For most people, giving up the day job and moving to a beautiful area of France is an impossible but delicious dream. In 1990, Patricia Atkinson and her husband sold up in England and emigrated to the Dordogne to a ramshackle farmhouse surrounded by vines. The vines were meant only as a recreation but then came the stock market crash: they lost everything apart from their dream house and the vineyard which was now their sole source of income.
Disaster followed disaster: the first red wine harvest turned to vinegar and Patricia's husband developed a serious illness and returned to Britain. Patricia, whose sole knowledge of wine up to that moment was that "it came from a bottle" and who had not a word of French, was left on her own to salvage what she could.
What follows is a remarkable story of triumph over adversity whereby Clos d'Yvigne, her tiny 4 hectare plot, has become a major estate of 21 hectares, the wine of which has won France's top wine award and is exported all over the world.
It is also a remarkable story of community spirit that has all but disappeared elsewhere but still exists in the byways of rural France where Patricia's friends and neighbours accepted her as one of their own, worked with her through the tears and triumph of the vineyards, and shared their lives with her.
'The Ripening Sun' is the story of a way of life that many aspire to, few understand and fewer still will ever experience.
