Gastronomy and Wine Portal

Those who are interested in Austrian wine are probably aware that there has been a change of leadership at the Austrian Wine Marketing Board not so long ago: last year in December, Wilhelm Klinger announced that he would step back from his duties as a Managing Director. His successor, Chris Yorke, has been elected after following a thorough multi-stage selection process involving more than 90 applicants, led AWMB in the early 2020.

Chris Yorke, Managing Director of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, spoke about his new position, plans and the impact of the epidemic on the wine business in the interview with Drinks’o’clock.

DoC: Mr. Yorke, studying your biography from official sources, it can be noted that your career was previously connected with the wine sector. Then you radically changed businesses: American Express NZ, Sony Card Europe, Roche Pharma (Welwyn Garden City), ICI Agrochemicals. Why did you change the spectrum of professions? What important professional qualities have you gained in so many different positions? How are they helping you now?

Ch.Y.: You are right I did work with a number of international companies, but this was before I entered the wine world.  The common thread with this international business experience was that the target audience was always premium and international.  Understanding the premium consumer and how her/his tastes change over time and in different countries is one of the key skills needed to do my job well.

DoC: Why did you decide to participate in candidates’ selection for the position of the Managing Director of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board? What attracts you to the wine sector?

Ch.Y.: I had been Global Marketing Director for New Zealand Wine based in New Zealand for 15 years, so I had been aware of Austrian Wine for a long time.  I had spoken to many international influencers who I asked who did the best generic marketing and often I got the answer: Austrian Wine! When I then heard that the position was becoming vacant I initially was unsure whether they would accept an international candidate.  They said they would choose the best candidate.  Along with 90 other candidates I went through the process and was lucky enough to be appointed.

DoC: You were elected as the Managing Director of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board after a thorough multi-stage selection process, in which more than 90 candidates participated. Tell us more about the selection stages, what was the assignment, who were your competitors?

Ch.Y.: It was a competitive process with a number of interviews and then a presentation to the Board.  The interviews I was able to undertake by skype as I was in New Zealand.  The final interview and presentation to the Board was carried out in Vienna, so I flew 30 hours each way to take part.  It was a confidential process so I don’t really know the identity of the other applicants. However, one applicant who I have subsequently managed to recruit into my management team is Christian Zechmeister, who is now responsible for Austria, Germany and our regions.  Christian has great experience so I think to overall quality of applicants was high.

DoC: Were there any words of encouragement from the ex-Managing Director? How was the transfer of the administration control going – how long did it take? Did you communicate a lot? What is the especially important information you have got from Willi Klinger?

Ch.Y.: Willi Klinger and I had a three-month handover period which went very well.  We travelled together to USA and Canada and also in many parts of Austria.  Willi was very generous with his time and took great care to introduce me to many stakeholders and to explain the background of how we work with them.  Like most wine countries, Austria’s is quite complex in terms of structures and regions so Willi particularly helped me untangle that.  I wish Willi well in his new role as CEO of Wein and Co in Austria.

Our wines have the types of elegant styles that consumers are looking for: good quality and value, sustainably produced and matching very well with food and our people are very friendly.

DoC: Your predecessor had a great authority – but, probably, the world does not expect from you the same strategy, everyone, as it seems to us, expects something new. What do you think about this? Will your position in the development of wine marketing be absolutely identical to the position of the ex-Managing Director? If you are planning changes, what specific new steps would you like to take and when should they be expected?

Ch.Y.: Every person brings their own approach to a role, building on their own strengths.  Willi did this and did it very well. My first task has been to build the team and we made a number of changes including as discussed increasing the size of our management team to give a clear focus:

• A closer focus on our key markets Austria and Germany and collaborative work with our wine regions
• A real focus on driving export growth in key premium wine markets
• All supported by a communications team across on-line and off-line channels

We are rolling out those changes this year and planning for next year.

DoC: You have held the position of the Managing Director for several months. What measures for the development of Austrian wine have you worked out? What did you work on during this period?

Ch.Y.: We have built the team and launched the strategy to the industry. We are now working on a number of activities to support what I call our “Glass in Hand” strategy.  What I mean by that is that we want to provide our wineries with more opportunities to show their wines to the world, as we are convinced that when trade and consumers try our wines and meet our people we can win. Why? Because our wines have the types of elegant styles that consumers are looking for: good quality and value, sustainably produced and matching very well with food and our people are very friendly.

DoC: What strategic markets are currently important to the Austrian Wine Marketing Board? How these issues going to be addressed?

Ch.Y.: Obviously the home market where we have 80% of our sales is important but as we have such a high market share the strategy is to defend and support the premium segments. Our only way to grow will be in international markets. Germany and Switzerland are logical due to language, but then we have USA, Benelux, Monopoly markets in UK, Central and Eastern Europe and parts of Asia.  We target markets and market segments that are premium and understand the price/quality that we offer.

DoC: What global international exhibitions do you plan to take part in? Perhaps you will enter new markets, new local exhibitions?

Ch.Y.: We are big fans of Prowein Düsseldorf and Shanghai and Vinexpo Hong Kong and now Paris.  We are also evaluating their other shows.  Obviously the current situation is very difficult for exhibition companies and there will probably be a shake out of cities and locations.  We also take part in smaller more targeted events, ie for organic or biodynamic wines and always look for new events that match our target consumers and trade.

Our only way to grow will be in international markets. Germany and Switzerland are logical due to language, but then we have USA, Benelux, Monopoly markets in UK, Central and Eastern Europe and parts of Asia.

DoC: Has coronavirus made major changes to your plans? How did your company adapt to processes under the global quarantine? How do you feel about online resources for placing image ads of Austrian wines?

Ch.Y.: Yes, corona virus is the number one topic as with all other companies and wine countries!  We have quickly refocused our activities and are launching an on-line campaign in Austria targeting sales of wine in supermarkets, online and from wineries.  We are looking to expand this to other countries.

Secondly we are focusing on plans for after Corona and are actively planning a number of events when our wineries can travel again, particularly supporting the restaurants around the world but also our wineries’ cellar doors, as well as wine tourism

DoC: How do you feel about such a safe, and therefore urgent method, like presenting Austrian wines online and after put this presentation on digital channels? Let’s say our Communication media group has such resources and an extensive experience of disseminating such information among buyers and distributors from different countries.

Ch.Y.: We are always open for urgent ideas. And since on this stage, such a concept is less dangerous – this is certainly an option for consideration.

DoC: What interesting wine events from Austrian Wine Marketing Board await wine lovers as well as wine professionals in the near future?

Ch.Y.: Very many! We plan to do Austrian tastings in Moscow, St Petersburg and Toronto and other events in Chicago, Basel, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stuttgart. as well as a number of other activities in the second half of the year.  A lot is on hold at the moment but once things clear up there will be a number of exciting activities we can let you know about!

Chris Yorke, Managing Director of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, spoke about his new position, plans and the impact of the epidemic on the wine business in the interview with Drinks’o’clock.

Daniel and Florence Cathiard, the owners of Château Smith Haut Lafitte, have invested enormous resources in the renovation of the 18th century Château  and winery buildings they acquired in 1990. And besides finances, Daniel and Florence brought their own worldview to the cause, consisting in the desire «to do everything so that every vintage of red and white wines reflects the potential of a magnificent terroir».

Florence Cathiard in an exclusive interview for D+ shared her wine business philosophy.

D+: Mrs. Florence Cathiard, this is a long-standing story and probably you were often asked about this, but we are also interested: why does a family of athletes, high-level sport professionals suddenly decide to radically change their business activities – from a logical activity for themselves – sporting goods stores Go Sport, go on to wine business. Was there any doubt? And what prompted you to buy a Château in Bordeaux?

Florence Cathiard: After 10 years of competition skiing (between the age of 12 and 21 for me), we worked very hard to develop our supermarkets over 20 years as well as Go Sport business. Daniel and I began to cross each other in airports and forgetting everything about family life in order to become even more successful in our respective careers.

When Daniel decided to sell his shares, I was unhappy and terrified at the very beginning but soon I understood that it could be a good opportunity for our couple to start over again with a new adventure… a small niche rather than a big company . At that time, the only drink we used to have and loved very much was Bordeaux red wines.

So we looked for some estates to purchase in Bordeaux and fell in love at first sight with the one single piece, great terroir of SHL, surrounded by 65 Ha of forest and meadows. Even if it was pretty derelict at the time.

D+: Could you recall the moment when you crossed the conditional threshold of Château  Smith Lafitte – already as a mistress and left alone with your domains? What were you thinking about at that moment? What particular problem bothered you the most and what should you do first?

F.C.: The very important thing for us at that moment was the terroir and on the other hand we need to have a certain estimate what we have to do! At the first time what we thought, that we wanted to be organic! But it was a total disaster with organic processes! We didn’t have our own organic company, it took us 5 years to get a result and it was very expensive.

D+: Did you have any wine-making ambitions at that moment – let’s say, that you will make a better wine than in such Château? Who, then, was your opponent who you wanted to overtake? Or at that time you did not pay attention to other leaders?

F.C.: As my always optimistic husband Daniel said, we were learning the job! (in the hard way). It took us until 1995 to really succeed in making a great vintage in both red and white. We understood that we need more recognitions in our wines. They should be more elegant, less oaky and have a long-long finish. We chose to hire Fabien Teitgen who just graduated from the best university for wine making and agricultural engineering.

We took him not only because of his diploma but because he also shared our same inner conviction about organic farming. Michel Rolland also became part of the project, and is still today our consultant and friend, as well as Stephane Derenoncourt who joined us more recently.

What we also did, we organize our own cooperage in the Château and it was a great idea! With our own oaks we decided to change a lot in our wines.

D+: Château Smith Haut Lafitte – one of the 4th (and there are about 6000 in total !!!) in Bordeaux with its own barrels’ production. Why did you decide to make your own barrels? What you did not like about the quality of suppliers? How did this affect the quality of your wines?

F.C.: We decided to make our own barrels because we think it is very important to master the supply of the oak and the subtleties of the toasting for the wood never to overwhelm the fruit nor the specificities of the terroir.

We feel no need to violate the rules of the region because a great growth of Bordeaux must precede the trends: we were and still are pioneers in oenotourism, in organic farming and now in biodynamic and phytotherapy…

We like to thrive on the constraints of having to compose our symphony in the crystal glass with a very limited name of varietals, of not being allowed to irrigate etc… Because a 650 years old Château as ours must remain Classic, avoid the mistakes of the past, and not follow the fashion which will not last…

D+: What difficulties did you encounter at the beginning of the wine-journey in principle? Have you studied the winemaking theory, viticulture, or everything were comprehended in practice? Whether there were any mistakes in your decision-making? Could you please remember it, if possible?

F.C.: In 1991 our expectations were greater than our fear. But 4 months after we bought the estate, we suffered from frost and lost 80% of the crop alike the four leading appellations of Bordeaux! It was an agricultural and financial disaster. Then in 1992 endured continuous rain and in 1993 we were half breaking but still pretty naïve and certainly a little arrogant, we decided to convert in organic farming and it was a complete failure. Yields went drastically down, our home made organic compost was totally inefficient and the vines suffered a lot…

D+: Robert Parker once spoke of Smith Haut Lafitte like this: “Under the impeccable leadership of the Cathiard Family, the Château has become one of Bordeaux’s brightest stars since the mid-1990s.” Could you please name three or five basic steps that led the Château to success?

F.C.: Leading a Château to success requires:

•  a great terroir;
• an excellent team;
• stop using chemicals and pesticide;
•  living on your estate or very near…
•  making no difference between your job and your way of life as well as a passion fully shared with your partner;
• a lot of luck and optimism to deal with Dame Nature and the weather.

D+: What changes/trends in the wine business can you personally notice over the past 10-15 years? Could you divide them into positive and negative?

F.C.: Positive in the last 15 years is that what we call ‘La Place de Bordeaux’, I mean the 50 wine merchants, negociants, they have given to SHL a worldwide exposure making our bottles famous in more than 30 countries. But on the other hand we have to back up the Négociants since some huge companies sell our wines to big markets, like the United States or Asia and don’t pay as much attention to the small markets, the ones we call niche, to divide our risks. Negative – what we can see now it is like postapocalyptic world because of Covid-19. Only our team is working on the vineyard, and we hope that in July it will end and people will come again to our Château. We rather prefer small individual sales, because we believe the people we meet directly, later becomes world ambassadors for our wines. The good thing about our new vintage, 2019, even it will not be easy to sell it like previous vintages, it might take more time, but it will only get better with a bit of ageing. We shall release the wine on the Place de Bordeaux at the end of June, and the odds are that prices shall be more interesting than last year, with a quality that is no less better. Smith Haut Lafitte 2019 will definitely be a good buying opportunity for fine wine lovers.

D+: Bordeaux is famous for its red wines and a few dare to risk breaking this tradition. But we can say that you are still sporting producing white wine. And do it brilliantly. Our editorial team visited you last year and we tasted one of the most outstanding vintages – 2011. In your opinion, what other years among your whites can be recommended to serious collectors?

F.C.: With our whites as well as with our reds we would like to show the best of Bordeaux. In the world they are the finest, not the first. For our white wines we have 10.5 ha. The soil is very special; it gives slow ripening which we think is excellent for our wines. We have 90% Sauvignon Blanc, 5% Semillon, 5% Sauvignon Gris. We have a special wine, special blend, special soil and every year we are among of three best white wine of the whole Bordeaux appellations. We are very proud of our whites, they are much smaller than red, but for us it is a niche and we have two kind of vintages. One type is full of energy and very straight like an arrow, direct, pure, with a lot of acidity, freshness. These are 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017 vintages. 2013 was selected among the 10 best wines of the world by Wine Spectator. For me, I prefer wine with more body, roundness in the mouth, the kind of wine that can confuse people. It is – 2005, 2009, 2015, 2019. In this wine people don’t recognize 90% Sauvignon Blanc and it is surprising. This kind of wine goes very well with fish. The first type of wine goes better with seafood. You decide. Better is to have both and choose.

D+: The vines in your vineyards, according to the information, are up to 40 years old. But there are also 60-year-old – Sauvignon Blanc varieties. Was there any temptation to make a cépage wines only from old vines or would it be a violation of the rules?

F.C.: We are doing now 90% Sauvignon and it will not change radically. We did the pure Sauvignon till 1998 and then we decided to add 5% Semillon, 5% Sauvignon Gris. We did this because Great Bordeaux wines are bland, not pure varietal. We wanted to stay faithful to the traditions for Great Bordeaux wines.

D+: How do you feel, that today more and more winemakers are violating the rules of the region in order to make wine according to their own rules? What, in your opinion, is more important – the originality of the style or features of the region, area? What change in the winemaking law in France, in your opinion, would be worth making? Or current legislation is almost ideal for producers?

F.C.: We love our wines, and it should be like this. Château  Smith Lafitte is 650 years old and we are very proud of it. We learn from our failures and therefore we get better, yet we want to pursue a typical terroir wine. Making a fancy wine outside the lines is probably a good bet for a small château/vineyard, but definitely not a good strategy for one of the top Classified Growth of Bordeaux like SHL.

D+: Your Château  has been following the principles of organic winemaking for several years. Tell us about the work done and your personal attitude to organics. Why does a Château  with a name Smith Haut Lafitte to have the organic status? Is it not about a business at all?

F.C.: My father wanted to call me “Nature”, but lucky enough my mother objected. I did all my skiing training by running in the southern Alpes mountains in my young days and Daniel, whom I met at a very young age, was even more passionate about the mountain and its nature, thanks to the snow which was very abundant in our childhood. There we found ourselves on the front line when climate change started to show its negative impact. As for our two daughters, they grew up in an isolated farm north of Grenoble. Mathilde, the founder of Caudalie, was very into animals and managed to tame two hens at a young age while Alice was always concerned about plants & vegetal, she now set up a huge organic vegetable garden at Les Sources de Caudalie.

To be more organic in your life style it is now very important – the planet is damaged to a point where it can no longer heal on its own, it’s time to take care of it as much as we can. Even if we have the impression of living in a protected environment in the heart of our vineyards, the least thing is to preserve what surrounds us.

We also took part in COP21 2015 (Climate changes conference). I was a president of the CSO (Conseil Supérieur de l’Oenotourisme) and as such, I met with all the major wine institutions in France as well as the related ministries such as agriculture, tourism, health… I spread the words about ecology. We were then invited to Cop 21 2015 where we sent our daughter Alice to stand for the new generation.

On the other side, we are fully committed to “phytotherapy” (herbal medicine) by cultivating and drying our own plants such as comfrey, wormwood, yarrow, wicker, valerian and tansy but also pick up horsetail, nettle and fern growing naturally in our forests, and later make a decoction out of it in a large teapot to then spread in our vineyard. Examples below:

• Cow Horn filled with humus mixture to dynamize soils life.
• Horsetail: Against fungal diseases, mildew, with action from silica and calcium.
• Osier: To fight against fungal diseases
• Oak bark: Improves grape resistance, fights against grey rot
• Ferns: natural insect repellent
• Nettles: A fertilizer that enhances interchange and chlorophyll storage

We also so far planted some 8.5km of multi-diversities hedgerows and we continue to plant. We set up a dozen hives as well to enhance the diversity around us. Even it can be very restrictive sometimes since the hedgerows sometimes make the vines frost-sensitive (by shadowing them) and the bees are sometimes attacked by Asian hornets, even if we need to dedicate large surface to cultivate our plants and build up barns to dry them, we believe that the other wine estates should also try to commit more in this fight according to their means and encourage them to do so.

We strongly believe that a healthy & beautiful environment is the best thing we can do for the people following the SHL adventure along with us. So far it really helps with certainty, living in harmony with nature, far from all kinds of city pollution and aggressiveness.

D+: Could you please tell a few words about “Les Cinq” (except for Haut Smith Lafitte, this includes: Canon La Gaffeliere, Gazin, Branaire-Ducru and Pontet-Canet) – an alliance created to promote in the world markets. Tell us how did the idea of unification come about? What is your relationship with the owners of these Châteaux?

F.C.:Our Club “Les Cinq” was founded by my husband Daniel and Stephane Von Neipperg during an Air France strike in 1993… Pontet Canet decided to leave the club a few years ago and now we are just 4 châteaux (But with Daniel and I that makes 5 friends) and we do not tour together as we used to do because we have grown differently in many aspects but we still communicate a lot and share some good meals and wines of course.

D+: When we wrote a report about a visit to your Château, we quoted your high opinion about the vintage of 2019, but at the same time you spoke out in the press with regret about the negative events of the past year: problems of the economic plan related to Brexit, Trump tax increase, uprisings in Hong Kong, triggering a downturn in Asian markets and price turbulence in China. And now here is the corona virus. How do you deal with current problems? Do you consider the uncertainty with en premier this year?

F.C.: Yes! We know that en primeur will be delayed. Now we send some samples to importers and to the great collectors of our wine we are very active in social media, we do it but we know that we will be cheaper even if the 2019 is a great vintage. We will not sell as much as we could, because some countries will be closed. But we think that people will never forget about drinking an excellent wine!

D+: What is the current situation with sales?

F.C.: Until now 20% to the US, including Canada, 20% for China, including Hong Kong, 20% for France, 20% for Europe. We are well sold in eastern countries also people from Switzerland love our wines and also Germany is a good market as well as Indonesia & Singapore. But this year with Covid-19 it will be disrupted and we don’t have a clue yet how the sales are going to scatter. We hope that a vaccine will be released soon in order to come back to a normal life/normal activity. I hope wine will be the one of the main thing that people will buy.

D+: How to minimize pandemic losses and keep sales? Is it worth to take it easy, maybe. As some say, it is better to wait out without investing in promotion? Wine does not go bad from aging, but only adds to the price?

F.C.: We try to minimize the very sad impact of Pandemia by taking time to answer to all our SHL friends around the world, proposing virtual master classes, setting up a drive in our boutique… and preparing a beautiful 2020 vintage every day! I think we should invest more in the Internet in a near future, as well as welcome our clients in our “small island of civilization”.

D+: Perhaps, with the glory of Château Smith about Lafitte in the world, only the glory Caudalie cosmetics – created from oenoproducts – can argue. How did you organize the business, whose idea was it, did the success come straight? Do you taste new products? What do you like most from the latest developments?

F.C.: Caudalie cosmetics is totally another complete story by itself even if we gave the initial “coup de pouce” all the glory and merit belongs to Mathilde and her husband Bertrand! Alice and Jerome are now owners & managers of les Sources de Caudalie. They just sold les Etangs de Corots since it was no longer part of their strategy of opening superb resorts in the 5 best French wine regions: Bordeaux, Bourgogne, Loire Valley (a beautiful resort, similar to Les Sources de Caudalie is bound to open in July or August), Champagne and Alsace.Our children have the complete disposal of their own businesses and we interfere in their decisions only if they ask us for advises.

D+: Your château is special not only in its history, the quality of its wines, you make your own barrels and have a cooperage on premise and other production advantages. This is a territory with a special philosophical atmosphere. This is an art objects park and, in fact, the château itself is an art object. Tell us what all these installations mean to you, who selects them for you? Do you have the final say in this selection and how do they all relate to your personal philosophy?

F.C.: It is our personal collection. But at the beginning we just bought a piece of art with my husband (the giant bronze hare by Barry Flanagan) and if we have some money left after we pay everybody and buy the best technical tools, we buy a great sculpture each year. As people began asking about this, and we made a few booklets and designed a new visit “Art & wine”. Now we are planning to go on with new sculptures .

D+: As far as we know, this year the 8th World Wine Tasting Championship is planned at Château Smith Haut Lafitte, in which the Ukrainian team will participate for the second time. How will it be with this contest now, is it postponed? Why did you invite the organizers or they contacted you? Why such an event is interesting for the already famous Château like Smith Haut Lafitte?

F.C.: This year in November we shall be very pleased to welcome the 8th World Wine Tasting championship and specially the Ukrainian team! The organizers contacted us and of course we could not say no to such a prestigious event.

D+: You wrote a book called Art de Vigne (‘The Art of the Vine’) – what is it about? This is for winegrowers, about the history of the region, about wines – to whom is it addressed?

F.C.: The book I wrote and that my husband illustrated with his photos wasn’t just only another nice coffee-table-book (I hope!) since 30 000 copies were printed, selling half of it and offering the other half. It was mainly read by great wine lovers, especially of SHL.

Blitz:

If you and your husband hadn’t bought Château Smith Haut Lafitte at one time, then you… (please continue the sentence)

Then we should have been very stupid, wealthier than now but to which use … and bound to escape to some remote and very boring fiscal paradise maybe…

Please tell us about your daily routine and diet.

In these times of Covid-19, I spent every morning with my husband and our 2 dogs in the vineyard, speaking (with social distancing) to our valiant team (nobody missing!) then we taste (and spit) some blind samples of the last vintage 2018 and 2019, while having a simple and fresh lunch (meat with red wine, fish when we drink white…). In the afternoon we have “window conference” with Fabien to organize the life of the Château and take many decision, then answering my email and house party with family and friends…

How do you relax?

Walking through our Land Art forest.

Which wine from your vintages is most dear to you and why?

2009.2010.2015.2016 and the two last babies 2018 & 2019. (2013, 2017 and 2019 for the White!) see technical sheet enclosed.

What book/movie/event turned your life upside down?

My encounter with Michel Serres, a great philosophical author who became my friend and unfortunately disappeared last year and my tasting of Haut Brion 1989.

Which country have you not been to yet, but would dream to visit?

Georgia because it is the cradle of wines and Napa Valley because we like the place are bound to go back there soon.

What is Florence Cathiard goals for today?

To make one of the very top wine of Bordeaux, White and Red, for each vintage, and to have a happy family in good health (better to reverse the two propositions…)

What is the life philosophy of Florence Cathiard?

Take your chance, believe in your star, follow your way. ‘À te regarder, ils s’habitueront’ (René Char)

Florence Cathiard in an exclusive interview for D+ shared her wine business philosophy.

I think for any winemaker in the world it would be an honor to work at Château d’Yquem. But of all the applicants, she was chosen – Sandrine Garbay, who was only 27 years old at the time! One of the youngest and most respected professionals on the planet answered D+ questions. Including this story, that looks like a fairy tale.

D+: Madam Garbay, Château d’Yquem is classified as Premier Cru Supérieur, the highest category in the classification of Bordeaux wines. To drink such a wine is, perhaps, like having a picture of Edgar Degas in your own living room… You can hardly meet them on the shelves of a supermarket (Château d’Yquem as well as Degas) J. How does it feel to work with wine of such a high level, in the interiors with such a design, in the Château with such a history?

Sandrine Garbay: It is funny you should compare the experience at d’Yquem to a painting by Degas, since I grew up with a copy of The Star hanging above my bed as a child and teenager. It is a great parallel. And in the same way that you never get tired of looking at a piece of art that moves you, I never get tired of coming to work in the enchanting setting of d’Yquem, nor tasting its precious elixir! Even after 25 years in the business! I am proud and, above all, honoured to work at d’Yquem.

D+: How did it happen that you ascended this pedestal in a very young – as for a winemaker – age? How old were you? Why was it you exactly who was chosen and how did your professional path begin at this, without exaggeration, amazing place, which personifies all the best that there is in the Sauternes region? It looks like a fairy tale.

S.G.: Not long after graduating in Oenology in 1989, aged 22, I was recruited by one of my professors specialising in MLF, Ms Aline Lonvaud, to undertake research in bacteriology. Thus, after spending five years working in a laboratory, I obtained a PhD in oenology in 1994. But eventually, as much as I enjoyed my job, I dreamt of returning to production and fulfilling my true vocation as an oenologist. That is why, not long after, I started looking for work in the southern Gironde, since my husband had just set up his own business not far from Sauternes. It was at this moment, when Alexandre de Lur Saluces offered me the opportunity to join his team at d’Yquem, that my life really turned into a fairy tale. When I heard the news, I was overwhelmed with joy, not to mention anxiety! I began working at d’Yquem on the 1st of September 1994.

My role consists in fermenting and ageing the wines at the estate, from the moment they arrive at the cellar to bottling. I also supervise packaging and shipping departments, and I am in charge of a team of ten people.

D+: Could you please tell us about your education – how much does the theory of winemaking help you in practice, as Sauternes is a very special, complex wine? Which of the winemaking masters became a teacher for you?

S.G.: I am continuously drawing on my initial training, my experience at Yquem, as well as technical and scientific advancements led by researchers at the ISVV, who I have a lot of faith in!

I learnt the specific characteristics of Sauternes, and particularly d’Yquem wines, thanks to my predecessor Guy Latrille, who I collaborated with for three years, as well as Francis Mayeur, the estate’s current technical director (who has been working at d’Yquem for 37 years!) and the now-retired consulting oenologist, Serge Chauvet, who first introduced me to Alexandre de Lur Saluces and to whom I owe a great deal (he was my «fairy godfather», so to speak). It is clear the incredible phenomenon that is noble rot requires special attention that cannot be learnt out of a textbook. The reaction that takes place between the grape (the host) and the fungus Botrytis cinerea (the guest) under the watchful eye of the Sauternes microclimate could almost be described as magic. This extraordinary process climaxes in the creation of d’Yquem, a treasure trove of voluptuousness and refinement.

D+: How does Sandrine Garbay’s regular work day go? Which is the most stressful period/season for you, why and how does this stress manifest itself?

S.G.:: My role consists in fermenting and ageing the wines at the estate, from the moment they arrive at the cellar to bottling. I also supervise packaging and shipping departments, and I am in charge of a team of ten people.

A typical day begins by allocating tasks to each of my colleagues. I then get down to tasting the wines on which we will work. This may involve tasting the wines in each barrel before they are racked  and  blended,  or  taking  part in group tastings led by a committee of six to seven people to determine the final blend, or regularly tasting  the wine throughout ageing. I then carry on completing administrative tasks (relating to wine, traceability, record- keeping, customs formalities, etc.). I generally devote some time each day to promoting the d’Yquem experience and sharing our dedication, either with the estate’s visitors, or with journalists, sommeliers or students from all over the world. The harvest is the most intense and stressful time of year, but it is also the most thrilling! It is my favourite season, since it reveals the intrinsic nature of my job. A new vintage is taking shape – this is an incredibly exciting time for us!

 D+: Château d’Yquem has a very long history. What has been fundamentally changing in the process of winemaking during all these long years, and what has remained unchanged? For example, we know that in 2011 the estate changed the process of vinification – was this your idea? Do you have, in spite of the legislative regulations and the traditions of the Château, a carte blanche to apply your own techniques, to experiment – if so, what other know-how have you applied?

S.G.: When considering altering the very essence of a wine like d’Yquem, it is important to do so with caution. Any change or development in the winemaking process must be carefully thought-through, evaluated and adapted to the identity of the end product. What has not changed throughout the history of d’Yquem, is the emphasis we place on producing and selecting high-quality grapes. Can you imagine just how complex and specific harvesting the botrytised grapes in passes is? We have a wealth of expertise at the estate, enriched with several centuries of experience.

In recent years, we have improved alcoholic fermentation thanks to advances in research, whilst remaining true to our roots by using the grapes’ indigenous yeast. We also fine-tuned ageing to help preserve the floral and fruity aromas of the wine, which resulted in the very gradual shortening of the barrel ageing period, from 40 to 20 months between 2000 and 2011, as  well  as  reduced  oxygenation  in the wine thanks to racking without air contact and bottling in an inert gas environment. We are constantly monitoring the latest technologies. If we come across something that could be of interest to d’Yquem without compromising our unyielding respect for the terroir and the product, we will consider conducting a trial, possibly full-scale, and evaluating the results.

We also fine-tuned ageing to help preserve the floral and fruity aromas of the wine, which resulted in the very gradual shortening of the barrel ageing period, from 40 to 20 months between 2000 and 2011, as well as reduced oxygenation in the wine thanks to racking without air contact and bottling in an inert gas environment.

D+: Sugar level is much higher in Château d’Yquem today than it was before. Why did you come to such a decision and what are its advantages?

S.G.: It is not a choice on our behalf – it is in fact the result, albeit a positive one, of climate change. Throughout the history of Yquem, the sugar levels in the greatest vintages were very similar to those produced since the 2000s. D’Yquem 1929, d’Yquem 1937, d’Yquem 1945 and 1949, and even d’Yquem 1959, which were grown under similar weather conditions to today, all had over 130 g/L of residual sugar. The intermediate vintages of those decades were clearly less concentrated: between 80 and 110 g/L.

But since the mid 1990s, the climate has been much more conducive to the spread of noble rot and, in particular, the evaporation of water to concentrate sugar levels afterwards. This resulted in the sugar levels in the wines exceeding 130 g/L, contributing greater power, aromatic complexity, and an impressively long aftertaste. The clear advantage of this is that, since 2001, we have managed to produce a «1937» every year! I am exaggerating a little, but there is a grain of truth in this…

D+: Could you tell us please about the features of working in the Château d’Yquem with a barrel – during the processes of vinification and aging. When we were on   a tour in your Château last year – by the way, we saw you from afar, but you were busy and we didn`t dare to come and make an acquaintance J – they told us that about 400 barrels are used per year.

S.G.: Barrels play an integral role in the winemaking process. From the very beginning, the juice from the grapes is fermented in new barrels (100%), which will accompany the wine throughout the ageing process. An aromatic reaction occurs between the lactones from the oak and those produced by Botrytis cinerea, which is responsible for the marmalade and candied orange notes typical of Sauternes wines. We are thus very fond of barrel ageing, but this does not prevent us from trialling other types of container. Come and ask us again in 10 years time!

D+: Which Château d’Yquem vintage would you call the top? Have you ever had bad vintages in your memory? What do you do in such cases? What is the main difficulty in the work of the head winemaker of Château d’Yquem?

S.G.: Many d’Yquem vintages are top-level wines: 21-29-37-45-49-67-75-83-88-97 and the legendary 2001. But in recent years, I would like to highlight the 2009-2015 and the 2017, which are, quite simply, fabulous! Of course, we should not forget that Mother Nature can spoil everything, as was the case in 2012. During this extraordinary year, I discovered how the rain, which fell almost incessantly in October, could lead to the development of grey rot and destroy the entire crop in just two weeks. We could not do anything to stop it… The one hundred barrels or so of wine produced (versus 400 for a typical vintage) turned out very bland and lacking body on the palate. The wines were not bad in themselves, but they were far from meeting the high standards demanded by d’Yquem. Pierre Lurton, with the full support of Bernard Arnault, chose not to produce d’Yquem that year.

For my part, this brought bad memories. The feeling of powerlessness was difficult to overcome, as always, but resilience and hope came with the following vintages. We are lucky in that respect!

D+: Last year Drinks+ visited Château d’Yquem. Welcoming his guests Bernard Arnault, General Manager of the LVMH, said that Château d’Yquem is following the path of organic winemaking and is going to move to biodynamics after completing a series of certification procedures in this status. What additional steps should Château d’Yquem make for this?

S.G.: We started our transition to organic viticulture two years ago. All in all, there were not many major changes     to undertake. We have never used chemical weedkillers, practising traditional ploughing instead. We do not use chemical fertilizers either, we have always enriched our soils with local farm manure only. We adopted organic methods to fend off powdery mildew and mating disruption against grape worms.

However, we were still using chemical biocontrol molecules to fight against mildew and black rot, which are not permitted in organic viticulture. We therefore decided to completely abandon these molecules and the estate has been officially undergoing a conversion to organic viticulture since August 2019. It will take us three years to obtain organic certification. This will have no impact on our cellar activities, since we already respect organic specifications.

When Alexandre de Lur Saluces offered me the opportunity to join his team at d’Yquem, that my life really turned into a fairy tale.

D+: They say wine starts in the vineyard. How much of this is fair for Sauternes?

S.G.: All wines start their journey in the vineyards, and in Sauternes we encounter the same challenges faced by dry red wine estates. We communicate with our colleagues from other estates, particularly regarding new technologies and developments that will help reduce the use of copper and sulphur to protect our vines. This is the major challenge of the Bordeaux wine region, and it should be remembered that our climate is not the same as that in the Languedoc or Burgundy. We tend to have a significant amount of rainfall during the growth cycle, which is already imposing the threat of vine diseases this year. When the Bordeaux region says that converting to organic viticulture is not easy, it is not for complacency or a lack of conviction on the part of winegrowers, it is because fighting against mildew and black rot using only copper is incredibly difficult.

D+: One of the features of Château d’Yquem is that grapes are harvested in 13 stages, with different Botrytis levels, which adds complexity and ideal acidity balance to the wine – what is your role and actions during this period?

S.G.: In fact, the harvest at d’Yquem takes place, on average, in five successive passes. That is already a lot! The organisation of these passes and the harvesting strategy is decided by the estate’s technical director, Francis Mayeur. He and I, alongside the vineyard manager, of course, communicate on a continuous basis. This stage is crucial in determining the quality of the wine. Nothing should be left to chance, and even with the three of us supervising this task, it is quite a challenge.

D+: Do you have assistants? Could you tell us about your team – who these people are, their education, age, work experience, interests etc. In general, what is your team like that are creating a legendary wine – the Sauternes of Château d’Yquem?

S.G.: I work with ten people all year round. I have a quality control assistant, whom I have been working with for the past 21 years, as well as a packaging assistant who has been at d’Yquem since 1993, and an assistant in charge of shipments since 2012. Only the latter was trained in winemaking – the other two come from very different backgrounds, more suited to their roles. They all completed their training at d’Yquem.

D+: Perhaps this might look like a provocation to violate corporate ethics, and yet, let me ask you: if not Château d’Yquem, then which of the famous wines would you single out for its impeccable quality?

S.G.: There are many great wines are remarkable! In this respect, I truly admire the work of Bordeaux-based consultant oenologist, Eric Boissenot, on behalf of all his clients, whatever their status. He is an incredibly talented man who maintains absolute discretion at all times. Similarly, Vincent Millet’s work at Calon Ségur is the perfect example of rigour and precision. The wines have gained considerable elegance and intensity, I am a big fan!

D+: Which of the Château d’Yquem vintages was the oldest that you have personally tried? Can the oldest Sauternes be called the best?

S.G.: The oldest d’Yquem that I have tasted was a d’Yquem 1801. While my emotions were running high,  it  was  not the best wine I have ever  tasted. I have fonder memories   of d’Yquem 1811, which featured aromas of cooked fruit, mingled with roasted nuances and notes of liquorice and spices. Generally speaking, d’Yquem wines require twenty years of ageing to fully express their rich range of aromas. However, younger wines can also be immensely enjoyable, while some very old ones remain delicious for an incredibly long time (over 100 years!). There is no hard and fast rule and each vintage may present its very own tasting curve. That is why it is a good idea to buy several bottles from the same vintage to taste it at every stage of its development – that way you will never end up disappointed!

D+: The problem of climate change leads to the fact that winemakers start experimenting with varieties which are not familiar to a particular region, crossing certain vines in the hope that they can develop something resistant to one of the main modern challenges of nature. Is Château d’Yquem thinking about climate change?

S.G.: Climate change presents a real challenge for the future of our vineyards. Testing new grape varieties is an avenue that we are exploring on a few rows, in order to   plan the future while remaining as faithful as possible to the identity of d’Yquem. But it is not the only one. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, a cool climatic phase in Bordeaux led us to favour early-ripening rootstocks and clones, alongside vineyard management and practices designed to compensate for lower temperatures. In recent years, this trend has completely reversed, so that we opted for easy- to-implement tools to delay ripening (shifting towards late- ripening rootstocks and clones, modifying vine training and the height of the leaf canopy, studying shading, as well as controlled irrigation in very early-ripening plots). These are just a few of the many avenues to explore and implement   at the regional level. The Nouvelle Aquitaine region has invested significantly into achieving this objective.

D+: What does the chief winemaker of Château d’Yquem dream about?

S.G.: My dreams remain humble: to continue to fully participate in the epic saga that is d’Yquem, to watch it adapt to the passing of time, to see the next generation take over this magnificent estate and to see it shine around the world, as it rightly deserves!

Photos by Château d’Yquem

Sandrine Garbay, one of the youngest and most respected professionals on the planet answered D+ questions.

To write to Jancis Robinson (who, I am sure, should not be presented to our audience) with a proposal for an interview, I was surprised when the answer came unexpectedly prompt. The content was in the spirit of the famous Jancis – concise and strict: “Send me questions. Not too many, please! I am so busy at the moment.” Of course, we could not resist the temptation and took the opportunity given to us by Mrs Janсis Robinson, the fate and the quarantine: and just in case we prepared questions with a marginJ, hoping that we would get at least a half of answers.

Jancis Robinson, a person with the special merits in the wine world, a wine critic, journalist, writer, consultant of Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland answered ALL D+ questions! We are incredibly grateful.

Drinks+: Mrs Jancis Robinson, first of all, we would like to note, this is a great honor for us to have the opportunity to ask you about your wine world vision, your personal thoughts and rules. You are a unique person in the wine world! In addition to many honorable titles and awards, you are known as the main wine encyclopedist of our time. Your energy is also enough for light wine genres. You are loved, known, read, quoted all over the world. You have achieved a lot in life… Including the unofficial status of the harshest wine critic in the world.

Do you agree with this opinion? What is the ultimate goal of your work – first of all, education of a wine consumer or education of a producer? Or something third?

Jancis Robinson: I’m sorry if I’m known as such a harsh wine critic. No-one could love wine more than me. And I love writing stories about it. But perhaps what gives rise to this supposed ‘unofficial status’ is that in my wine reviews/tasting notes I always write down my impressions as I am tasting, a sort of stream of consciousness (I never go back to rewrite my tasting notes to polish them) and I write 100% for my readers, wine consumers, and not for quotation as sales aids. This is probably why my tasting notes are so rarely quoted by producers!

I’m no great fan of tasting notes that are a long list of flavours because I think tasting is so subjective that it’s unlikely another taster with find those same flavours. Also, consumers may feel inadequate if they don’t sense the same flavours. I concentrate a bit more on the vital statistics of the wine: body, tannin, acidity, sweetness, how mature – and then perhaps an impressionistic overview and assessment of its personality.

D+: Your 20-point wine scoring scale has shorter scores number, but more emotional in terms of description: “Deadly dull”, “Distinguished”, “Superior” “Truly exceptional” etc. What, in your opinion, is the advantage in comparison with the 100-point wine scoring used by many?

J.R.: I think everyone should be free to use whichever scale they feel most comfortable with.  The 20-point scale is the traditional European one and I have never felt the need to switch. But I am sad if too much emphasis is put on scores. I see scores as a necessary evil – something that was needed when the fine wine market was on fire and readers needed a rapid shorthand assessment of quality so that that could buy wine in a hurry. But that is no longer the case and of course I always thing words are far more important and no wine can be summed up in a number.

On JancisRobinson.com we publish a separate tasting note for every different bottle of a wine that we taste and we find that there can be considerable variation between bottles so no-one should take a single tasting note and score as the gospel!

D+: You are the only wine author who was distinguished as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, on whose wine cellars you are also advise. Tell us, please, how this process works. Do you travel, taste, then offer a list? How often do the wine list change? Which countries prevail? Has it ever occurred to you to get a feedback with a request to replace one or another wines or all your offers were always accepted unconditionally?

J.R.: There’s something about climbing into a taxi and asking the driver to take me to Buckingham Palace that still gives me an absurd amount of pleasure, even in this, my 16th year as a member of the Royal Household Wine Committee. I am not remotely blasé about the subsequent fight through the crowds of tourists to present my driving licence as photo ID, first to the policemen at the North Centre Gate (pictured), the one on the right of the Palace, and then, after a 50-metre crunch over the pink gravel, again to the liveried staff at the Privy Purse Door.

We need to select enough wine, about 5,000 bottles, for the Royal Household to offer its guests at more than 300 events held each year in Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. Our budget is supplied by the Queen’s Civil List funding. Outsiders might assume that we spend our time picking out the plums from the world’s vineyards for Her Majesty’s cellar but the reality is very much more prosaic. By far the majority of the wines we buy are either nonvintage champagne (supplied at an average price considerably lower than any supermarket special offer I have come across) or relatively modest wines for big receptions, the likes of inexpensive New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and the most basic red Bordeaux.

But whenever I publish tasting notes on the wines submitted to the RHWC on my website, some readers almost invariably come back expressing disappointment that the wines aren’t grander. I realize on reflection, however, that the complainers are rarely British taxpayers.

We committee members meet a few times each year to taste, usually under Buckingham Palace though once, memorably, in the rather more cramped cellars of Windsor Castle. Wines for state occasions like this come not from the Royal Household but from the quite separate government cellars under Lancaster House, which have their own, separate wine committee.

We do get to taste some reasonably smart stuff for Her Majesty and her guests. We buy young red Bordeaux when it’s released and age it because – at least so far – that has saved money. And there is always a cache of red and white burgundy, as well as some vintage champagne for really important guests. But whenever I publish tasting notes on the wines submitted to the RHWC on my website, some readers almost invariably come back expressing disappointment that the wines aren’t grander. I realise on reflection, however, that the complainers are rarely British taxpayers .

While I always enjoy blind tasting (and it is most important that we taste blind because so many of the wines submitted come from companies run by members of the committee), the wines themselves are just a small part of what I enjoy about our ‘work’ on the RHWC.

At our tastings, conducted in complete silence until we each submit our list of favourites, the Clerk of the Royal Cellars’ (Simon Berry’s) chief role is to co-ordinate the scores and make concrete buying decisions based on them. Within budgetary constraints we are given a relatively free hand in our choices.

D+: Have you ever thought about creating your own wine? And even if this is not a goal for you, and you are not considering such an opportunity, still we would like to know which wine region/country you would choose and why? Hypothetically?

J.R.: I am a pretty average gardener and am a complete control freak so I have neither the ability nor the character to be a farmer. It would also mean sacrificing my objectivity.  I feel so lucky to be able to taste the fruits of the labours of so many winemakers around the world.

I never intended to produce anything other than words and it took all the persuasive powers of designer Richard Brendon to come up with my beautiful glassware!

D+: Please tell us briefly about the ideal tasting glass.

J.R.: The Wine Glass from the collection has been specifically designed to offer the best tasting experience for every wine, whatever its colour, appellation, style or strength, including Champagne, port, sherry and beyond. I have spent 42 years trying to make wine as approachable and as pleasurable as possible and sincerely believe that just one glass for all wines makes perfect practical sense.

D+: In your opinion, what relatively new wine-making countries could be included to your personal TOP over the next 5-10 years and with which varieties? Which wine regions do you think are undervalued in the wine world?

J.R.: Both my JancisRobinson.com colleague Julia Harding MW and I are huge fans of Portugal and Greece – for the same reasons. Both produce highly distinctive wines from a rich array of indigenous grape varieties that we are still discovering. We admire the fact that neither country succumbed to international grape varieties in any major way. As wine producers, they are not new, but they deserve to be more widely understood and admired.

I’m also a big fan of new wave South African wines – the young guns from Swartland, for instance. And I am rather thrilled by the fact that the wine world is more in flux than I have ever known it with so many new trends: lower alcohol, less oak, indigenous grape varieties, natural wine, skin contact whites.

On JancisRobinson.com we publish a separate tasting note for every different bottle of a wine that we taste and we find that there can be considerable variation between bottles so no-one should take a single tasting note and score as the gospel!

D+: We know that you have looked fairly closely at organic and biodynamic wines. In your experience, is the profile taste of organic wines different from conventional wines? What do you think is the prospect of natural wines? Which wineries/countries regions, in your opinion, stand out in this wine types?

J.R.: I think BD wines often have a wildness and immediacy about them but I wouldn’t claim to be able to taste a difference between organic and non-organic wine.

Natural wine has no strict definition but tends to be defined by what it isn’t. All but the most hideously industrial wines are ‘natural’ products to a certain degree but, just like fruit itself, anything fruit-based such as juice, wine and dried fruits is prone to being spoilt by excess oxygen and/or harmful bacteria. For centuries, sulphur or sulphur-based compounds have been used to stabilise and preserve freshness in all these products but, as technical knowledge increased in the twentieth century, so did the array of additives used in winemaking. In the 1970s many a wine smelt more of the chemistry lab than the fruit basket.

This century and in the later years of last century, however, there has been a global, industry-wide move to reduce agrochemicals in the vineyard and additives in the winery – this last encouraged not least by the discovery that asthmatics are particularly and sometimes dangerously sensitive to compounds associated with sulphur, which is why any wine containing more than 10 mg/l of sulphur dioxide has to be labelled ‘contains sulphites’.

Those making natural wine try to minimise their use of sulphur dioxide (a small amount is routinely produced when grape juice is fermented into wine anyway), and also tend to see forms of stabilisation such as filtration as equally evil. But sulphur dioxide is effectively a preservative, and low- or no-sulphur wines easily brown or lose their fruit if exposed to warmth, and the lack of stabilisation can result in cloudy wines.

Although the most famous practitioners of the current era of natural winemaking were senior vignerons in Beaujolais in the 1960s, and then the Loire Valley, today’s ‘naturalistas’ tend to be relatively young.

One day in Madrid I met a young sommelier who had been introduced to natural wines in the Loire and had enjoyed them there, but was now horrified by the dogmatism evident at natural wine bars in Spain, where, she felt, the quality of the wines served was so much lower.

As a result of this sort of phenomenon, the reputation of natural wines is so bad in some quarters that even some of those producing them – the respected Philippe Pacalet of Burgundy and Envinate of Spain for instance – deliberately avoid the term. One of British Columbia’s most successful wine producers, Okanagan Crush Pad, grows exclusively organic grapes and is careful to preserve every nuance of what nature provides in their Free Form wines but, as the company’s Christine Coletta explained recently in London, they deliberately avoid the term ‘natural’ and use ‘minimal intervention’ instead.

But this doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. I asked the queen of natural wine, New York wine writer Alice Feiring of The Feiring Line, what she felt about the nomenclature of these increasingly prevalent wines. She admitted, ‘it’s a term in flux for sure. However, there’s no other term for it, and when pushed those people [who repudiate the term] will admit that they [their wines] are indeed natural. So at some point it’s going to be just wine, like it used to be before technology shaped it all. It’s a very tricky question and a trickier answer. For one, I don’t mind it one bit.’

Climate change has sneaked up on us in my lifetime and dramatically expanded the extent of the world wine map towards the poles. Who would have thought grapes could be ripened in Scandinavia, Poland, southern Chile?

Wearing my wine consumer hat, I feel quite strongly that wines that most obviously belong to what Feiring calls ‘the natural wine “club”’, those that are very different from the conventional norm, should be clearly signalled on wine lists and shelves. I have ordered less successful natural wines from even quite celebrated wine lists and had to leave everything but the first sip. I approve of those restaurant wine lists that recognise the popularity of natural wines with a segment of their customers by offering some, but corral them clearly in a separate section, perhaps headed Natural, New Wave or Off Piste Wines.

The winemakers I admire are those who have established a reputation for their conventional wines but who, unblinkered by prejudice against natural wines, try out some of the strategies adopted by the naturalistas. Despite the current polarisation, I suspect that eventually everyone will meet somewhere in the middle.

D+: You probably have a wine cellar. How many bottles does your collection have? What is the oldest/most expensive wine you have? What wines do you mainly collect?

J.R.: About 2,000 bottles all in our temperature controlled cellar in our new flat – carved out of a too-large laundry room.  Not sure about the most expensive. Coche Corton Charlemagne, a bottle of DRC kindly given to celebrate my OBE, the odd bottle of Petrus. As my mentor Edmund Penning-Rowsell, my predecessor at the Financial Times, said, ‘you must never think about the price when you are pulling a cork.’

I mainly buy German wine and French classics with a track record of ageing.

D+: October 2019 saw the launch of the eighth and latest edition of The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson MW. First published in 1971, the original tome was hailed as an instant classic and essential reference work for wine professionals and wine lovers; and been translated into 14 languages. Between the first release and the brand new 8th edition, what are the most unexpected changes for you on the winemaking world scene?

J.R.: Climate change has sneaked up on us in my lifetime and dramatically expanded the extent of the world wine map towards the poles. Who would have thought grapes could be ripened in Scandinavia, Poland, southern Chile?

D+: You have been collaborating with Hugh Johnson for many years. How you share the writing roles – by wine types? Or by origin – do you have favorite? How do you cooperate? How often you argue? About what issues?

J.R.: Since the fifth edition that came out in 2001 I do the updating and Hugh reads through what I write, and writes the Foreword. But Hugh sits in on all the early planning meetings to decide what to drop and what to add. We each have our favourite wine regions!

D+: If we compare the critical assessment of wine by one person (a wine critic\writer) and team\commission (wine competition judges, tasting juries), which of them is more objective? And in principle, what do you think about the role of international wine contests, contests within the framework of exhibitions, etc. Which do you consider exemplary?

J.R.: I’m sure all tasters in whatever context are objective but I’m no big fan of panels of tasters because the results tend to be smoothed out. There will always be someone who doesn’t like the most unusual or distinctive wine. Whereas with a single taster the consumer can get to know their preferences.

D+: In that regard, how do you assess rating/evaluation resources such as Vivino, etc.?

J.R.: It seems very popular but I’ve never used it. My Vivino is JancisRobinson.com where all 200,000 of my tasting notes are! I was a bit cross when they tried to scrape our tasting notes database.

D+: What do you think about the future of the investment as a component of the wine industry? For example, such index as Liv-ex?

J.R.: I’m afraid I am a very naïve wine lover. I believe wine is for drinking, not for investing in. Sorry!  But I do find data such as Liv-ex’s useful background for my writing.

D+: How do you think the pandemic will affect a global winemaking?

J.R.: I think – hope – your article will come out when we are already in the post-pandemic era!

Blitz:

If you are away from the wine topic, then you take an interest in…

– Food, family, friends and books.

You are an exceptional workaholic! What is you working day usual schedule: what time you usually wake up? What are your priority tasks? In what time does the day end?

– I do work very hard during the day, from about 7 to 7 sometimes, the first few hours always devoted to JancisRobinson.com. We are mad enough to publish two articles every day and I always read and edit them. But I never work in the evening – unless tasting wine in the early evening.

How much wine do you taste on average per day?

– One year I reckoned I tasted about 10,000 wines but that was an unusually high total.

Favorite book, film about wine?

– I enjoyed Thirsty Dragon by Susan Mustacich about the Chinese love affair with wine.

If possible, recall the most interesting paradox/funny story that you have observed in the wine world?

– There is so little correlation between price and quality in the wine world.

Jancis Robinson, a person with the special merits in the wine world, a wine critic, journalist, writer, consultant of Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland answered all D+ questions!

Christian Wolf, Director Degustation at MUNDUS VINI GmbH, told the D+ Editor-in-chief about his career, organizational features of contest-tastings, innovations and plans.

Drinks+: Christian, you have been working in the international wine business for more than 10 years and most of your professional career as a Director Degustation at MUNDUS VINI GmbH. Tell us a few words about yourself. What attracts you in the wine business? Why did you decide to connect your life with the wine?

Christian Wolf: I grew up in the second largest wine growing region in Germany, the Pfalz (Palatina). My grandfather owned 1 ha of vineyards, planted with Riesling, Silvaner, Scheurebe, Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris), Dornfelder as well as some Portugieser. He was a member of a small wine cooperative. During my school time I was working a lot in the vineyard to help my grandparents. On the weekends, I helped them as well working in the wine shop of the cooperative. My grandfather also produced his “house wine”, about 200 liters per year, not very tasty, but it was his own! This was when I began to fall in love with wine. In a professional sense I really started to plan my career in the wine business after finishing school and doing my social service at the wine school Neustadt, which is also a research center for viniculture. The head of it is Prof. Ph.D. Ulrich Fischer, who is today my colleague in the board of MUNDUS VINI. After finishing my study at Geisenheim University, I worked seven years in the wine trade, before I joined the team of MUNDUS VINI and Meininger Verlag.

After finishing my study at Geisenheim University, I worked seven years in the wine trade, before I joined the team of MUNDUS VINI and Meininger Verlag.

What wine makes so special and different from anything else I know, is three things: the people, the influence of the nature, the endless diversity.

I love the people in the wine business, those are different to the people from any other business I know. Of course, everybody needs to earn money with his business, but I love the passion and the collegiality you feel every day in the wine business.

D+: How did you become a part of Meininger Verlag team?

C.W.: This was quite funny. I worked for a major wine importer as the head product manager for the portfolio, which was mainly France with some famous wineries from Champagne, Burgundy, Alsace and some more. A member of the management of Meininger Verlag and one of my former lecturers at Geisenheim university phoned me in the office, asking me if I would be interested in a meeting with Christoph Meininger to talk about the position of Director Degustation at Meininger Verlag and MUNDUS VINI. Before I decided to start at Meininger, I had some really good meetings and discussions with Christoph Meininger and his sister Andrea Meininger-Apfel. As you know, this is the fifth generation of family business. We felt from the start that it will fit 100 percent. And Neustadt, where the publication house is located, is my hometown, so I was really coming back to my origins.

I love the passion and the collegiality you feel every day in the wine business.

D+: What were the first changes at MUNDUS VINI processes with your arrival at the company? Perhaps you developed a plan to improve the system of the competition, supplemented the team, attracted new participants, new wine regions?

C.W.: First of all, I have to say that my predecessors in this position really did a great job. MUNDUS VINI is a fantastic, a unique competition. All the team and the judges feel like a family. Of course, we did some major changes also at the beginning, like implementing a new marketing strategy, building new and more advantages to the participants and also focusing not only on the main wine growing regions, but taking care also about growing regions like Armenia or at the moment Czech Republic.

D+: Tell us more about your work as a Director Degustation at MUNDUS VINI GmbH. I would like to know more about the team, because organizing, conducting and summing up the results of the competition as we see year after year is a huge job.

C.W.: To be honest, sometimes I am really happy that nobody really knows how much effort we put in this competition. Some may say this is too much looking for the details, but exactly this is what I want to push and which differs us from all the others.

Our team is not as big as someone might think, but as we are working over the whole year with this team, it makes many things very effective and detailed at one time.

The organization for the competition start two years before, the main part about half a year before we start tasting. Inviting the perfect judges for the competition, checking the wine samples, building the flights and the right teams for the specific wines and origins is a part we are investing a lot of time. The communication after the competition is getting more and more important, as we see a lot of wine competitions out there and we improved and expanded our marketing activities and the support to the participants very much over the last five years.

The most important maybe is to have a very good team. This takes of course some time, as all the work for MUNDUS VINI has to be spread over several shoulders. We have people in the team taking care about the judges, other about the delivered wine samples, other about the development of our tasting system and marketing. More and more important is the contact to the wine regions and the winegrowers. If we do not listen to them, we will not be able to help them in the future.

First of all, I have to say that my predecessors in this position really did a great job. MUNDUS VINI is a fantastic, a unique competition. All the team and the judges feel like a family.

D+: From your point of view, what is the most difficult part in the MUNDUS VINI organization?

C.W.: Hard to say. As I mentioned before, we spend a lot of time in finding and inviting the perfect judges. Short time before MUNDUS VINI it is the most difficult to build the tasting panels and the flights for the competition. And you always have to take care to see “the whole thing”, if you get lost in too many details, it will not work.

D+: What is the dynamics of the growth in participants’ number over the past few years?

C.W.: At the first MUNDUS VINI Tasting about 20 years ago we tasted around 3,000 wines. With the start of the Spring Tasting in 2014, which is in perfect time short before ProWein, we increased to a total number of wines of 11,000 wines a year. MUNDUS VINI has established itself as one of the major international wine competitions.

D+: What new wine-growing regions, from which countries have been actively participating in the competition in recent years?

C.W.: Since two years we see increasing numbers of wine samples from China, but also from the Scandinavian countries like Denmark or Sweden. In times of climate change those areas are getting more and more suitable for wine growing. As a competition taking place on European mainland, I feel very happy that we are attracting more and more wines also from “New World” countries like Australia, Chile, New Zealand. But since five years we really see significant numbers of wines from Eastern Europe. In quantity but much more in quality. Wines from Armenia, Czech Republic and some others are coming more and more into the competition and the quality is very good. We will hear a lot more from this wines in the next years.

D+: As for the jury members. Professionals from all over the world several times a year come to take part in the international competition and do tremendous work in a blind tasting of all around the world wines’ (many of them more than for 20 times already). What can you say about judges? Did you update the list? Perhaps, the jury members have been supplemented in recent years.

C.W.: As mentioned before, MUNDUS VINI feels like a family. Over the 20 years we built up a unique team of judges from more than 50 countries at the moment. They all have different background, come from different cultures, are different age and so much more things. But when we meet in Neustadt/Germany, we are one family. Just to give you an example: we all know about the situation in Israel and Lebanon. Since so many years we have some in the jury from both countries. I do not want to say that we are the “United Nations of Wine”, that doesn’t really fit. But we are a place where politics doesn’t mean anything, just the people that we are.

At the first MUNDUS VINI Tasting about 20 years ago we tasted around 3,000 wines. With the start of the Spring Tasting in 2014, which is in perfect time short before ProWein, we increased to a total number of wines of 11,000 wines a year.

In my five years there were a lot of changes in the group. Some, as you mentioned in your questions, were part of MUNDUS VINI since the beginning and we are so thankful that they believed in our idea at a very early stage. But of course, we have to change the group year by year. For the Spring Tasting in February 2020 we accepted 270 judges, 40 of them are with us for the first time.

To say it in one sentence: over the last five years MUNDUS VINI is getting more female and younger.

You know, still most of the people in the wine business are men, but this Spring Tasting 40% of the group is female.

D+: Last year, MUNDUS VINI expanded the geography of the competition. German winemakers presented their wines in the Scandinavian market at the MUNDUS VINI NORDIC competition. Why Northern Europe? Are there any plans for further expansion on other continents?

C.W.: The MUNDUS VINI NORDIC competition is organised in cooperation with the German Wine Institute – Wines of Germany. Most of the German wine export goes to the US, Netherlands and Great Britain. But if you sum up the export volume to Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, the Nordic countries are number 2 after US. The aim of the competition is to have more attention to German wine in the Nordic countries. Special about the competition is, that we only invited judges from those four countries. MUNDUS VINI always wants to give an international judgment on the wines, which is perfect. But with this competition, which only aims to a specific region, we wanted to give the “Nordic” taste into. And I worked very well.

For the year 2020 we decided not to do it in the “Nordic” countries, because we believe that a biennial rhythm makes more sense.

This year we are going to organise MUNDUS VINI EAST, which focuses on the Eastern European markets, supplemented by countries like Belarus, Russia and some others.

Some people in those countries know very well about German wine, but we see a lot of more potential for German wine. Those countries are growing and it is not very far to go there.

The current economic situation with the US, a decreasing Chinese market, a lot of regulations and tariffs is not very satisfying for the German wine growers. With MUNDUS VINI EAST we believe to “open the eyes” of the German wine growers for high interesting consumers and the chance to have German wine more and more well placed in those countries.

D+: What would be your advice to those who plan to taste wine blindly, how to develop the necessary skills, is it worth relying on knowledge and experience, trust only sensations, or use all this together?

C.W.: First of all, it is very important to know the different aromas. If you have never smelt and ate a banana, how can you find it in your description of a wine??? The easiest way is to find some friends, buy some bottles of wine and taste them. In a second step, buy a “neutral” wine, get some apple in one glass, some banana in the other, some cherries and so on. This is how we train sensory skill on our consumer wine fairs.

If you are interested in getting more knowledge, I know so many wine merchants all over the world offering wine tastings, wine dinner and some also wine courses. Don’t be shy, if you don’t taste, you will never know.

D+: When you are not in a process of organizing a tasting, what do you like to do most – is there a hobby?

C.W.: We are in the lucky situation to have the vineyards and the forest (Pfaelzer Wald) in front of the door. I love hiking with my family through the vineyards and especially on the Pfalz forest. There we have the so-called Waldhuette (forest cottage), which are offering wine, small snacks and typical Palatinate food. You always meet friends or you find some new.

Before I started at Meininger Verlag, I loved skiing, but as I have full program with the Spring Tasting in February and ProWein in March, it is impossible now.

I love hiking with my family through the vineyards and especially on the Pfalz forest. There we have the so-called Waldhuette (forest cottage), which are offering wine, small snacks and typical Palatinate food. You always meet friends or you find some new.

D+: What kind of wine do you drink with your family? Favorite wine region (Germany, World).

C.W.: OK, I am German, a grew up in the Pfalz region, which is famous for its great Riesling wines from some of the best single vineyards in the world. But during my work at a fine wine merchant, which focuses on France and German sweet wines, I really felt in love with German Riesling sweet wines. If you ever tasted a matured Mosel Spätlese or Kabinett, you will understand.

Some of my favorite red wines come from Burgundy, I love the fineness of Pinot Noir. But for my private consumption, the most important thing is the story of the wine. I want to know and to understand the soil, the vineyard, the vintage, the idea of the wine maker, the history, let us call it the “terroir”, which is much more than only the geography. If you want, call me an “intellectual wine drinker”.

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MUNDUS VINI was founded by Meininger Verlag 18 years ago and has been one of the most important wine competitions in the world. A highly qualified international jury comprising oenologists, wine-makers, professional wine traders, sommeliers and expert journalists, among them Editor-in-chief of Drinks+ magazine, taste the wines, sparkling wines and fortified wines in ‘blind’ tasting rounds.

The 11,000 wines that are submitted every year are clear proof of the importance this competition has now achieved in Germany and all over the world.

 Photo Credit: Ad Lumina

Christian Wolf, Director Degustation at MUNDUS VINI GmbH, told the D+ Editor-in-chief about his career, organizational features of contest-tastings, innovations and plans.

Robert Joseph – one of the most experienced and successful representatives of the wine world. He is the wine critic of the London Sunday Telegraph and award-winning author of more than 28 books on wine, including French Wines, Bordeaux and its Wines and The Complete Encyclopedia of Wine. He also contributed to the progress of winemaking by founding the world’s largest International Wine Challenge competition. Robert Joseph appears regularly on television and radio. Decanter magazine named him as one of the 50 people who would influence wine drinking in the 21st century. Robert Joseph is an editorial consultant and columnist for Meininger’s Wine Business International. Joseph shared his thoughts, knowledge and forecasts with the Editor-in-chief of Drinks+ magazine.

D+: Mr. Robert Joseph, you have a unique experience in many areas of the wine world. What is important for you now and what kind of activity in the wine business is the most attractive today for you?

Robert Joseph: Creating new wines (I’m working on a project in Georgia), and discovering ones that are new to me.

D+: It had been almost a year since you finished the work on your book ‘The Future of Wine Has Changed’. It was a difficult year for the wine world. What would you add or change now, given the situation today?

R.J.: In fact, the publication was delayed, and I am happy to have the chance to reconsider some of my assumptions. The one thing of which I am sure is the growth in digital communication (online tastings, Augmented and Virtual Reality) and distribution. I honestly believe that the supermarket ‘wall of wine’ will soon be a thing of the past.

D+: The future of wine has changed, and not only wine, many industries have fundamentally transformed their businesses. However, if we talk about the wine business, as a part of the global economy, in your opinion, changes that have occurred are positive and expected?

R.J.: We have seen relatively few changes, compared to other sectors. In most countries, most wine is still sold in supermarkets in glass 75cl bottles. There has been a general resistance to producing premium still wine through blending across regions and even the cheapest wines tend to have vintages.

But changes are happening. On the one hand, the natural wine phenomenon, whilst being initially associated with amateurish production of faulty wines, is evolving into something quite interesting and it is clear that just as Nouvelle Cuisine reduced the use of flour, cream and butter in cooking in the 1970s, natural wine will encourage lower-intervention winemaking.

There are more innovative premium blends, especially in the US where red blends (not based on French recipes) are now selling at up to $100. In Europe, categories like Vin de France are similarly and simultaneously allowing more experimentation and more production of higher volume wines with consistent quality and style. Multi-vintage wines are arriving too, even from wineries as prestigious as Opus One, but they are still treated with suspicion.

I honestly believe that the supermarket ‘wall of wine’ will soon be a thing of the past.

In packaging, while heavy bottles quite reasonably upset those who care about the environment, there is a move towards more environmentally friendly options such as (lightweight and almost infinitely recyclable) aluminium cans and kegs that allow wine to be served on draught in the on trade.

All of these changes are positive. Many traditionalists dislike the arrival of innovations such as wines aged in whisky and rum barrels or fermented using beer yeasts… As far as I’m concerned anything that sparks an interest in wine is to be welcomed. Especially at a time when global consumption has flattened (before coronavirus) and shows little signs of short-term return to growth.

D+: In the context of climate changes, we are already producing new wines, changing the wine legislation that regulates production, and new wine countries with higher wine quality than before are entering the market. In your opinion, for the most part, we are at the stage of adoption of the changes and will we adapt or at the stage of their denial – and, accordingly, will we try to fight with them?

R.J.: This will vary. Many traditional wine models face an existential crisis. Merlot is increasingly unviable in Bordeaux. It will rarely if ever be possible to make the 12% red Burgundy of the 1980s. Will Pinot Noir be sustainable there in 30 years time?

Attitudes will vary from region to region and producer to producer. New sub regions will develop. In the hills of the Cote de Beaune when I lived there, grapes often struggled to get to 10%, and the wines were rarely noteworthy. Now, Burgundy expert Jasper Morris recommends examples grown in my old village.

60% of the marketing budget should be spent on brand building, rather than discounting – in order to foster ‘price elasticity’ in the mind of the consumer.

Burgundy will be slow to abandon its current – and historic – single-variety model. Bordeaux has always been a blended wine and the region has already allowed producers to use a slightly different recipe. Franciacorta has done the same. Other regions will follow.

D+: In your speeches, you noted that buying wine there is a big gap between consumers and those who have deep technical knowledge about wine. What exactly needs to be done by the producer to fill this gap and sell, bring the wine to the consumer?

R.J.: There is a need for much more empathy in the wine industry. Professionals need to put themselves in the shoes of consumers with little wine knowledge or the desire to acquire it. These people should pause to consider how little most of them know about tea or coffee, or possibly beer or spirits.

Once they acknowledge the lack of innate wish to know more about wine, they will be able to think about how to communicate more successfully – to have conversations with their customers rather than deliver lectures.

D+: You note that the wine market is extremely diverse and saturated, and it is very easy to get lost for the brand. According to your articles, just a good quality is not enough to sell a bottle. More attention should be paid to the wine marketing. Please tell us in more detail how to act in this situation? What percentage of the marketing budget should be spent on promotion, what resources should be used, in your opinion?

R.J.: Speaking on our recent Real Business of Wine webcast, advertising and marketing expert, Tom Lewis estimated that 60% of the marketing budget should be spent on brand building, rather than discounting – in order to foster ‘price elasticity’ in the mind of the consumer. Price promotions do the opposite, making them associate the brand with low, discounted, prices.

Prices and margins are not talked about enough in wine. In other sectors, it is common to add 20 cents for marketing on top of every dollar it has cost to produce a product. This 20% marketing budget is common for sparkling wines and spirits; with wine the figure is closer to 5%.

In the 1980s there were 20,000 Bordeaux chateaux. Today there are less than 6,000 and I expect that number to halve within the decade.

A main reason for this is pricing which is too often based on what neighbours charge, or what is ‘acceptable’ for the appellation or varietal. Apart from the minority whose acknowledged quality allows them to escape this fate – or those like Bottega in Italy with its packaging and marketing skills – this is inevitably a race to the bottom.

Selling in supermarkets which demand low prices and discounts doubly exacerbates this situation. Branded – but weakly marketed – wines sit on shelves alongside the retailers’ well-packaged own labels. And often lose the battle.

D+: Recently, we see the tendency that not-so-typical wine regions of England, Denmark and Holland, Thailand begin to produce wines. Brands from Eastern Europe enter the world market, new wines appear (for example, the so-called crossover wine products). Does this mean that competition in the wine market is in the most active phase? Or the competition will be intensified?

R.J.: Competition will not slow, as new regions and styles emerge. But I expect the number of producers and distributors to reduce. There are many cheeses in the world, but far fewer dairies than wineries. As craft breweries succeed, they are bought by bigger businesses and I expect to see this continue with wine. In the 1980s there were 20,000 Bordeaux chateaux. Today there are less than 6,000 and I expect that number to halve within the decade. And a post covid-19 financial crisis would speed that process.

Small, agile producers (under 10,000 cases) with low costs and local sales and/or high value sales elsewhere will survive and may prosper.

D+: Do the new products, wine producing countries affect the tastes, preferences of wine lovers? Can you predict how tastes and demand will change in the near future? What will become especially fashionable, popular?

R.J.: If I could predict anything with any accuracy, I’d be a lot richer. But I foresee continued polarization between esoteric ‘natural’ and ‘traditional’ wines and more crowd-pleasing examples designed to satisfy public tastes rather than historic models.

D+: In connection with the climate changes and taste preferences, which of the once outsider wines can take a leading position?

R.J.: Good question. One obvious answer is blends from countries with heat-resistant varieties. This could include countries like Greece and Turkey. On the other hand, obviously, as temperatures rise, cool climate regions – like Britain and northern France – will benefit.

D+: How, in your opinion, did the development of social media influence the wine business?

R.J.: Hugely, because it has allowed smaller producers to communicate alongside bigger ones, and consumers to learn from each other.

D+: What do you think about the impact of journalists, Instagram bloggers on wine consumers’ opinions? Can coups of such magnitude be expected as Parker did for Bordeaux or Spurrier for California?

R.J.: I believe that Parker was a unique phenomenon. There was never anyone with his global influence in any sector. Spurrier’s role in helping to boost California was also a one-off. Black swans are, by their nature, unpredictable, but media and communications have changed since the 1970s and 1980s. More recent Judgment of Paris-style tastings have had less impact.

D+: Which of the world’s oenologists do you consider to be the most talented, or perhaps even genius? And what is his merit?

R.J.: There are so many – too many to choose one. It is unfashionable, I know, but I believe that Michel Roland has had a very positive impact on the wine world internationally. His contribution to great wines like Chateau Ausone, Ornellaia and Araujo and to regions like Mendoza in Argentina cannot be overstated.

D+: What style of wines is especially close to you?

R.J.: I have a very wide range of tastes, but particularly enjoy Burgundy, Gernman an Austrian whites, the Rhone and Italy. I probably drink Bordeaux less than many traditional wine professionals.

D+: Please tell us about your wineries where you are a co-owner: Greener Planet and Le Grand Noir. What wines do you produce and from which vineyards? Who are your customers? What countries are targeted? What is your role in brand development?

R.J.: Both wines are unusual in being created from scratch by a wine writer with the consumer in mind. I often like to say that the Le Grand Noir – which I love to drink at home by the way – are made for people who wouldn’t read the wine books I used to write. They are designed to be delicious, above all, but also consistent in style and quality – something many wine enthusiasts don’t actually want. They are also easy to drink – without cellaring or decanting or matching with particular – or any – food. Finally, they come in a wide range of styles – 14 – but all from the same place and vineyard landholding.

To achieve this, we took a Champagne approach, blending wine from the different altitudes, soils, aspects and microclimates of the 7,000ha of vineyards we work with in the Minervois region of Languedoc in Southern France. Most if our wines fall under the IGP / Vin de Pays designation, which allows us loots of freedom to experiment with blends and styles. I’m proud to say that they have been good enough to be served in Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill in London, while being affordable and easy enough to drink to take on a picnic .

Greener Planet was a different project in which we set out, in the same region, to make attractively-priced wines that were both organic and good for the environment and community. When we launched them in 2007, I think we were a little too early, but now may be their moment. Stylistically, they are more obviously terroir-focused than le Grand Noir, and are not aged in oak, for example.

D+: How do you think the pandemic will affect the winemaking? Perhaps there are aspects that we are not aware of, but which are visible to professionals like you?

R.J.: It is too early to say how the pandemic will affect the industry, but in winemaking it may accelerate the mover to automation – for producers who can afford the investment. For the industry as a whole, everything depends on economics. One scenario suggests a repeat of the wild excesses of the 1920s after WW1 and the ‘Spanish Flu’. Another is that we will have a big economic crash. Unfortunately, I expect the latter is more likely, especially as we were already ‘late’ for a downturn on the 10-year cycle we’ve seen in recent history.

If this is the case, the likelihood is that strong brands (which will include distributor own-brands) will get stronger. Small, agile producers (under 10,000 cases) with low costs and local sales and/or high value sales elsewhere will survive and may prosper. Producers in the 10,000-150,000 case range will suffer, unless they have built unusually strong brands and distribution.

Marketing, communication and distribution – especially direct-to-customer – will all become even more important than ever.

It’s our tradition, after serious questions, to give a short blitz of a personal plan. If you don’t mind, we would ask you to answer in just a few sentences:

If you weren’t in the wine business, you would be …

I would probably still be a journalist or lawyer or researcher. I love discovering new things and ideas and questioning the status quo.

How your working day is built: what time you usually wake up? What are your priority tasks? In what time does the day end?

I wake quite early – at around 6.30 am and often start to work at 8am. My days vary, and often I’m still working at 8pm.

Favorite wine that you can drink on week-ends and the most expensive – which you drink on special occasions?

I love Grenache blends – from our le Grand Noir GSM to Chateauneuf du Pape and Spanish Garnachas. For special occasions, it would have to be red Burgundy – possibly from Volnay or Vosne-Romanée

The most interesting wine region for you.

Probably Italy – because of the diversity of its wines.

Favorite book?

Hugh Johnson’s first book – WINE – now out of print was the one that turned me onto the subject, way back in the 1970s.

A film about wine?

I’m not sure I love any of them. The best, in my opinion, including Sideways, were not films about wine. They were good stories set in a wine environment. The recent Netflix ‘wine movie’ Uncorked is actually an enjoyable film about family. I loved the way wine was savoured in Babette’s Feast. Out of the documentaries, I might go for Sour Grapes.

Hobbies?

Reading, walking, photography, listening to music…

Photo: fenavin.com, static.businessworld.in, 5starwines.it, unisa.edu.au, chrisvonulmenstein.com, cdn1.i-scmp.com, indianwineacademy.com, media.gettyimages.com, nationmagazine.ru, i.promecal.es, cdn4.i-scmp.com, guns2gewurztraminer.com

Robert Joseph, one of the most experienced and successful representatives of the wine world, shared his thoughts, knowledge and forecasts with the Editor-in-chief of Drinks+ magazine.

Author: Natalia Burlachenko, Columnist for Drinks+, took an interview with Roberto Cipresso, unique wine consultant, who is a philosopher, oenologist, researcher and author of amazing wines.

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Charismatic, brilliant and enthusiastic Roberto Cipresso, who has become a member of the grand international project Vinos de La Luz since 2014, was born in Bassano del Grappa, an ancient Italian town. Having gained an oenological education, he settled in Montalcino and commenced working in the winemaking field in 1987. Having started collaboration with iconic Italian manufacturers Case Basse, Poggio Antico and Ciacci Piccolo mini d’Aragona, he soon became famous. Roberto Cipresso is invited to advise both Italian producers and wineries around the world, including South America. In 1999, Roberto created the Winemaking project, forming a team of highly qualified consultants in the field of agronomy and oenology. Roberto also owns the Fattoria La Fiorita winery boutique in the heart of Montalcino. La Fiorita produces Brunello and La Fiorita wines and gained numerous prestigious awards, including Parker points of 99, 98 and 97. In addition, Roberto Cipresso is the creator of the innovative project Winecircus, an experimental laboratory cellar. There, assisted by a team of experts, he has been conducting researches, studying various aspects of viticulture and producing branded experimental wines. Among the achievements of Winecircus is a special cuvé created especially for Pope John Paul II in 2000. Roberto is the author of four books dedicated to wine: Il Romanzo del Vino, Vinosofia, Vineide and Vino, el romano secreto, and often gives lectures at wine schools and universities around the world.

Why did you become a “winemaker”?

When I was 20 years old, I had a great passion for the mountains. I planned that skiing and climbing would be my future, and that I would earn my living due to such activities. The mountains gave me a motivation for life. I was happy. I studied agriculture and received a master’s degree in viticulture and oenology in Northern Italy, near Trento, but that was a necessity rather than a vocation. I wanted to be near the mountains, and the area was perfect. Unfortunately, we had an accident and I left the mountains.

Trying to overcome the resulting sadness, I went to Tuscany, believing that after 3 months of living there I could return to the heights. However, I encountered an unusual world – the world of wine. I also realized that the mountains gave great lessons; they taught me how to survive, made me know my limits and taught me to respect nature, and to recognize its signs. It was there that I developed the ability to observe, capture odors, detect signals, and quickly analyze them. I applied all this invaluable knowledge in the vineyards of Tuscany in order to create wine. I fell completely in love with wine and was able to travel around the world, applying my observation skills, which, in turn, gave me more opportunities to collect information – first observe, then translate. My romance with wine is in fact a secret romance, which I share only when wine is poured into a glass.

Will you, please, share with us, what stages you can define in your professional life of an oenologist?

The first stage of my life as a winemaker began in Tuscany, in Montalcino, where I worked in vineyards and in a winery; I just studied everything, commencing from how to clean a barrel, and ending with how to drive a tractor. This period was a basic one, and I compare it with elementary school. If you do not know exactly how to do this or that job, it is very difficult to cooperate with producers, give them an advice, teach workers, how to work in the field, if you do not know how to do it yourself. Thus, the first step was the practical aspect of observation: with ears and eyes wide open, I absorbed everything about the wine, from the grape planting to how it was bottled.

The second step was travelling. Asking the same question in different places, I received different answers because the climate, culture, and people were different. It fascinated me. I researched, met (with various people), tasted wines, communicated with people and asked why.

Therefore, when we talk about terroir, we should not talk about the vine, because if we recognize the variety, it means that the terroir is weak, but when the terroir prevails, the variety fades into the background.

Traveling taught me to find a reason for many things that I saw. Having learned to do everything in Montalcino and having found many answers while travelling, I realized that I was ready to give advice, taking my responsibility to producers, who wanted to improve their wine, but not from an aesthetic perspective – rather from a deeper and more intellectual one. The wine identity – what I call “el mar azul” – is a unique aspect of the wine, which must be produced with great attention, and, at the end, the wine, which, thanks to its strength and personality, represents its own DNA.

The fourth step was to write books that were supposed to transform all my knowledge and experience into a text. I wanted to find a fairly easy, straightforward, and understandable language, I strived to talk about technical parameters, but in a common language so that all people understand and read like a novel, and so that everything I wrote could reach the widest possible audience. I wrote 4 books which incorporated my notes from all the trips and all the wines that I made for others. My notes were just messy notebooks, but when I put them in order, they turned into 4 books that are the story of my life. Until today, these have been 4 stages in my life, but there is still a lot to come, because ongoing research and discovery of new paths has always been my vocation.

How can the world be divided according to the concept of terroirs?

“Terroir” is a very complex word that cannot be translated into Spanish, English, Italian or any other language. It is a French word that identifies wine with many elements that have nothing to do with grapes. Terroir is an identity of place and soil, amount of sunlight and humidity, microclimate, spontaneous vegetation, temperature amplitude and many other components that make the grapes speak not of their family tree, but rather interpret, where they come from, where they are grown.

When we come to the point, when the wine defines the place, we have the wine of a certain terroir, and that is why we are talking about an absolutely unique wine.

In a distant and not so distant history, we saw that a person chose places without knowledge or research, but nowadays knowledge gives us a great opportunity to find terroir vineyards. Now, producers have turned their area into something solemn, such as Burgundy, Montalcino, Piedmont, Ribera del Duero and many others.

Then I met Ricardo Nunez, who seduced me with a very bold idea, consisting in uniting, according to the same philosophy and protocols, the wineries that he already had in Valle de Uco in Argentina and Ribera del Duero in Spain.

Before, a man planted a vineyard in easily accessible places, near a road or a river, near a railway or where the land was more fertile, but this is an old story; now, the time is completely different. I like the concept of Apelación de Origen, but at the same time I want to continue to research and move freely in any other direction, because now we have a lot of knowledge in the field of geology and a lot of research on grape plants that are adapted to different places. Today, we can choose the “terroir”, because science and human intelligence allow us to understand, when and how everything turns into this magic word. Today, we must think about the viticulture of the future, leaving a legacy for the next generation, opening our eyes to the most extreme viticulture, such as the one existing in a new world, for example, in Argentina, California and South Africa, where extreme vineyards are planted in the mountains. In the Cordillera, they are looking for compounds of elements that define the word that we are talking about, and other “terroirs”.

That is why I say that we must take into consideration the history, but should not be slaves of the history. We should be developing. It should be emphasized that in the world there will be as many terroirs as the occasions when we find the symbiosis of nature with grapes.

What is your favorite terroir?

For me, there is no such thing as a “favorite terroir,” but there is a “different terroir,” which has a continental or marine climate, with limestone or sand, with its height, at the foot of a mountain or near a lake. I am attracted to the terroir, where all of the above is well mixed and I am happy to think of grapes as a real chameleon that can adapt and turn into something else. Therefore, when we talk about terroir, we should not talk about the vine, because if we recognize the variety, it means that the terroir is weak, but when the terroir prevails, the variety fades into the background. So there is no better terroir, there are just different terroirs.

As an oenologist you belong to the world, but your permanent place is Montalcino. Can you tell us what characterizes Montalcino, the heart of Italian Tuscany?

Montalcino is a unique place, a little, because it is crossed by the 43rd parallel, which, in itself, carries magic. It touches Georgia in the east and reaches Oregon in the west. In the middle, it crosses the mystical region, to which Medjugorje, Assisi, Lourdes, and Santiago de Compostela belong, and it seems that it gives these places unique and mysterious energy within the same horizon.

Montalcino is also unique for its hills, which have a very rich geology. Here, you can find such a variety of soils as shale, sandstone, gravel, limestone, tuff, and red earth with limestone crusts. Montalcino is attractive because a different terroir prevails on each plot. There is no Brunello de Montalcino alone, there are different Brunello de Montalcino; the word “typical” does not exist anymore, because each terroir has its own individuality and its own typicality, and there is no Brunello de Montalcino, typical and the same, there is Brunello from different microzones, different heights, and different soils. This is incredible, when the mosaic of different plots allows you to make different Brunello in a fairly small area. This is a great miracle of Montalcino, which has a variety of soils and gives birth to unsurpassed wines. It is through the prism of this concept that we should think about the wine of the future.

Currently, there is an opinion and trend in the world of wine that claims that in order to grow the best wine, it is not necessary to be under the strict control and rules of “Denominaciones de Origen”. To the contrary, it is said that the Winemaker should have much more creative freedom and not be limited by the rules. What is your opinion on this?

Freedom is a great theme when the vineyard and winery are within the Apelacion de Origen. I return to the question that we discussed above, because there are some errors in the history of the evolution of wine; history itself has established some rules that we cannot even recognize at all times, and I affirm that it is not obligatory to recognize them as correct. Although these rules allowed us to write a history, at some point they imply slavery, they cut off our wings, which would allow us to see the wine from a different point of view, to observe the wine from different angles, which, as I mentioned, I learned in the mountains.

Having an Apelacion de Origen is very important, but we should consider it as a point of departure, not as a point of arrival, because the point of arrival is to find a suitable actor on the right stage in a drama written for an actor, and he – the vineyard – can even observe many situations that happened to him. So this is the element that expresses the whole scenario of history, deep and mixed with soil, climate, its own microclimate, its sun, its light, its moon, its water, this magical ensemble that makes wine express its place of origin.

The rules are important, but they cannot stop evolution, they must not stop research; to the contrary, they must allow them to continue changing their own rules. Apelacion de Origen should be dynamic, because otherwise, it makes the petrified wine, it becomes just a painted portrait that does not evolve with the evolution of people.

From the evolution of vineyards, let’s turn to the history of companies. The history of Vinos de La Luz suggests that you are one of its intellectual and philosophical founders. How did you meet Vinos de La Luz and what is the company bearing the name Vinos de La Luz?

To answer your question, I want to use the phrase of Ricardo F. Nunez, who always says that when the stars meet in the sky and we see them in harmony, something unusual happens in our life. It was the very moment in my life, when I left the project in Argentina, which was a world project called “Bodegas Achaval Ferrer”, and started another project – my own project called “Mater Vini” – then I met Ricardo Nunez, who seduced me with a very bold idea, consisting in uniting, according to the same philosophy and protocols, the wineries that he already had in Valle de Uco in Argentina and Ribera del Duero in Spain.

The idea attracted great attention because its aim was to look at different regions with the same philosophy and with different outcome, and it means the same as to ask alike questions and receive different answers. It was a new creative action, so we had to teach new teams to add them to the unique Cipresso philosophy, which Ricardo accepted with great respect. Ricardo added Montalcino to his production, which was my homeland.

We began to revise my own story, starting from the time when I discovered Altamira in Valle de Uco, Mendoza, in 1990, as one of the most valuable lands, which today, 30 years later, gives the best Malbec in the world. There, we found several old vineyards that produced extraordinary La Luz wines; from there we went to Ribera del Duero to search for vineyards or plant them in the most sacrificial regions, in “poor” areas, where it is more difficult for the grapes to bear fruit, with a small harvest, but with a unique character. Then, we returned to Tuscany, to the sites that we spoke about earlier, located in the very heart of Montalcino, with the same philosophy. These were the three ways that captivated me, it was impossible not to get carried away by the passion, which meant exploring new wines in the so-called “El Mar Azul”, where few try to make the best wines in the world. So we started making wines with a character and personality in the old vineyards of Altamira in Argentina, Gumiel de Isan in Burgos, in Ribera del Duero, and in Montalcino, Tuscany. We planned that in the future we will also get excellent wine from other vineyards, at a higher altitude, poorer and scarcer soil, and with younger vines.

We live in melting aromas, melting music, melting flowers, and melting cultures and it’s time to think about the wine that we will be created by uniting different continents and different zones; we can create wine which will be a common emotion of all continents – Pangea wine – wine originating from wines of five continents.

From the very beginning, we already had a project to create another Vino de La Luz in California, in Santa Barbara, where Syrah grapes have a chameleonic characteristic with the environment, and there we already produced small quantities of the 2018 and 2019 harvest, like other Vinos de La Luz. Next, we will go to Georgia in order to make wine on the most ancient land in the history of wine, where there are saperavi grapes, which excite me and awaken all the adrenaline to make wine of them.

We must remember that all that we have done so far is because the local winemaking teams from Argentina and Spain have worked together, following this philosophy, creating a great international team. It should be stated that the idea of producing Icon wine from each country in small quantities gave rise to another idea from Ricardo: all wines of all wineries should have been produced, resorting to the same production philosophy, even if they had their own traditional brands. That’s why today, we can see so many award-winning brands owned by Vinos de La Luz.

It was a strategic decision based on the premise of this person: if we make all the wines with the same protocols and the same philosophy, even if they have different qualities, we will have wines of a similar nature, which will necessarily be the Vinos de La Luz. I should admit – what has been done has incredible results.

In your latest book, Wine, A Secret Romance, you devote a chapter to the wine that you call Planetary. What kind of wine is this and how will it be created?

I wrote this chapter, which relates to a dream, desire, madness, a project created in order to translate it into non-punctual time, that is, nowadays. We live in melting aromas, melting music, melting flowers, and melting cultures and it’s time to think about the wine that we will be created by uniting different continents and different zones; we can create wine which will be a common emotion of all continents – Pangea wine – wine originating from wines of five continents. We will take Saperavi from Georgia, which will add spices and dynamics to the blend, Tempranillo, which will be flesh and blood, Sangiovese from Montalcino will be the basis for its structure and acidity; the unusual Argentinean Malbec will give it fruitiness and balsamic shades, and, finally, the Californian Syra, possessing incredible adaptability, will fasten all the aromas together.

We will create this wine in the United States, where barrels with four other wines will be stored to make this blend. Today, this is the only possible place that allows us to build a blend configuration with the correct proportions of wines from different countries and continents. Thereupon, all over the world, you will be able to drink this wine – we will make very few bottles – which will be a journey, how to say … a journey illuminated by every Apelacion de Origen. This is a dream, but we will make it come true.

You took part in the first International Wine & Spirits Expo in Kyiv in 2018, where you gave lecture on “Terroir” and said your parting words to the local winemakers, encouraging them to explore paths leading to excellence, which you repeated to us today (no doubt, we still remember those words). Shall we see you again at the next Wine & Spirits Expo in Kyiv?

I was shocked by this exhibition and by the impression that we are at the stage of a new history with professionals who know a lot about wine from other countries, but want to develop their own personality. This is the beginning of an exciting story that will take some time and which I would very much like to become a witness, as well as an actor and protagonist. There are many new people who want to know, need to know, but also want to create. I could see it, tasting their wine, in their eyes, in their concern, to know if my opinion coincided with theirs. And this fire, let’s say, this sacred fire in the eyes of the producers, represents the winemakers who decided to create their own history at the national and international level. I should say, that I do not want to miss this story, so if Ricardo plans, I will be with him, because Ukraine should step by step reach the level that will make it world famous.

Photos by Vinos de La Luz winegrowing group

Drinks+ interviewed charismatic, brilliant and enthusiastic Roberto Cipresso, who has become a member of the grand international project Vinos de La Luz since 2014.

While Boissenot was engaged in wine magic on the Left Bank, a right-bank based oenolaboratory in Bordeaux was – and is – operated by another sorcerer – Michel Rolland.

His childhood passed in the family ChâteauLe Bon Pasteur, where his grandfather produced and sold Bon Pasteur wine. He was educated at the Tour Blanche School of Viticulture and Oenology in Bordeaux, where, by the way, he met his future wife Dany in 1968. So to speak, in the right place, at the right time. Denis Rolland also became a very authoritative, although not flying, oenologist.

Michel Rolland, already 70, published Le Gourou du Vin book a few years ago, telling about his incredible travels around the world, about the fact that he appeared on the world wine scene at the right time, when everything was just beginning to change, which helped him become MICHEL ROLLAND.

Michel Rolland spends most of his time traveling around the vineyards of the Old and New World. When asked whether he is going to retire, Rolland replies: “I have seven employees and while Michelle Rolland is in service, they have work and earnings.” Michel Rolland is a legendary person, he collaborates with 150 wineries in 17 countries of the world. He also owns several French wineries, and Michel Rolland’s wine collection, the Rolland Collection, is a real treasure for any foodie. Recently, the famous oenologist announced his plans for the development of the Black Sea coast: he advises manufacturers of Turkey, Bulgaria and Armenia, believing that these regions have excellent potential.

Michel Rolland is sure that a good wine can only be created if the healthy grapes of high quality are fully ripe. “Wine made from good grapes is always better than wine made by a good oenologist!”, the Master never tires of repeating. There is a legend in the wine world that it was Michel Rolland who revealed Robert Parker to the world. To such “accusations”, the flying winemaker replies that this is an exaggeration.

Michel Rolland is always energetic and cheerful. “I’m not tired of living, so I hope to do a lot more for fans of good wine. And if someone offers me to plant grapes on the moon, I’m happy to go to space,” jokes the most cheerful oenologist of France.

Michel Rolland is a legendary person, he collaborates with 150 wineries in 17 countries of the world.

Excuse the pun, Jacques Boissenot who reigned in the Left Bank Bordeaux can be called the right wing of Émile Peynaud.

Peynot taught Jacques a lot or, rather, everything, including “flying”. As a result, the very same Decanter awarded Jacques Boissenot the title of Winemaker of the Decade. Peynaud’s student clearly grasped the Master’s main testament: to modernize wine production as much as possible, without forgetting the history and traditions. Jacques Boissenot died in 2014 at the age of 76, for many years he carried the title of a flying winemaker. During the last 20 years of his life, his son Eric assisted him.

Jacques Boissenot was against excessive lengthening of the processes of maceration and aging, was an opponent of gravitational methods, arguing that in order to create a good wine grapes should be subjected to soft pressing. He supported and recommended that clients conduct malolactic fermentation along with the alcoholic one.

Despite his status, Jacques Boissenot was known as a modest man. If you look at his office, located in a small house in the town of Lamarck at the border of Margaux and Saint-Julien communities, you could never tell he had advised the four out of five Premier Grand Crus Classés (Château Lafite Rothschild, Château Margaux, Château Mouton Rothschild, Château Latour). In total, under the reliable wing of Jacques Boissenot, there were about 190 chateaux, 90% of which are located on the Left Bank of Gironde River.

The role of the flying winemaker in life of Boissenot is more likely an accident than a pattern. He was born in Beirut, where his father did military service and could stay in Lebanon forever, and only in his youth had he learned what is wine under a cork, as his parents used to buy inexpensive jug wine, poured in large glass containers. Boissenot dreamed of a veterinarian’s career but after a friend said “study to be a winemaker, this is an easy job,” he followed the advice and entered the faculty of oenology. But the job wasn’t an easy one. And some time later he met Émile Peynaud and became his right hand, or right wing, in a new profession – a wine consultant, a flying winemaker. The name Boissenot is associated with fashion for elegant fruity Cabernets.

Photo: chngpohtiong.com, sudouest.fr, facebook.com/wineatkingpower, connectionstowine.cavendoclient.com

When Jacques Boissenot met Émile Peynaud he became his right hand, or right wing, in a new profession – a wine consultant, a flying winemaker.

Genius marketer? Virtuous technologist? Or simply a magician? The flying winemaker – who is he?

One cannot believe it: On one day, this genius of oenology managed to “fly around” about one and a half dozen wineries. It was Émile Peynaud, the French professor of oenology, who “invented” the work of a wine consultant. He advised the iconic Bordeaux wineries such as Château Margaux, Château Leoville Las Cases, Château Lagrange and Château Pontet-Canet. Peynaud accounted for over 70 companies. And look at those. For example, in Italy, he worked with Antinori to create the first “Super Tuscan” Solaia and Tignanello wines, while in Chile he consulted Concha y Toro.

Émile Peynaud, the French professor of oenology, “invented” the work of a wine consultant and advised iconic Bordeaux wineries.

Peynaud entered winemaking as an ordinary teenage handyman, and during his nearly century-long life he managed to conquer incredible career heights. Émile Peynaud published his first scientific work at the age of twenty, and his book “The Taste of Wine”, published in 1980, became a bestseller. Famous winemakers in Italy, Spain, Greece, Mexico and Chile attribute the glory of many of their wines to the insights of Peynot.

He wrote more than 300 works on tasting and winemaking. By sampling young wine from barrels, Peynaud could tell its evolution for 20 years in advance.

It was Émile Peynaud who was one of the founders of the classification of wine aromas: He identified ten classes of aromas, creating the aromatic school of wines of the 20th century. Its basis is the influence of fermentation temperature on wine flavor. Now, according to his method, sommeliers are taught. “He has made such a huge contribution to the philosophy of French wine, that no other resident of France has managed to make,” said Hugh Johnson about him.

Photo: dimanoinmano.it, images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com

Émile Peynaud, the French professor of oenology, “invented” the work of a wine consultant and advised iconic Bordeaux wineries.