Vinicultural Envoy: David Pearson

Last May, David Pearson was in big trouble. An unlikely coalition of hunters and communists was parading through the narrow streets of Aniane, a village in the Languedoc region of southwest France, baying for his blood. Shadowy forces were spreading misinformation to trash the project Pearson had spent the previous two years putting together. Some seven months later, he recalled, "I told headquarters that in the worst-case scenario, this could end up like Elian Gonzalez."

Pearson's project--and the cause of an almighty ruckus in Aniane--was his search for, and acquisition of, some 120 acres of high-quality French grape-growing soil where California wine giant Robert Mondavi could produce its own high-quality French vintages. For Pearson, Mondavi's general manager in France, that turned out to be no easy task in a country where winemaking is an ancestral tradition and anti-Americanism something of a national sport.

Yet ultimately Pearson triumphed; having won local council approval, his Aniane vineyard awaits the green light from national authorities. Today Mondavi's man in southern France can sip pastis with the hunters who were among his staunchest opponents, fearing that Mondavi would destroy the habitat of their favorite prey, the wild boar. It's a tribute to the 38-year-old's soft-spoken perseverance. "If he were an Indian, he'd be called Crafty Fox," says local winemaker Pierre Clavel with a smile.

Pearson was raised in San Diego, where his father was a doctor and his mother a committed environmentalist. Pearson discovered his vocation while hiking around Europe after high school. He spent a year in France as a wine-business intern after graduating in 1984 from the University of Southern California at Davis with a degree in oenology. Then he moved to the East Coast and a job in a research lab. Before long he was hankering for the wine trade again. He studied for an M.B.A., then joined Hublein to manage imports of Baron Philippe de Rothschild's wines to the U.S. Then the phone rang, with an offer to work on Mondavi's Languedoc project.

The giant of Napa Valley focused on the South of France in the early '90s, when a mutant strain of phylloxera grub was eating its way through California's vineyards. Mondavi looked abroad to satisfy U.S. consumer demand for wine, which was increasing 30% each year. The company found what it was looking for in the Languedoc, where grape growers were starting to market single-variety wines. The Languedoc was also a region that was abandoning bulk production in favor of high-quality winemaking. "If you look at the climate and the soils here, you've got every element you need to make world-class wine," says Pearson.

When he arrived with his family in January 1998, his mission was simple: scout the region and find a single 120-acre plot where Mondavi could produce 240,000 bottles of top-quality wine each year. After two years of road trips, wine tasting and geological surveying, he settled on a patch of scrub-covered hillside on the Massif de l'Arboussas, above the village of Aniane, about 15 miles northwest of the regional center of Montpellier. There was just one problem: the land belonged to the village. "French people wouldn't even think about doing something on common land," Pearson says. "But we went ahead and asked."