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started her new school that year Maîtresse confessed that she was convinced Sophia was
from a French home despite her foreign passport.
Pierre opened a bottle of white wine that I recognised. It was from the property of another
vigneron who had left a successful career to follow the dream of making wine.
'He makes good wine. But business is tough. He's a bitter man. Life is difficult. He's in
business with a partner so he can't get out. He thinks that his family would have had a bet-
ter life if he had stayed in his boring but financially rewarding desk job,' said Pierre.
With a business partner it would be harder to exit, that was certain. There are so many
long-term decisions in wine. There would never be a good time to sell. No wonder so many
wine businesses went up for sale after the liquidator had forced the situation. I promised
myself that would not be us.
If people who had been successful winemakers for decades and in some instances gener-
ations were failing, the crisis was serious. I had to come up with a way for us to diversify
into a complementary business. I recalled my conversation with Kerry a couple of months
beforeandstarted draftingabusinessplanforwinetourism.ThatMondaywhenSeancame
in from pruning, we sat down to a bowl of steaming soup made from our home-grown but-
ternut squashes that were piled high in baskets in the kitchen and I told him about my ideas.
We had talked vaguely about wine tourism when Kerry was visiting but then the harvest
had consumed our attention.
'I'm thinking of offering wine classes and wine tours along the lines of what Kerry sug-
gested. We have to find other ways to make money and it seems like an obvious one for us
in a region like Aquitaine with so many tourists.'
'Maybe,' said Sean. 'How will you start?'
'I'll outline my ideas for what we can offer and how to present them on a website this af-
ternoon. I've already spoken to Kerry and he has agreed to put me onto his wine tourism
site. After coding the website I'll develop the course material.'
'Is it such a good idea? How much time is it going to take to get the website up? It prob-
ably won't generate anything and it will take you weeks of work.'
I was frustrated by his attitude. I needed support and collaboration, not negative vibes. He
was playing his usual devil's advocate.
'But if we do nothing we'll never know. I don't think it will take me more than a week to
get my ideas together and to have a site up. I'll use the template you developed for the wine
site.'
That evening I handed Sean the short plan I had worked out. 'We'll have to think about
pricing but I want to start with wine courses, tours and vineyard walks.'
'That sounds like a large range. Maybe you should start smaller.'
'No, I need to start with the range we want otherwise it won't happen.'
A few days later I visited our local tourist office to find out whether anyone was offering
this sort of thing already.
