Fine wine, fine lines
STOP me if you’ve heard this one: a cartoonist and a winemaker walk into a room and decide to exchange jobs…
Actually, this isn’t a joke. This is the premise of The Initiates, a book by French cartoonist Étienne Davodeau.
Davodeau is a cartoonist who doesn’t know much about the world of winemaking, while Richard Leroy is an artisanal winemaker who has never read a single comic book or graphic novel in his 50 years of life.
One day, Davodeau decides to approach Leroy to propose an experiment to see how different (or similar) their chosen industries are, and to see what it is about each man’s chosen profession that makes him want to devote his entire life to it.
So it is that Davodeau goes to work in Leroy’s vineyards and cellar, and in return the winemaker explores the world of comics – and over the course of slightly more than a year, the two manage to get in each other’s way, open and sample a lot of wine, prune many vines, draw a few lines, read a lot of comic books, visit art exhibitions, and travel around meeting famous winemakers and comic artists.
The result is a fascinating representation of both professions, one that is both educational yet entertaining, and which ultimately proves that even though they are in different indistries, their passion, aspirations and goals may not be so different after all.
Now, although it says, “A comic artist and a wine artisan exchange jobs” on the cover, this description is rather misleading. Although it would have been pretty amusing to read about a clueless comic artist taking over operations at a vinery and screwing up an entire season’s harvest while an artistically-challenged winemaker documented the process in a comic populated with stick figures, The Initiates isn’t about that at all.
In fact, their so-called “exchanging of jobs” is more like an mutual internship, with one man guiding the other along and educating him about the virtues and processes of his chosen field.
It was the wine-making part of the book that fascinated me the most – after all, since I live in a country where wine-making is not exactly a common occupation, it was fascinating to learn about how wine is made, especially in such an easy-to-understand format.
Davodeau’s venture into Leroy’s wine-making business gives a comprehensive yet remarkably simple insight into how Leroy makes his wine. Granted, this is from the point of view of a small artisanal winemaker (as opposed to a larger producer), but if anything, this gave the winemaking part of the book a lot more charm and character.
Davodeau also manages to capture the personality and character of the winemaker perfectly – from the many times Leroy scoffs at an inferior bottle of wine (at one point he decides to drink water rather than spoil his appetite with a bad wine), to the way he orders the artist around in the vineyard, this is as much a character analysis of the winemaker himself as the wine he makes.
At the same time, the French artist’s attempts to educate Leroy on the virtues of comics are equally fascinating, though reading about the duo going to printing presses and art exhibitions somehow paled in comparison to their excursions to the beautiful vineyards so beautifully sketched by Davodeau.
To his credit, Davodeau does his best to express the virtues of his chosen profession – Moebius, Watchmen, Maus and The Photographer are some of the critically acclaimed names and titles he brings up, and the two of them even pay visits to some famous French comic artists such as Emmanuel Guibert ( The Photographer) and Marc-Antoine Matthieu ( Museum Vaults) so Leroy can learn more about how the comic artist’s mind ticks.
That The Initiates works so well is all thanks to Davodeau’s beautifully simple yet remarkably detailed black-and-white artwork. He is not only adept at turning otherwise wordy technical expositions into wonderful gems of information, he also manages to weave his characters’ personalities and eccentricities (yes, even his own!) into the story in such a way that the reader is never bored, even when the book delves into the more technical subjects such as biodynamic wine or printing press proofs.
The Initiates is a rare breed of graphic novel – categorised under “graphic novel/nonfiction/wine making/comic art”, it takes a unique approach in introducing the reader to two vastly different professions, and is a fascinatingly entertaining yet educational read that goes a long way towards proving that even the most technical and maybe boring subjects can be rendered fun and entertaining when depicted in a graphic novel format.