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It’s my country, I was born here, I grew up surrounded by family.

It’s here, in Fleys (pronounced Flay-ee), that I live with Lucie, my partner at home and at work. We inhabit the house in where I was born, in the very street where my grandparents and great-grandparents were living. Every morning, to get to my vines on the hillside, I walk through the tiny streets, I pass by women and men who have watched me grow up. Hello Charly, hello Robert, good day Marguerite, hello Madeleine! I love this life: farmer, winemaker, villager, familiar. 180 of us live tightly knit around our church steeple. It’s a lively place, youthful and friendly. I am a part of this age-old Chablis countryside-risen from the ancient earth folds where the ocean hid shell and fossil treasures for me to find under my plough when labouring in spring. It’s my countryside, a land where my children now grow up, a land of peaceful days that give me faith in the future.