I hate these kind of articles.
They make it sound like anyone can up and move to France to pursue their dream. Not that I'm bitter, but rather they paint an extremely rosy (and unrealistic) picture of the expat life.
The article doesn't mention if his wife is French (which I suspect) or how he got a visa and carte de séjour to move to France, how he really learned French (I'm not buying the story that he learned it from a 19th century book on wine), and fails to consider how monumental the help of his investor is. They make it sound normal that he found someone to fund him $150,000.
I guess what bugs me the most is that the emphasis seems all in the wrong places. Why isn't the wife mentioned more for her (most likely) instrumental role helping her American husband make it with the locals? How did they get the investor? How have they found distributors for their wine, and are they exporting? How did he convince a French bank and real estate agency to sell him land and finance his business? How did they get the 1,000 people on the mailing list to buy his first wine? What do the French say behind his back? (I'm not buying either that they've welcomed him like family)
I haven't left a comment, but I really liked this one:
You see? With a dream, determination, and a friend who replies "Is that all?" when asked for $150,000, miracles can happen!There's also this one:
The complete fantasy of this article is that Americans can come to France to live and work based on a whim. Please tell us how Mr. Walker dealt with immigration issues and employment laws.Okay, one last one:
Somehow the phrases "with little money" & "his family's real estate business" & "Merril Lynch" do not appear consistent.
Does the author of this article know what the term "little money" really means to most Americans?
End of rant!
5 comments:
The conclusion to this article is really something: [“Anybody can do it,” he said, about the winemaking. “You just have to care enough.”]
Yeah, right. I think the dozens of French wine-makers in deep financial and other difficulties will appreciate that. Surely, they don't care enough that they will end up bankrupt and their family destitute.
With respect to this particular story, in addition to the immigration issues you pointed out, I believe that the status of being an importer vs. wine-maker makes a big difference in terms of which regulations you have to follow. As a "negociant" as long as you have customers, basically anything goes.
I think the French newspapers are fond of similar success stories about French folks going off to the US to live the Dream. More often than not, they're equally annoying, and conveniently keeping quiet all the difficulties faced by most emigrants.
At least they admit that it's a fairy tale! And it perpetuates the American "you can do anything you set your mind to" mentality, which I do kind of miss over here.
It's funny that they bother to mention that he's "tall and lean with sculptured good looks" because if he wasn't, they wouldn't have said anything about his looks at all, lol. We like our fairy tales to star cute people.
I haven't read the article yet but Andromeda's comment had me laughing.. i'm not sure i'd be able to take any article seriously that mentions "sculpted good looks".
So in reality, he and his wife were living in the states when her parents died and thus she inherited a vineyard. She was probably all, "what the heck am I gonna do?" and he was like, "hey, I've been unemployed for two years, let's go to France." Then they arrived and he was all, "polly-voo franceez?" and the locals were all "lolz" but he was too ignorant to get the joke so he felt like that must mean he fits in. Then her brothers (who also inherited a chunk of the vineyard when Pop Pop passed away) threw some cash at her to get rid of their share which equalled something around 150000$ and the rest is history.
I'm just assuming my version is something a little bit closer to accurate, unless he walks around France using archaic expressions found in a 19th century wine making book..and if he does, his "friends" are awfully cruel for not setting him straight.
Too bad he's not a blogger.
Really interesting, thanks for posting! I find it funny how a lot of journalists "sway" the story to focus solely on the awesome parts and don't address any of other issues to moving abroad and opening a company. They do make it seem that anyone can do it, and we all know that's far from the truth.
150,000 dollars can go a long way in making someone's dream a reality, but the reality is, most of us will never have access to that kind of money.
I still prefer to buy wine locally made and sold by French viticulteurs who don't speak a word of English and built their business - literally - from the ground up with no help from big name "investors".
Amber, your version is probably right! I went back to see if there were more comments and the guy left a rather long comment talking a bit about his maison du vin.
Someone else left a link for another recent article about him published on bloomburg, which smells awfully like a press campaign. He probably sent press releases to national newspapers with pre-written quotes and pictures and the journalist called him for 5 minutes to verify the story and then copies and pasted most of the text from the press release. That would explain the lack of critical analysis and fairy tale style presentation.
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