Bread, wine and liberty
Du pain, du vin, du Boursin
Some wine, some bread, some Boursin cheese. So ran the national ad in France for Boursin, linking it to both wine and bread.
But what works in France might not work in America. Specifically, Connecticut.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting Mitch Rapaport and Margaret Sapir. Throwing in the towel on corporate careers (and perhaps in spite of their business training since each holds an MBA), the couple decided to start a Wave Hill Breads, a bakery, as a second career. They apprenticed for three years with a baker in Vermont before finally finding space in Wilton, Connecticut a year and a half ago.
It’s a great bread for wine lovers since they mill their own spelt and rye at the bakery, activating wild yeasts and leading to…fermentation! The excellent, hand made breads made from just six ingredients are currently available at select stores in Fairfield and Westchester Counties (see a photo of them in their bakery here). Foodie Michael Stern even went so far as to say it is possibly the best bread on the East coast!
Mitch had a previous career in branding and thus told me that he took a particular interest in the bread’s bag. He wanted to include a couple of stanzas from the poem “Neighbours” by Robert Service that mentioned both wine and bread. But when he emailed the text to about a dozen friends, he said the opinion was split on whether to include the reference to wine, with the negatives particularly strongly opposed. So he decided to scrap the poem.
He wrote me in a follow-up email that some were “concerned that wine may be taboo in some homes, that parents may be concerned about the influence on children, and that many families contain recovering alcoholics. In other words, why take an unnecessary risk?”
I could possibly understand some people not wanting to put actual wine in front of recovering alcoholics or children–but the mere mention of wine?! Eegads, the Catholic Church with real bread and wine must pose difficulties…See right for the final packaging of the bread, which isn’t exactly short on words. Here’s the text from the poem that Mitch wanted to use:
My neighbour has a field of wheat
And I a rood of vine;
And he will give me bread to eat,
And I will give him wine.
So with my neighbour I rejoice
That we are fit and free,
Content to praise with lusty voice
Bread, Wine and Liberty.
What do you think? Have your say in the comments below!
Wave Hill Breads, 196 Danbury Road, Wilton CT 06897. Tel: 203.762.9595
Related: “You say oinos, I say oenos” [Dr. V]
tags: wine | bread
On March 7th, 2007 at 3:55 pm ,Amy @ WineTalent.net wrote:
Dr. Vino:
I too had thought about and even experimented with starting up a bakery. I toast their efforts, and hard work in starting up a great bakery. Good bread is hard to find.
With fermentation being of the utmost importance to wine, bread and cheese, I think they go hand in hand. But bread is also the staff of life, and to convey a wholesome, family friendly image, a connection with wine could possibly be a negative.
I’d want the verse on my bread in a heartbeat. But then again, I love wine, cheese and bread as much as life itself. So if they were going after my demographic, the verse should stay.
On March 8th, 2007 at 2:37 am ,Jack wrote:
No reason they shouldn’t put that text on the package.
Afterall, who would want someone to buy your product that was so ultra-conservative that the mere mention of the word wine (surely a word not even in the Bible) on the package would cause them not to purchase it? Mitch either needs much better friends or a huge injection of common sense. (Perhaps these people you emailed thought your bread COMES with a bottle of wine with a kid-friendly label!)
Seriously, this is one of the most ridiculous and boneheaded things I’ve read in a long time. I would not buy his bread simply based on his super wimpy decision! (And I can’t help thinking that this is exactly the kind of breadmaker who would put “organic high fructose corn syrup” in his bread. Wild yeasts – or does he mean Monsanto GMO yeasts?)
Mitch, if you’re afraid to print a poem that has the word wine on a bread bag in CT, I don’t think you should be running any kind of small business; such timidity is not the formula for any kind of long term business success.
On March 8th, 2007 at 7:15 am ,timmyc wrote:
Interestingly the “Du pain, du vin, du boursin” ads ran in the uk as well – in fact I’m not sure they ever ran in France at all and they may have been aimed at the UK market, who at the time where also being told “The French adore Piat D’Or” which must of course be a lie as it’s not available in France!
http://www.winepost.blogspot.com
On March 8th, 2007 at 8:21 am ,Dr. Vino wrote:
Amy – Indeed, birds of a feather ferment together–or something like that!
Jack – Whoa! What did you put in your hand-harvested, shade grown, organic Kona this morning?!? I guess this issue DOES arouse passions!
Timmyc – Thanks for the UK update. I know that the Boursin slogan was used in France as well.
On March 8th, 2007 at 4:02 pm ,Mitch wrote:
Jack, having wanted to include the verse in the first place, we obviously thought it was a good idea. But, being fifty-somethings, we learned a long time ago not to assume that most people share one’s own way of looking at things. We were startled by the reaction we received from the wide variety of friends whom we emailed…but why ask, if you’re not prepared to consider the answer you get? For us, it’s a matter of respecting our customers. That said, we hope you’ll try WHB some time. We’re passionate about our bread, which contains only artisan flour, organic spelt and rye that we mill ourselves, water, salt, and a pinch of yeast.
On March 9th, 2007 at 10:05 pm ,Terence wrote:
Although Jack got a little hyper, I do agree with him. What kind of demo are they going after that would mind the mention of wine on the damned bag? Connecticut’s in the Bible Belt already?
Never mind the fact that it was reported as a GOOD thing that Jesus turned water into wine…