Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Cars, wine : same thing ?

I had another dream… actually a nightmare.

Everyone in Bordeaux, including of course, the classified growths, those of 1855 and the others, all take good care of their vines: leaf thinning, green harvest, manual harvest, vibrating machines to sort the grapes, the latest destemmer, seed selection, cold, heat, skills, and more....
If all the great terroir do the same, if all the historical crus do the same, how come Valandraud still has a place with the best?
Well it's simple, I am also fortunate to have vines in good terroir, there, no reason to stress. All the comments heard during my early days, made by jealous people proved to be false and those who believed in Valandraud were right!

It makes me think about old cars, unreliable, always breaking down, even those beautiful and expensive ones, such as English ones or those more showy, from Italy, our beautiful Dauphines often seen with their 4 wheels in the air, and fast rusting chrome .
All this was fine at the time, nostalgic today, but if progress has made cars more reliable, there is also globalization of taste. If I believe those nostalgic, yes...... but if I look at what’s available to me: the Mercedes S class is different from Porsche, itself different from BMW, and I do not even mention Citroen and Peugeot!
All those cars are reliable, but they are quite different if you look at them, their interior, when you touch them, smell them, drive them and how they age…

Doesn’t this remind you about wine ? And not those garage ones.

All wines taste the same according to doomsayers, and still, what a difference between Figeac and Cheval Blanc! What a difference between Valandraud, my top cuvee, and Virginie de Valandraud! And still, they come from the same terroir, same technique, same means.

Cars cannot exceed 130 kms/hr on the highways, but after driving 400 kms, you will be in a different state of freshness depending on the car.

Every watch gives you the time, even if anyone can succeed in life even without having a Rolex. I still dream about beautiful luxurious watched such as Zénith, Patek Philippe, Breguet, Audemars Piguet, Richard Mille, Chopard… I don’t know all of them…(and my Seiko still works well !)

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