I was a little over 30 when my partner at the time and I took our campervan through France. Along with our camping equipment, a dog-eared roadmap of France and only rudimentary French, we brought along our six-month-old daughter. It turned out she did not like being on the road as much as we did. Somehow, despite a schedule packed mainly with singing ‘Old MacDonald’ at the top of our lungs every time we got back behind the wheel, nappies, and sleep deprivation, we managed to fit in wine tastings and vineyard tours in the Loire, the Alsace, and Burgundy. A few years before that we had hitched out to the Cinque Terre, having read that there were vineyards going for a song. We didn’t buy a vineyard, but we did spend a few blissful weeks climbing the vertiginous hills, swimming in the sea and fantasising about what a life would look like there. All of this is to say that when Peter Hahn describes the moment he bought his vineyard in the Loire valley, my heart skips a little.

Angels in the Cellar is the story of how a moment of panic and clarity in the back of a London cab leads the author to move to France, buying an ancient vineyard and dedicating the next 16 years to regenerating the land, the antique equipment and the wine made there. Call it escapist reading, with a slap in the face of reality, but make it a gentle slap with a fragrant vine leaf. A year in Provence meets The Shepherd’s Life, Hahn takes us through a year in seasons on a French vineyard. He ponders the gentle rhythm of wine-making, and the repetitive, cyclical nature of working with a natural, unpredictable product. A life lived in close quarters with nature, at once unforgiving and endlessly enriching.

I have spent a life skirting around the desire to grow wine, to live the life Peter Hahn has managed to do so beautifully. I never did get that job on a vineyard, but I did spend a year living in Normandy, converting an old timber-framed barn and learning French. Years later, I took myself to wine school to learn the basics, and more recently, as part of my job teaching farming and cookery at a boarding school, helped tend a small row of Chardonnay vines with our students. My colleague and mentor was Keir Rowe, whose father Alan wrote the seminal book on growing grapes in the UK, Successful Grape growing for eating and wine-making after over 30 years spent growing vines in Suffolk. Hahn’s lyrical descriptions of the repetitive but tender work of pruning and shaping each vine brought back fond and visceral memories.

‘The word cynefin is layered with meaning. A Welsh noun with no direct equivalent in English, its origins lie in a farming term used to describe the habitual tracks and trails worn by animals in hillsides. The word has since morphed and deepened to express a very personal sense of place, belonging and familiarity… Being ‘naturally acclimatised’ to a place is, I think, only really felt by living within nature.’ Hahn writes eloquently and confidently, and reminds me more than once of John Lewis Stempel, the quintessential ‘intellectual farmer’. Hahn talks of plant sentience, of the intricacies of soil science, of the challenges of modern regenerative farming. He is unafraid to admit his naivety, and his deference to the wine-growing families and the people he meets on his adventure is utterly charming. He paints a captivating picture of a life spent in honour of the land, of community and family, and above all, the natural world.

I suppose my only reservation would be the same as the one I have had with Stempel. As much as I love the ‘vicarious enchantment’, as Zoe Gilbert calls it, of reading about someone else ‘living the dream’, it is a dream out of the reach of most. The inherent privilege required in order to achieve a dream like this is rarely acknowledged. Most readers of this book will never have the means to buy and maintain a vineyard in the Loire valley, and so, the ‘middle-class white man’ narrative, which has colonised so much nature writing over the past centuries, is certainly not being challenged here.

And yet I can overlook this here: Like Stempel, Hahn writes eloquently and passionately about a more regenerative, gentle way of farming, about respecting the delicate ecosystem he has found himself steward of. ‘For me, every time I prepare a vine for layering, it reinforces the sense that I am not just growing grapes to make wine to sell on the market, but am also a care-giver, nurturing the vines, helping them reproduce and grow. It strengthens my connection to these plants, this soil, and the ongoing story of this place.’ Hahn does not take his good fortune for granted. He is painfully aware of the legacy he has taken on, and must look after. It is clear he innately respects the natural world around him, and that over the years he has been shaped and humbled by it. Of course it also doesn’t hurt that he is published by Little Toller in Dorset, who to my mind only publish meaningful, beautiful books.

After I finished the final chapter, I got in touch with the vineyard closest to me, Sandridge Barton, whose vines cling to the side of the Dart valley, a few miles from my house, and I signed myself up to help with this summer’s harvest. Because, well, you never know, maybe one day I will finally stop skirting around those vines and get a little bit closer to the earth, just as Hahn has done.

Angels in the Cellar publishes on 14th April with Little Toller