Angels in the Cellar:Notes from a French Vineyard

Who among us hasn’t thought about quitting their job, selling the house, chucking it all and moving to the French countryside to make wine?

On the verge of an emotional breakdown, Peter Hahn quit his management consultant job over twenty years ago, bought a small run-down ancient vineyard and house in the Loire Valley, and has rarely ventured since from his newfound home, tending his vines and making a yearly vintage of organic wine. 

Angels in the Cellar tells his back-to-nature story in a charming, eloquent way, following the seasons and chronicling the grueling, but ultimately rewarding, work of managing the land in a luscious part of the French countryside, not far from the banks of the iconic Loire River. Angels in the Cellar is more of a naturalist’s story than a book about winemaking. It invites readers to spend a year in Peter’s company among the vines, where he reflects on the land, his life, regenerative farming, and the lives of the small group of people he works with, and of the villagers in the nearby town. The narrative follows Peter through the seasons, pruning the vines and harvesting the grapes by hand, before going with him to the cellar, where the alchemy begins—and the angels take charge. 

An evocative, poetic account of a year spent working with nature, Angels in the Cellar is also a powerful repudiation of the global economy, its obsession with hyper-consumption, and the impact of large-scale farming on the land and its ecosystems. | Peter Hahn is a winegrower in France’s Loire Valley. He is an American who spent his childhood and adolescent years in Asia and Australia, subsequently receiving his BA from Tufts University in Massachusetts and his MBA from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. For almost fifteen years he worked in global management consulting and finance. He now lives and works at Le Clos de la Meslerie, a small vineyard in central France, rarely leaving it, growing grapes, making small-batch, organic wines, and reveling in the life the land has given him. He is married and has three children. This is his first book.