intimacy of this enclosed carriage . . . and how long (or short, some part of him wanted to argue) they’d be here. Hands clasped neatly in his lap, his attention darted to the window, and he bit thoughtfully at his lower lip. “Do you, ah . . . How many places does your family happen to own, Lord van Zieks? I admit I don’t have much of an idea of what’s common for your . . . standing—?”