Michel Rolland (born December 24, 1947) is a Bordeaux-based oenologist, with hundreds of clients across 13 countries and influencing wine style around the world. "It is his consultancies outside France that have set him apart from all but a handful of his countrymen." It is frequently addressed that his signature style, which he helps wineries achieve, is fruit-heavy and oak-influenced, a preference shared by influential critic Robert Parker.
Vineyards at the Rolland family estate of Château Le Bon Pasteur in Pomerol.
Born into a wine making family in Libourne, Rolland grew up on the family's estate Château Le Bon Pasteur in Pomerol.[1] After high school, Rolland enrolled at Tour Blanche Viticultural and Oenology school in Bordeaux with his father's encouragement. Excelling in his studies, he was one of five student chosen by director Jean-Pierre Navarre to evaluate the program's quality against that of the prestigious Bordeaux Oenology Institute. Rolland later enrolled in the institute, where he met his wife and fellow oenologist, Dany Rolland, and graduated as part of the class of 1972.
At the institute, Michel Rolland studied under the tutelage of renowned oenologists Pierre Sudraud, Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon, Jean Ribéreau-Gayon, and Émile Peynaud. Rolland has said these men were a great influence upon him and considers them the "Fathers of Modern Oenology."
In 1973, Rolland and his wife bought into an oenology lab on the Right Bank of Bordeaux in the town of Libourne. They took over full control of the lab in 1976 and expanded it to include tasting rooms. By 2006 the Rolland's lab employed 8 full-time technicians, analyzing samples from nearly 800 wine estates in France each year.[2] Rolland's two daughters, Stéphanie & Marie, also work at the lab.
Michel Rolland's first clients included the Bordeaux Châteaux Troplong Mondot, Angélus, and Beau-Séjour Bécot. An early setback was the loss of two Saint-Émilion first growths, Château Canon and Château La Gaffelière, due to conflict in style with the owners and Rolland. According to Rolland, the loss "calmed him down" and brought him out of an awkward stage in his early career. Twenty years later, the two chateaux returned to be part of the more than 100 wineries who employ Michel Rolland as their consultant.
In his book Noble Rot: A Bordeaux Wine Revolution, William Echikson writes that before Michel Rolland became consultant to Château Lascombes, it "produced about 500,000 bottles of mediocre wine, about half of which was sold not as Lascombes itself, but as the inferior Chevalier de Lascombes." Today, Echikson contends, that even the Chevalier (the second wine of the estate) is better than the old full-fledged Lascombes.
Media exposure
Michel Rolland's signature on a bottle of the Argentine wine Yacochuya which Rolland owns as part of a joint venture in Cafayate.
Rolland features prominently in the critical 2004 documentary Mondovino by Jonathan Nossiter as an agent of wine globalization. In Mondovino, Rolland is seen on several occasions advising his clients to microoxygenate their wines, including a scene at Château Le Gay in Bordeaux. Since the film, Rolland has said that he is "not a fan of microoxygenation. The film suggests I am. Some of my clients inquire about it. It can help in special conditions — if the tannins are fierce or hard, micro-oxygenation can make them softer and rounder. In certain countries with certain terroir, like Chile or Argentina, I may use it." James Suckling, formerly of Wine Spectator, notes in an article about Rolland that "He is not a proponent of micro-oxidation in wine-making as some suggest, and never has been".[2]
Michel Rolland is also a wine making consultant for the Amphorae Winery in Israel (marketed as Makura in the United States) and has started signing his name to their premium Makura series. He visits Amphorae and their vineyards once a year and has his assistants throughout the year help implement his practices adopted by Amphorae's wine making team at the winery and in their vineyards.
The Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855 resulted from the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris, when Emperor Napoleon III requested a classification system for France's best Bordeaux wines that were to be on display for visitors from around the world. Brokers from the wine industry ranked the wines according to a château's reputation and trading price, which at that time was directly related to quality.
First Growth status is a classification of wines primarily from the Bordeaux region of France.
Bordeaux wine is produced in the Bordeaux region of southwest France, around the city of Bordeaux, on the Garonne River. To the north of the city the Dordogne River joins the Garonne forming the broad estuary called the Gironde; the Gironde department, with a total vineyard area of 110,800 hectares, is the largest wine growing area in France.
Margaux is a wine growing commune and Appellation d'origine contrôlée within Haut-Médoc in Bordeaux, centred on the village of Margaux. Its leading château is also called Margaux. It contains 21 cru classé châteaux, more than any other commune in Bordeaux.
Château Angélus, until 1990 known as Château L'Angélus, or simply L'Angélus, is a Bordeaux wine from the appellation Saint-Émilion, since 2012 ranked Premier grand cru classé (A) in the Classification of Saint-Émilion wine. The winery is located on the Right Bank of the Bordeaux wine region, in the commune of Saint-Émilion in the department Gironde.
The wine regions of Bordeaux are a large number of wine growing areas, differing widely in size and sometimes overlapping, which lie within the overarching wine region of Bordeaux, centred on the city of Bordeaux and covering the whole area of the Gironde department of Aquitaine.
Henri Enjalbert was a French professor of geography at the University of Bordeaux. He was considered an eminent specialist in wine geology, whose expert opinion frequently overlapped into the fields of oenology, and wine and terroir history, within the Bordeaux region and beyond. Among other credits, he has been called "Bordeaux's most diligent geologist" and "the discoverer of Mas de Daumas Gassac. Among his contentions are that Albania, the Ionian Islands of Greece, and southern Dalmatia in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina may have been the last European refuge of the grape vine after the Ice Age.
Château Beauregard is a Bordeaux wine estate from the appellation Pomerol. The winery is located on the Right Bank of the Bordeaux wine region, in the commune of Pomerol in the department Gironde. As all wine produced in this appellation, Château Beauregard is unclassified but the estate is estimated among the great growths of the region.
Pomerol is a French wine-growing commune and Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) within the Libournais in Bordeaux. The wine produced here is predominately from Merlot with Cabernet Franc playing a supporting role. Unlike most other Bordeaux communes, there is no real village of Pomerol, although there is a church. The houses are set among the vineyards.
André Lurton was a French winemaker and winery owner. It is also the name of his eponymous winemaking group in Bordeaux which was mostly owned by him and after his death only by his children.
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