Old Europe

BORDEAUX: The French refer to the tiny town of Saint-Emilion in this lovely city as the "Old Europe" denigrated by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Catacombs, a monolithic chapel and the medieval dwellings of Benedictine monks, carved out of limestone formations, have been preserved in the town of just 3,000 residents.

Classified in 1999 as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Saint-Emilion is a quiet town of narrow, steeply winding cobbled streets, surrounded by the world-renowned vineyards of Bordeaux where grapes for wines have been grown for 2,000 years.

Saint-Emilion is home to Chateau Dassault, the 24-hectare winery of one of France’s largest and most successful industrial conglomerates. The estate is a five-minute drive from Chateau Petrus, a seven-hectare vineyard that produces the world‚s most expensive red wine.

Petrus was Joseph Estrada’s favorite, and his massive consumption of the pricey red wine was one of the scandals that contributed to his downfall. These days Erap complains that he no longer gets Petrus as a gift. Erap, what did you expect in a land of fair-weather friends?

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This minor detail about Petrus I learned from Laurent Dassault, grandson of the late Marcel Dassault, founder of the group that manufactures, among others, Falcon executive jets as well as the Mirage and Rafale fighter jets that are the pride of the French air force.

Over a delectable dinner at Chateau Dassault, Laurent told foreign journalists that about three years ago, he had tried to buy into Chateau Petrus, when its owners needed to raise money. But the owners wanted a whopping 150 million euros for a 49 percent stake. Laurent thought that was too much money for a share that gave his family no control at all over Chateau Petrus.

The Dassault clan owns the controlling shares in the Dassault group of companies, which also has a stake in numerous French publications including the newspaper Le Figaro. Dassault Aviation traces its roots to 1916, when the 24-year-old Marcel, newly married to the daughter of a furniture maker, decided that there must be more to life than designing furniture. So he started designing aircraft propellers. He sold 6,000 of the propellers before going on to design planes. These days the company he founded designs stealth fighter jets.

Marcel’s son Serge, who is mayor of Corbeil town in the southern suburb of Paris, is diversifying further and has developed an electric-powered car. If Serge Dassault, now 79, focuses on that project with the same passion that he and his children have devoted to their products, the French may soon give Japanese hybrid car makers a run for their money.

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Passion is what Laurent Dassault has in abundance. He takes us around his modern winery, accompanied by oenophile Laurence Brun Vergriette, and talks about his pursuit of excellence, whether in making fine Bordeaux or combat aircraft, making investment decisions for the clan, growing fruits in a greenhouse in Abu Dhabi or developing the biotechnology sector of Singapore.

Laurent likes to quote from French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince: "It is not enough to foresee the future; (you have) to make it real." He said that like the Little Prince, "I am full of passion and dreams and do everything I can to make them real."

Bordeaux is also home to Dassault Aviation’s biggest plant in France. Many of the company’s clients have been entertained at Chateau Dassault – one of the bonuses of owning a winery together with an aerospace company. In the Mirage and Rafale, the French have produced two of the world’s finest combat aircraft. Call it the "New Europe" – high-tech, but still suffused with old world charm and a passion for the good life.

At the Dassault plant here in Merignac, engineers are busy assembling Mirage 2000 jets for Greece, India and the United Arab Emirates. French combat aircraft do not come cheap; our government can afford only a retrofitting contract for old planes. There were negotiations for this a few years back, but these days our military is becoming increasingly dependent once again on US military hardware. Even if our government finally comes up with money for military modernization, I don‚t think the French can penetrate the Philippine market – especially after Washington‚s row with Paris over the war in Iraq.

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The Europeans, particularly the French, are among the biggest competitors of the Americans in the aerospace industry. In civilian aircraft, Europe’s Airbus Industrie has overtaken Boeing, with Airbus‚ latest coup a $1-billion contract for commercial jets with Australia’s Qantas Airways.

Competition for combat aircraft is trickier. The US defense industry is fully backed by its government, and Washington uses its political and diplomatic clout to win contracts around the world for American defense companies.

How does a European company like Dassault Aviation compete?

If you buy American, you’re buying political dependence. With the French, you get political independence. That’s the Dassault sales pitch, anyway. Full technology transfer comes with the package – something the Americans, citing national security, don’t give when selling their combat aircraft.

Despite the "hyperpower" status of the United States, the world is buying French combat aircraft. Yves Robins, Dassault vice president for international relations and defense, told us that the company program for Mirage and Rafale jets is full all the way to 2017.

Even the Americans are buying Dassault products. The company’s biggest plant for the Falcon business jet is in Bill Clinton’s hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. Mainly because, as Yves told us, the Americans are the biggest buyers of the Falcon, and it’s easier to customize clients‚ jets in their own country.

Dassault’s Little Rock operation is so big the French Aeronautics and Spatial Industries Group (GIFAS), which promotes the French aerospace industry around the world, is sometimes tempted to describe it as an American company.

"Our industries cannot afford to dominate the world," a GIFAS official told us in Paris. But other countries are seeing increasingly, he said, that "there is a non-US option."

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The situation is the reverse in wines; the French were there ahead of the Americans, but California is catching up quickly.

Puffing on a Havana cigar in the opulent dining room of Chateau Dassault, where he had shared his company’s Bordeaux with his guests, Laurent Dassault seemed unperturbed by the American challenge.

Dassault believes that if you focus on producing only the best, everything else will fall into place.