Living surrounded by vineyards is influencing my perspective on life.
There is a little shop next to the tourist information office in the nearby village of Segonzac where you can drop by and taste a cognac or two and explore the individual produce of several local distillers. This is small scale cognac production – families who have worked the same vineyards for generations, tended the vines, plant by plant, through the seasons of each year.
Every year they strive to produce the best quality grapes they can from their vineyard. And each year they strive to produce the tastiest cognac they can – taste which is not just pleasurable but unique and distinctive.
It’s delightful to head home with a bottle of cognac produced 40 years ago by the father of the man who sells it to you.
The focus is quality. Quality and that unique, distinctive flavour. These vineyards and distilleries have been productive for years and years. They don’t “succeed” by producing more and more every year.
They don’t survive by buying up all the surrounding vineyards and becoming global mega-corporations. (there are cognac producers in the area which are a bit like that – big, multinational companies).
They thrive by doing well what they do well. Their focus is on quality and what makes their particular cognac unique.
We hear so much these days about the need for “growth” – more consumption, more production, more sales, more profits.
There is another way.
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