Friday, December 23, 2011

Freedom Fries in Beaune

Ok, so if you can't tell by now, I find France's attitude toward business kind of amusing. Ok, not amusing, worse.

So, driving out of French wine country I couldn't help notice the awkward location of a new McDonald's. I also couldn't help notice that breakfast at our hotel ran 20 euro a head and there was no other place where breakfast would take less than an hour or two.  McDonald's was going to save our morning.

The exit wasn't marked from the main road and it took a few near missed before we hit the right driveway.  Was it that someone was deliberately trying to stop people from going to McDonalds?

For folks who have been to McDonald's in Europe, you'll know how nice they are compared to ours - fresh croissants, pain au chocolate, espresso - you name it.  Breakfast was delicious, and it was cheap (relative to the other options at least).  Thank you America, for customer-centric businesses and ruthlessly efficient supply chains.

Curious about the strange location of this little fast food joint, I chatted up a guy in McDonald's business casual, sitting at a table with his iBook.  He happened to be a regional VP and knew a lot about this particular store.

It turns out this place had a great story.

McDonald's had been trying to get a restaurant in Beaune for years, but the mayor wouldn't allow it.  He hated all fast food, categorically.  He forbade anyone from building a fast-food joint anywhere in the city limits, and the city limit covers a lot of the countryside.

But... he missed one little patch of real estate right next to the off-ramp, which technically belonged to the city on the other side of the highway.  Those guys didn't like McDonald's too much either, but they hated the arrogant mayor of Beaune even more.  To spite him, and to earn some coin, they let McDonald's buy the land and build their restaurant.

McDonald's was now the first thing people would see when visiting Beaune.  Touche!

Furious, the mayor of Beaune won't allow McDonald's to place any of its signage in the city limits.  So that explains the awful access and total lack of signage.

How is the restaurant doing?  Above plan, says the VP.  He says the lack of competition is good for business (there isn't another fast food joint for 50km), and he feels pretty damn sure there isn't going to be any other competition any time soon.

Go away and take your pomme frites de liberte with you.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Vin

France without wine would be like America without Bud Light... or maybe America without burgers?  It's far more than a beverage - wine is ingrained in the culture, is part of daily life and is as much part of the French identity as fashion or the 35 hour work week.

This fact helped explain a lot of the quirky facts about wine production in France.  

Just about anywhere in the New World, wine is a beverage, and like any beverage, entrepreneurs have the right to make it where and how they want, market it and charge whatever price they please.  They typically don't enjoy government subsidies either - why would they?  If anything, wine is taxed at a premium because of its alcohol content.

But, because its national status, wine is more a means than an end in France.  Wine producers are the small-town heroes of France, maintaining traditions and culture that urbanites like to visit on the weekends but not actually commit themselves to.  Most producers can point to ancestors in the 17th or 18th century who made wine from the very same plot of land.  Wine is not about marketing or process - it is about the characteristics of the earth, the terroir.  Many producers make no more than a few thousand bottles of wine - it is literally made and bottled in their garages.  This is the stuff of Subaru-driving, sustainable-locally-sourced-organic farmers market legends. 

Unfortunately for these producers, however, their wine is usually not very good, nor is it very cheap.  The best of French wine dominates auctions around the world.  The middle of the market holds its own too.  But there is an enormous glut of not particularly good wine, that isn't particularly cheap, and why would anyone want to buy that stuff when there is perfectly good wine coming out of Chile, Argentina or South Africa for half the price and twice the quality?  Well, the French believe you should support the local farmers, and they do, by buying the wine or at least paying to turn the wine into ethanol.  But consumers outside of France - and especially in the UK, Nordic Countries and US - well, they don't really care.

This is why I felt two powerful and intensely conflicting emotions as we drove through wine country.  Part of me thought it was all so quaint, charming, romantic.  And then the other part of me - the part of me trained to care about efficiency and money - thought it was incredibly bureaucratic, inefficient, and an enormous waste of resources.  

As a French wine producer, you are less an entrepreneur than an arm of the state.  You cannot choose what to grow, or where to grow it, or how to take care of the vines, or even necessarily how to price it or market it.  It is a quasi-state monopoly designed to protect the mediocre at the expense of the best.  And, unsurprisingly, it does not create a tremendous amount of value for consumers (here is more from the BBC).  The New World continues to gain share at the expense of the old, a trend that's unlikely to be reversed any time soon.

Maybe the timing of my visit was good.  With the looming fiscal crisis in France as elsewhere, it's an open question of how France can continue to preserve this way of life for others to enjoy.  But, until then, enjoy the throwback to an earlier time and visit the castles, medieval village, and charming vineyards of French wine country.

The label hasn't changed in generations - because it's regulated by the state.































Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Verdun

The quaint French countryside is interrupted in a few places by memorials to a bloody history.  

In an arc that stretches from Lille in the north to Verdun in the southeast is the "Zone Rouge" or red zone - a area that was utterly devastated during the trench warfare of World War I.  Tens of millions of artillery shells fell over a narrow corridor as the war settled into stalemate and the great powers fought for gains measured in yards.  

Passing through Verdun is an eerie experience.  Verdun is one of the more famous of the battle sites, notorious for its pointlessness and horror. The numbers are staggering and speak for themselves, over 300,000 people were killed over the 10 months of the battle - 1,000 people a day on average.  Many more were wounded.  More soldiers died during one month of Verdun than during the entire Vietnam war.  The result of the battle amounted to a stalemate - neither side could truly claim victory.

The landscape of the battlefield is permanently disfigured by the 40 million artillery shells fired during battle.  Today, it has an eerie, sculpted beauty to it.  It looks like a forgotten golf course, which has been reclaimed by the forest around it, and it stretches for miles and miles.  The Zone Rouge, as well as the areas around it, has been declared a national monument.  It's estimated that there are still tens of thousands of soldiers buried under the debris of battle.

Visiting the museums and memorials is a powerful experience.  Over an area of several football fields are posted tens of thousands of crosses in remembrance of the men who braved the horror and gave their lives for their countries.   

File:German trench Delville Wood September 1916.jpg
The "Zone Rouge", 1918

File:Battelfield Verdun.JPG
Then and now.

One of several underground citadels which served as a command and supply outposts during the battle.  Soldiers would live for months underground, waiting for their day of battle, cooking for the army, or tending to the wounded.









Saturday, December 10, 2011

Models and Bottles

Real Champagne comes from Champagne.

Getting out of Paris is wonderful.  The French countryside is charming.  There are rolling hills, covered in  green vineyards.  The roads are lazy.  The towns that haven't changed in hundreds of years.  Suddenly I understood why the French spent so much too subsidize this stuff - agriculture in France isn't just an industry - it's also a landscaping project that covers an entire country.

Champagne, a few hours drive east of Paris, is a good place to get a feel for small town France.  It's also the capital of the global sparkling wine industry.  

Moet is one of France's prestigious brands.  It produces Moet Imperial, originally created for Napoleon, and Dom Perignon, which retails for over $100 a bottle.

The luxury starts with the champagne-flute chandeliers.





The Moet brand is about celebration, and being fabulous.

Called Imperial because it was the champagne of Napoleon Bonaparte

Freudian?  




Thousands of bottles waiting for a party.

Hundreds of miles of tunnels lie under the surface of the towns of Champagne.


A bottle for a party of every size!



Secret code so that people don't "accidentally" take a bottle of the good stuff.



Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Wanderlust

You know, I felt pretty good about being back, and then I saw this guy's blog.  Wow.

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=480532

If you have a constant hunger for adventure stories, there are literally dozens of people doing amazing trips here.