The Dream Job

Dear wine friends,

Last week a young couple visited me in the cellar. They were looking for a place to celebrate their engagement with friends and family. After I had shown them around, the young lady suddenly asked:

“What is it like to have your dream job?”

I was caught off guard. Not because it is an unusual question — but because I realized I didn’t have a ready-made answer.

On one level, of course, this is an absolute dream job. It produces plenty of Instagrammable, picture-perfect moments: quiet winter days spent pruning the vines under a blue sky, the gentle company of our little Ouessant sheep, the simple pleasure of sharing a glass of wine and a conversation with a friend. But of course it isn’t just that. It is also a normal business with all the pains and frustrations of running a small business.

So what does “dream job” really mean?

If we dig a little deeper, the question seems to pull us toward value and purpose. I draw genuine satisfaction from working in harmony with nature, from attempting to be a good steward of the land entrusted to me. The vineyard and cellar are a playground where I find an outlet for my creative energies.

It matters to me that our wines are made with absolute minimal non-grape inputs. I also take pleasure in knowing, that the product I make, when shared between friends, can open up a conversation in a way that might otherwise not have happened.

But is that the ultimate truth here?

If we look even deeper, we begin to notice that these meanings are all just stories. They feel true and are deeply felt. Yet they are narratives — interpretations we collectively agree to believe in.

As the historian Yuval Harari has often pointed out, much of our world runs on shared stories. Take the 20-franc note. I am willing to exchange a bottle of wine for a small red piece of paper because I trust that the next person will also accept it. Its value does not lie in the paper itself, but in our shared belief in its value. If that belief dissolved, the note would simply become paper again.

The same can be said, in a more subtle way, about concepts like career, corporation, success — even “the dream job.” They are collectively sustained ideas that exist only because we participate in them. In some sense, we are all choosing our stories.

I choose to believe that working biodynamically has value.

I choose to believe that careful farming matters.

I choose to believe that a shared bottle of wine can elevate a good conversation.

These choices are not random — they are informed by experience and intuition — but they remain choices. They are commitments to a certain way of seeing and participating in the world.

Perhaps a “dream job” is not a string of perfect days, but rather having a daily routine that is in harmony with the story that is playing in our heads.

So I invite you to step into my world. Share a bottle of wine with someone you like and explore each others stories and beliefs about the world – you may learn something new.

Cheers, Hoss