How an American businessman lost his job and found himself in an old French vineyard

‘What do you really love? It’s a great question, isn’t it?’ Peter Hahn in his vineyard. Photograph: Claude Pauquet/Agence VU

One Friday night 24 years ago, Peter Hahn was sitting in the back of a cab to Heathrow, sleepless after yet another 48-hour work bender.

“My computer’s on my lap,” the American-born organic winegrower from France recalls, the spring sun lighting up the deep pink walls of his study in his ancient manor house in the Loire Valley, his beloved vines outside, “and I’m doing a spreadsheet.