A Day in the Life of Eric Kurver, Owner of Maison Saint Aix

With a background in marketing and advertising, originally from the Netherlands, Eric Kurver left that all behind and moved to France with his family starting a brand new business venture following his passion for wine.

Eric is now the proud owner of Maison Saint Aix and the creator of award-winning AIX Rosé. We had a chat with Eric about what his typical day entails.

Tell us what a typical day looks like for you

I am lucky I do not need to commute, my office is in the winery which is under a minutes walk from my home.

Up until last year I was travelling a lot and a normal day did not really exist for me. I was up at 4am ready to catch the 7am flight most days, flying all over the place. To Norway, Spain, Dubai, Singapore, US the list goes on!

Since Covid, this has stopped and I have somewhat of a normal day. I wake up at 7-8am, I have lunch at 12 with a glass of rosé of course! I also now have much more time to be involved with the winemaking and I learned a lot last year.

I have definitely realised that winemaking is way more complex than I thought. You can learn something new every day. We keep reinvesting and trying to make the best possible rosé, finding new ways to gain better control and make sure in five years time we still have the same incredible style and that we are able to adapt if we need to. We plant new vines every year and it takes 4-5 years before the vines get into production so it is investing in the future and looking at the long term future of the business.

My most memorable moment…

I think this has to be right back when I started my venture with AIX. There’s a big wine council in France and I went for my first meeting there. I was really nervous because there are a lot of very influential people in the wine world that attend and I stood up and introduced myself to the President and let him know my name and that I had just bought a vineyard.

And he said "Entre Vignerons on tutois”, which in English would be, “Eric, a very warm welcome to the Club.” That made me feel very welcome in the wine world and I still remember that today.

What would your Plan B have been?

No Plan B. That is the best business plan, you have to make Plan A work, no excuses.

What I am most proud of….

I think it is how we have managed to get here, the risks we have taken, the huge amount of work we have done and how we have saved this winery. We have taken some serious risks along the way but in doing that we have created something magical and saved the jobs for all the people who were working in the winery.

Read our other producer interviews here.