“The disappearance of the breeder and expert trader”.
The disappearance of the breeder and expert trader
By Erik Sauter
May 5, 2007
At the request of my father, a traditional wine merchant and winemaker, I moved to Bordeaux at the age of 17. To learn the wine trade on the job, to do internships and to take courses at the Faculty of Talence (University of Bordeaux). 1962, a generous vintage, was my first harvest in Pomerol and Fronsac. As soon as the grapes were picked, I went to work in the winery. In those days, sorting tables didn’t yet exist. The owners’ only concern was to bring in the harvest in its current state. Healthy and rotten grapes, ripe and less ripe grapes, all mixed together. Before the rainy season arrived, threatening to dilute the already thin must. So sparse, in fact, that two chaptalizations were sometimes necessary: one, nocturnal and illegal, and the next, officially announced and controllable.
De-vatting and pressing were my first experiences with new wine in my life. Many more were to follow. The cellar master allowed me to work like the other workers, which also meant emptying the vats of their marc. Dangerous, exhausting work due to the asphyxiating presence of C02 and intoxicating due to the presence of alcohol in the air. My stomach suffered for a long time to come, and for decades I couldn’t stand the smell of the digestif known as Marc. The green light to enter the vat was given if a candle flame didn’t go out. Vertical presses, now reappearing everywhere with their wooden cages, were still filled and emptied by the peel, as were fermentation vats.
First juice, best juice, pumped into other storage vats for malolactic fermentation, which was still too little mastered at the time. Sometimes stopped by the winter cold, we had to wait for a warm spring with the opening of the doors, to restart this indispensable fermentation, especially for the reds. Otherwise, bottle fermentations with the presence of C02 would make the tannins even drier and more astringent, with the smell of reduction spoiling the pleasure of the bouquet. I returned home after further training in other regions and after attending the Trier School of Wine in Germany, to take charge of bottling and sales. In those days, all the wines were bottled in our centuries-old cellars at a constant temperature of 12ºC and extremely high humidity.
As a result, I had to handle sales for an elite clientele: private individuals, dominated by the clergy, restaurateurs and a few wine merchants. There was little or no oenophile journalism, and those who took it up had everything to learn, or were sailing on waves of fables and empirical truths, handed down from generation to generation, but completely overtaken and outdated by developments in the science called oenology. I had the privilege of attending classes given by Professors Emile Peynaud and Ribéreau-Gayon, which remain engraved in my memory, and I felt a great need to pass on their knowledge and know-how to customers and wine lovers alike.
There was little or no mail order. As I was visiting customers one by one, I had to find a way of communicating with them. To inform them of what was worth knowing about the wines. To increase appreciation of our wines. For me, the solution lay in correspondence. The personal letter. I began to write letters introducing the winemakers, the wines, their way of doing things, their problems and their joys. The fascinations I felt while traveling and discovering. Since my experiences “on the estate”, a need to return to the source proved indomitable. To go back to the source and drink in the knowledge and developments. Answers filled my letters, which became more sophisticated. With reply and order forms and pre-paid return envelopes.
For me, bottling should be done by the owner at the property. Little by little, I was reducing our bottlings in favor of the original bottlings. In this way, I returned an important part of my profession – maturing and bottling – to those who lived in the shadow of the négociants. As the owners were not very wealthy and therefore ill-equipped, I had to rely on mobile and custom bottlers. The enormous disappointments of the first bottlings made me unhappy, without discouraging me. Strict selection and specifications forbidding overly drastic interventions – excessive doses of S02, for example – to avoid stripping the wine almost completely. Thanks to the cooler, more stable climate and the centuries-old cellars, our bids were much better. But the emancipation of the owners and the guarantee of origin were more important to me.
The “bets on the truck” were gradually improving, and my customers were aware of this as they read the texts of the mailings and tasted the products of these bets. Far from the eventual expiration of the inspiration needed to fascinate readers, buyers and connoisseurs, a new source suddenly sprang to life in 1977. The running of a wine estate! An owner in the Médoc, deceived by the price trend from 1971 to 1972 and the ensuing fall in prices, wanted to sell his over-indebted property. I was determined, but lacked the money to make my dream come true, so I had to find a solution. A friend, a wealthy entrepreneur, declared himself willing to invest without having seen the property! A property company and an operating company were created, and suddenly I was the administrator, operator and winemaker of a 17.5 ha estate with a beautiful gravelly terroir, located a few kilometers north of Lesparre. The last harvest was in 1985 and the estate had grown to 25 hectares.
Emile Peynaud’s successor, Jacques Boissenot, helped me with advice from the very first harvest (1978). The letters became veritable chapters in a wine book, fascinating readers and connoisseurs to such an extent that sales of domaine wine soared. Half of the 100-barrel harvest went to this small country with modest wine consumption. I’d come down for a week a month, and in summer we’d stay much longer with the kids – the beach is 14 kilometers away – and for the harvest, I’d bring a team of students and several cooks to share meals with the local team.
The (new) owner’s fortunes declined in the 80s following a real estate crisis. He asked me to sell because his bankers were becoming concerned. The capital gain was not inconsiderable. But a little more patience would have doubled the selling price and increased the capital gain by a factor of ten. I wasn’t without vines for very long. In 1993, I became co-owner, with a long-standing friend, of a very small estate (Domaine Mondivin cabernet-franc) in Villany, Hungary. This is the ideal terroir for great reds and, in the words of the illustrious Michael Broadbent, “the natural home of the cabernet-franc”. In 2006, another estate will follow, through a purchase shared with two friends. In France and organically farmed in the Cotes de Thongue: Les Chemins de Bassac. With a remarkable grape variety. White: roussanne and viognier. Red: grenache, syrah, mourvèdre, cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir. A new challenge awaited me here.
My attachment to the source, to the winegrowers, to the terroir, led me to go very far in informing, defending and illustrating. One day, I published a booklet entitled “Portrait of a Winegrower”. The winemaker was Jacques Perrin, a visionary, a man of unflappable toil, a savior of terroir and a defender of truth. To better understand and explain wine tasting, I translated and published Max Léglise’s book “Une initiation à la dégustation des grands vins”. Mail order was booming. Technical data sheets, tasting notes and food and wine pairings were, and still are, a bouquet of information. Real, good information was appreciated and paid for, but today it’s been replaced by stars and scores out of 100.
Over forty years in the mail order business, I’ve seen the influence of the press grow, an influence I was able to do without for over 30 years. But the press has now taken over for good. It has replaced and eliminated the erudite experts of the trade. “If you can’t beat them, join them”, and so I became a wine and gastronomy journalist/chronicler. Great wine has lost its expert in the trade network. The task of the external winemaker has been brilliantly taken over by the owners. Star consultant oenologists are there to perfect vinification and ageing. The wines have become better perhaps, certainly more concentrated, often less digestible. Fruit and wood have taken over, erasing terroir. The resemblance, the conformity, across all the ambitious wines of the world, surprises and shocks lovers of finesse, lace and intellec. Beauty by recipe. Recipes have replaced naturalness, sensibility and intuition. Recipes can be bought, sometimes at a high price. Investors don’t like the uncertain, the intuitive.
Only the top art markets still have their experts. It takes a character like François Mitjaville, owner of Chateaux Tertre Roteboeuf and Roc de Cambes, to rightly denounce this absence of experts with a deontology and ethics of the profession. The specialized press has become the source of information. Numerous studies, in-depth articles, interviews, horizontal, vertical, blind and open tastings are all available to interested parties. But overbidding, speculation and the unlimited greed of owners, brokers and allocation holders have made many of the wines featured in the specialist press unaffordable. The true connoisseur tastes the wine most desired by words, without being able to pigeonhole it. This is an act he must leave to the new Russian or Chinese billionaires.
It’s a reality. It’s also a miracle in the midst of a global wine crisis in which the famous are becoming better known and the lesser known more despised. For a journalist, it’s more tempting to rub shoulders with the stars, to make them shine even brighter, than to take an interest in those who perish in the stars’ shadows. The privilege of entering the false intimacy of the greats makes them radiant and a little blind. Good grades sell. Much more than good advice based on years of experience. Very good grades generate speculation, overbidding and greed. Every year, the distance between ratings that reduce sales and those that stimulate them narrows further.
For the owner of a Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, a score between 89 and 90 was enough to sell his crop well and, above all, quickly when the Parker scores first appeared. After that, it was a score of 93/100 and above. During the 2005 primeur campaign, a score of 96 out of 100 was needed to achieve the same effect. Nobody cares about medium- and long-term potential anymore. The pleasure of drinking, digestibility and the happy or unhappy marriage with a given dish. A website, a list with allocations and notes now form the backbone of the new wine merchant. His expertise is limited to recognizing the potential for price increases or the danger of price decreases. He has no need for words, but he is willing to paste press clippings onto his selections – that sells too.