Michel Rolland, the world’s most famous consultant winemaker, stopped by in London last week on his way back from Argentina to his base in Pomerol, Bordeaux. (He was off to see a client in India via his own winemaking venture in South Africa the day after.) He used his spare morning to present 13 of his wines made in four continents to a group of British wine writers, presumably partly to do something to counter all the negative publicity engendered by filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter in his controversial documentary Mondovino.
In the film – a commercial success in France, a critical one in the UK and general object of contempt in the US – the bearded Rolland is seen cackling demonically in the back of his black Mercedes and heard repeatedly telling his clients in various Bordeaux châteaux to employ micro-oxygenation, a technique that can soften young wine by bubbling tiny amounts of oxygen through it.
So what did he think of Mondovino, he was asked. “Mondovino? Well I don’t totally agree with the movie, not surprisingly,” Rolland cracked one of his ready, pre-cackle smiles. “It showed only a very small, unexciting part of my work. I’m not the greatest fan of micro-oxygenation in fact but Nossiter came on 12 oct 2002 – just at the end of the Bordeaux harvest. If you use micro-oxygenation, you have to use it between the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations. During that day I certainly told a few of my clients to use their microx. I said it twice but in the movie he repeats it to give the impression I tell everyone to use it. If you look carefully at the film there are repeated images of same property too.
“The guy has been really dishonest. On the sound track, for instance, he makes my voice seem stronger than it is. But,” he shrugged, “I do admit that I have a Mercedes and a driver. With all my professional tastings, lunch, dinner, and a blood alcohol limit now of 0.5 in France….” He shuddered. “I am 57. Jail is not for me.”
A hard-working Asian friend of mine, determined to pass the Master of Wine exams, spent a few days in Bordeaux with Rolland earlier this year. She was exhausted by the experience. Every working day began at 7.30 and his last appointment was at 7pm. “Like all successful people, he is a true workaholic. It was an amazing experience to watch him blending. I could see all the tense château owners, and the winemakers taking copious notes, while Michel spoke. He would taste various lots and then suggest the blend right there on the spot after tasting 20 to 30, sometimes more than 50, different components. I was barely able to taste through the high tannins and new oak to distinguish the difference in variety, but the winemaker would blend according to the suggested proportions and, voila! – the final blend was completely different from the individual components.”
That Michel Rolland is a magician is without doubt. That he is ubiquitous in the world of wine is also unquestionable. He specializes in extremely ripe, concentrated, velvety, often rather oaky red wines and, with a few assistants, counsels more than 100 clients, from Harlan Estate in the Napa Valley via Spain, Portugal and Italy to Grover Vineyards in the hills above Bangalore. From the oenology lab he and his wife Dany run in Pomerol he began giving winemaking advice to a few friends locally 25 years ago. One of his earliest commissions outside St Emilion and Pomerol on Bordeaux’s right bank was in California and it was much easier to win, he ruefully points out with his Pomerol paysan blood coming to the fore, than his first client on Bordeaux’s left bank, the supposedly haughty Médoc and Graves. “Even with a passport it’s difficult to get there,” he growled. Today he consults at some of the most famous classed growths of the Médoc and Graves – Chx Le<aa>oville Poyferre<aa>, Kirwan and Pape Cle<aa>ment, for example, although has been accused of making them taste like right bank wines.
As with his friend of the same glorious vintage 1947, American wine writer Robert Parker, what has been under discussion long before the advent of Mondovino is not the extent of his influence but whether it is a positive or negative thing for wine quality.
On the basis of my extensive blind tastings of red bordeaux every year (most recently earlier this month), on last week’s presentation of some of his babies in London, and on a fascinating blind tasting I attended a month ago in France which pitted some Rolland wines against the rest, I have my own views on this.
Outside Bordeaux I think he has been almost entirely beneficial. By drawing together the strings that hold the wine world together he has accelerated winemaking progress in countries such as Argentina, Chile and India quite extraordinarily. A wine producer in an underdeveloped region can, for the not inconsiderable cost of a Rolland consultancy, ride aboard one of the most sophisticated winemaking machines in the world. And the range of ingredients with which he can work – from Ornellaia on the Tuscan coast for example through Tinta do Toro in Spain to Pinotage in South Africa – is so vast that he could hardly be accused of imposing uniformity.
About his influence within the Bordeaux region I am much less convinced. Here he is working basically with three (related) grape varieties Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, with one climate and a fairly narrow range of soils and natural environments. Some of the wines he makes there I like, but many of them I can spot in a blind tasting as a Rolland wine rather than as, for example, a Listrac or a St Emilion. Homogeneity seems to me to be a danger rather than a virtue for red bordeaux. And I suspect furthermore that I am looking for red bordeaux that flowers at a more stately pace than most Rolland wines seem to.
But two things make Mondovino’s blatantly anti-Rolland theme both unnecessary and foolish. Firstly he is immensely likeable and is therefore widely liked, so makes an extremely unpopular target. Despite his obvious success, he has no airs and graces. He knows the world and exactly where he fits into it. His job, as he wearily points out, is to follow his clients’ instructions to make technically better wines that are easy to like (and, his detractors might claim, will win high Parker scores).
Secondly he is obviously extremely able. To make the style of wines he does, he has to use dangerously ripe grapes so, for example, brettanomyces spoilage yeast is a constant threat – especially since he eschews adding tartaric acid to reduce unusually high pH levels. He may have made some disastrous wines in his long career but none that I have heard of.
If his worst fault is to make a few wines too like each other, then arguably all that those who seek a bit more definition and distinction in their wines need to do is to seek out wines from the many thousands of producers around the globe who do not pay the Rolland shilling.
Where to taste Rolland
Ornellaia 2001 Bolgheri, Italy
Stunning Tuscan claret by any measure.
£75 a bottle Handford Fine Wines of London W11
Casa Lapostolle, Clos Apalta 2001 Colchagua Valley, Chile
Excellent vintage of this sumptuous rendition of Carmenère, Chile’s speciality, with some Cabernet Sauvignon.
£37.50 Booths, Fortnum & Mason, Harrods, Selfridges, top Sainsbury’s
Ch Belgrave 2000 Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux
Rolland consistently keeps this Dourthe left bank minor classed growth fresh yet appealing.
£24 Grand Vin of Hampshire
Clos de los Siete 2003 Mendoza, Argentina
The cheapest way to experience the full-on Rolland style, from a large wine estate of his own, with partners. You will love or loathe the sweetness.
£10-11 Majestic, Oddbins, top Waitrose stores
For stockists elsewhere see www.winesearcher.com