The Road to Burgundy by Ray Walker

I got my hands on Ray Walker's book, The Road to Burgundy and read it almost in one sitting. If there ever was a good guy who finishes first, Ray Walker's is the quintessential story. My husband belongs to a forum and he used to tell me about an American who went to Burgundy to make wine. So I was familiar with Ray Walker's name, but until I read this book, I did not know the details.
The subtitle of Ray Walker's book is, The Unlikely Story of an American Making Wine and A New Life in France. In reading this book, it is clear how unlikely Ray Walker's story is because his only qualification was that he spent one summer in California helping wash tanks and barrels. He had very little enological knowledge and what he learned was from books written in the 1800's. Is that enough? If passion, dedication and a desire to succeed is enough, certainly in Ray Walker's case, it was enough. Enough to be able to secure grapes from Morey-Saint-Denis, premier cru, Les Chaffots, Charmes-Chambertin and even more improbably, Le Chambertin. I loved reading this book, it gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, you don't have to have a fortune to make wine, you just have to have passion, dedication, a desire to succeed, and just a little bit of pixie dust!
Additional comment: My daughter and I were watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi, if you haven't seen it, it's a good movie. What does this movie have in common with Ray Walker? In the movie, the Food Critic, Yamamoto says this about Jiro's sushi, "Ultimate simplicity leads to purity". That reminded me of how Ray Walker made his first vintage 2009, hand picked, hand sorted, hand destemmed, and for the Le Chambertin, only one punch down. Almost at the end of the book, Ray wrote that he invited a local guy to taste his wines. After he tasted from the final barrel of 2009 Chambertin, this local person said, "Pure. All of them...pure."