Alexis Gaucher-Piola is another lawyer who turned his passion into his job: specialised in litigations and affairs linked to the world of wine making, he has made a successful career in this field at the heart of one of France's biggest winemaking regions.
With Christmas and New Year's Eve approaching, you are certainly considering the purchase of good bottles of wine for your dinners. And you may not be surprised to learn that, behind these lovely St Emilion and Chardonnay, hides the work of other lawyers!
'I worked on the purchase of a winery recently, the deal was several hundred million euros', says Alexis Gaucher-Piola (Eurojuris France), a lawyer from Libourne, not far from Bordeaux. 'This deal kept me busy every day for four years!' Alexis is an expert in Wine Law, a specialisation recognised by Law Universities in France; 'I would never have been able to manage this deal if I had not been a specialist', Alexis says.
Such a speciality obviously stems from passion. 'I love wine', Alexis says, 'I worked in a vineyard as a student, and I don't think you can do legal work on such a topic if you don't have a passion for it. After I graduated, I started writing a legal column for a wine magazine, a hundred articles in total. It was an occasion for me to learn even more, and some readers contacted me for further advice. Then I worked for a lawfirm which already had big clients in this field'. Today, Alexis has his own lawfirm with four other lawyers.
Wine law is a category withing the greater field of agricultural law, which is adapted to the realities of the rural world. 'We meet such typical cases of agricultural law as delayed salary. This happens when a siblinghood inherits a farm of any type, in which one of the siblings has been living and working all his life, without pay, but fed and housed there. Other siblings must pay a compensation that can go as high as 120,000 euros'. Other cases relate to the labelling of wines: France has pioneered the protection of traditional products with its 'controlled origin label' or appellation d'origine contrôlée. 'Litigations happen when the label has been taken away from a wine producer who considers it unfair, or if the label has been misattributed to someone not really meeting criteria'. According to Alexis, Wine Law is big money: 'The purchase of a little parcel of vineyard can amount to crazy sums, two and a half acres can worth from one to four million euros! I believe we will meet at least one huge litigation per decade over these'.
Even if Alexis met with success in his very precise field, he remains interestingly balanced about the trend of specialisation among lawyers. 'Specialisation is a good thing if you are in a huge bar or in a big lawfirm, to stand out of the crowd. But in a small bar, being a general lawyer is good too. My associates are mostly general and they do a good career. Here in the Aquitaine part of France, we are the biggest wine producing region in the world, and yet there are only five specialists like me
