On December 24, 1997, the day of his fiftieth birthday, Michel Rolland reveled in a memorable meal. A dinner designed to have a good time of course, but also to remember it fondly for the rest of your life. With two friends who were also celebrating their fiftieth birthday, including the American critic Robert Parker, he opened and tasted twenty-seven bottles of their birth vintage: 1947. Only the greatest Bordeaux wines. Extremely rare and overpriced bottles. “A Petrus?”, he is asked twenty-five years later. “Of course,” he replies. “Haut Brion?”, we are surprised. “Of course! It’s Bob’s favorite wine!” he explains. “Cheval Blanc? Margaux? Ausone? Lafite?” At each name, he nods.
He no longer remembers the conversation. “I think we must have spent 95% of our time talking about wines. As usual.” On the other hand, he has not forgotten the string-roasted woodcocks that they ate that day, nor the foie gras… The episode sums up well the facetious spirit, a bit provocative, of Rolland, and his taste good things. It is its nature and its culture. At nearly 75 years old, the Gascon is now a wine guru whose advice can be bought at exorbitant prices. A kind of pope of large bottles. But you will never see him pontificate. He constantly wears that little smile, that sly air of a rebellious child that has always had the gift of exasperating school teachers, convinced that it was the mark of insolence.
With Robert Parker. Alongside his influential American accomplice, he globalized the wines of Bordeaux. (Private collection)
The smell of fennel rather than chalk
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“In class, I was not a dunce but a rather mediocre pupil. Never prizes, nor crowns. I preferred the smell of fennel on the paths to that of chalk.” His big brother studied brilliantly and became a lawyer, but he imagined, quite logically, taking over his father’s vines, at the Domaine du Bon Pasteur, in Pomerol. Defying the odds, he discovered a passion for biology which led him to the faculty of Bordeaux in 1968. There he obtained an oenologist diploma which enabled him to take over, with his wife Dany, also an oenologist, the laboratory of wine analyzes of Libourne in 1973, the date of his first vintage.
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Rolland does not take himself seriously. It is only when he tastes wines that he becomes serious. The face closes and all its pores open. The nose sometimes inquisitive, sometimes circumspect, the glasses placed in front and the ears wide open. We believe he is monopolized by his tasting and the juices he sniffs, inhales, chews and spits out. He can taste more than 200 in a day. But in doing so, he is on the lookout. He listens to the winegrower, observes the places and smells the people. In vino veritas? It is not so simple. The truth is not only in the wine.
“I do this job because I like people, not because I like wine,” says Michel Rolland, who could have had a degree in psychology through the validation of acquired experience.
professional jubilee
In three months, for the fiftieth time in his career, he will be, like every year, in the vineyards and in the cellars that he has known since childhood for some. More often than not, he will have his ear glued to his smartphone, trying to reassure his anxious winegrowers at the idea of deciding the best date to start picking the grapes. “In the cool early morning or at night to avoid the heat? Or immediately because rain is announced, but will the fruit be ripe?” Rebelote in the fall. He will have to reassure, help and decide after having tasted the musts: “Should we stop the fermentation? Another two days?” So on, throughout the year. Decisions are heavy, right down to the art of blending where he excels.
In one of the laboratories where he makes the assemblies. He can taste more than 200 wines in one day. When he tastes, he becomes serious, absorbed by the juices he sniffs, inhales, chews and spits out. (Photos: Federico Garcia)
Deep ties have been forged with the owners, his customers: the restless Bernard Magrez, always on the lookout for innovation, the Cathiard (Smith Haut Lafitte) and the Perse (Pavie), committed and enthusiastic couples, Hubert de Boüard (Angélus), himself a wine-makerthe late Catherine Péré-Vergé (La Violette) whom he considered his sister, or even one of the figures of Napa Valley, Robert Mondavi.
This fiftieth professional anniversary is also what is called a jubilee. Michel Rolland is jubilant literally and figuratively. In fifty years of career, he has just increased the commercial success of Bordeaux wines tenfold and actively participated in their globalization, with the help and complicity of his friend, the critic Robert Parker, who has also become a wine guru.
cruel documentary
While Rolland urged properties to modernize their equipment, change their practices, prefer quality over quantity and vinify in new barrels, Parker, the first influencer in history, thirty years before the invention of blogs, wrote books and articles on these virtuous practices, awarding high marks to the best. The two men acquired such authority, one by advising, the other by noting, that the domains that listened to them saw their sales and prices explode. In Pomerol, but also in the rest of Bordeaux, the first vineyard in the world, where Rolland has multiplied collaborations, then in the Napa Valley in California, Argentina, Chile, Australia, Lebanon…
But such success has its downside. He has been accused of standardizing tastes, of favoring friends, of “parkerizing” the vineyard. The documentary film Mondovino, by the American Jonathan Nossiter, selected at Cannes in 2004, denounces what he considers to be a seizure.
Rolland is not to his advantage, wheeler-dealer and authoritarian. “I was trapped, he filmed me to make me Machiavellian.” At the time, the pill was bitter and the oenologist suffered from not being able to make his defense heard. Today, he smiles, like the rest. “Nossiter has fallen into oblivion. I am still here, and the reproaches made to me have evaporated as the woody scent disappears in old vintages.”
In no hurry to retire, Rolland nevertheless prepared the rest and arranged his schedule to travel a little less. “I now advise only 70 properties directly, instead of more than 110 a few years ago.” He transmitted many files and part of the capital of the company that bears his name to his collaborators who became his partners. He slows the pace but warns, with a smile: “The 1947 vintage has not yet expressed its full potential!”
RED HEARTS
The Fontenil Challenge 2000 This château in Fronsac (near Saint-Emilion and Pomerol) has belonged to Michel Rolland since 1986, who made it his laboratory. This personal challenge gives a very successful wine with the 2000 vintage, concentrated in what the best of oenology can do.
Valley of Flowers 2006 When he took over this seventy-year-old Argentinian vineyard in 2011, Michel Rolland was able to put into practice his ambition and his intuitions concerning a great Malbec from Argentina. A grape variety originating from Cahors, which has become essential to the expression of the local terroir.
Certan of May 1947 The priest of Pomerol, a friend of the family who meant a lot to him, had brought this bottle from his magnificent cellar during a Sunday meal, when Michel was a child. “My first 1947, the year of my birth, thank God it was not to be the last!”
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