A Conversation with Jean-Marie Fourrier - Part 3

This is the final post about my conversation with Jean-Marie Fourrier. It was an honor and a pleasure to interview him, and I hope that you've enjoyed reading about it.


BG: I want to ask you about farming. You have plots in more than 10 different vineyards, some of them not within walking distance of each other. I read about wine makers who say "My primary job is in the vineyard," and things like that. And I've been wondering, you cannot be every where in one day. How do you decide which vineyard you're going to work in on a given day?

JMF: During harvest I look at the forecast and I decide where to pick based on the weather. Chambolle might be three days less ripe than Gevrey, so I'll wait there. Also, it depends on the age of the vines - young vines are very energetic and grow faster. You cannot plan your whole week. I adapt my planning day by day with the weather. I can plan only what I'll do tomorrow. Now I have 4 people assisting me in the vineyards, which helps.

BG: What about during the rest of the year, before harvest, on a sunny day in June, for example?

JMF: I have 10 hectares, 100 thousand vines to look after. What people don't realize is that I will come to each individual vine 15-17 times every year. For pruning, pulling the canes, tying the Guyot on the wires, two or three times for debudding, three times or so during the growing season, checking wooden sticks and wires, and more. And that's not including the tractor or harvest. 15-17 times for every vine - that's a lot of manual labor. I just work with my team to make sure that every vine gets the right attention and work.

BG: Of those kinds of work, which is your favorite?

JMF: I still love all of those jobs. It's a cycle, every year begins with pruning and ends with harvest. I love being in New York like this, but I love going back to farming, being in my vineyards.

BG: Which of the jobs is your least favorite?

JMF: I guess pruning. It's the most difficult job. You are bending very low all day long in cold weather and fog, you go home frozen for lunch, but it's the first job of every vintage and you have to do it.

BG: Do your hands get scratched up?

JMF: Sometimes, but it's not so bad. The cellar work can be dangerous. In 2001 I fell off a vat while I was punching the cap and I broke discs in my back. That's how my grandfather died - they found him in the morning after he had fallen into a vat. He was on his own, punching the cap at 4:00 AM. It's a very dangerous job. One vat produces 10 times it's volume in carbon dioxide.

BG: That's really awful.

JMF: My grandfather isn't the only one. There are more than 10 people who have died that way in the past 10 years.

BG: Let's talk about something happier. Among your vineyards, which is the most beautiful spot?

JMF: For me it is Combes aux Moines, in the northern part of Gevrey, near Clos St. Jacques. There is a 180 degree view. You can see to Dijon and almost to Beaune. It is a rock amphitheater that was planted in 1928. In the summer it keeps the heat and you must work it in the morning because there are snakes sleeping there in the mid day. I've seen foxes there in the morning, and in winter sometimes boar.

BG: Is there a vineyard that you don't currently have, where you'd really love to be working?

JMF: Chambertin is a place I would love to make wine, the terroir is fantastic. The soils are very different from Griotte. Griotte is lower on the slope. The etymology of the word Griotte is crais, meaning chalk. Griotte-Chambertin, Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet, Les Cras in Chambolle - it's all from the same word.

BG: Do you read magazines or blogs? What type of wine criticism is meaningful to you?

JMF: I read what the critics write because I'm curious. I'm always honest with them. French critics, you know, do not visit cellars. We're supposed to send them sample bottles and then they have 100 wines on the table. That's not a good way to taste. I never give bottles for that, I prefer to receive people in the cellar. I export 99% of my wine because I'm unknown in France - I don't submit bottles. The way they taste, I won't do it. It's like going to a restaurant and trying 100 beef Bourgignon - the one you like the best is the one with chili peppers in the recipe.

BG: Wait a minute - no one buys your wine in France?

JMF: It's true, no one knows my wines there. I export almost all of it.

BG: Amazing. Do you personally drink wines from other places? What do you like to drink?

JMF: I love Oregon wines, particularly Drouhin, Ponzi, and Adelsheim - all of the pioneers, really. If you age those wines 10-15 years and serve them blind, they'll really surprise you. I also drink Austrian Riesling a lot, and of course Chassagne Montrachet too.

BG (flipping through notebook, looking for questions he meant to ask): What about climate change - do you think it is an issue in Burgundy?

JMF: My grandmother said that nature has a cycle of 60-80 years. We judge the world today in very short terms. Last December in Burgundy it was -10 degrees Celsius. This winter it was -15 degrees. Winters now are closer to the 1970's when I was a kid. Another thing that's changed is the temperature during the growing season - it is 1.3 degrees higher than it was when I was a kid. That's like moving Burgundy 180 kilometers further south to Lyon, north of the Rhône. The consequence is that there is no spring frost, as there used to be. There has been no spring frost in Chablis for the last 15 years. But there are more hailstorms in the summer, the summer weather is more unpredictable. Is it global warming? Cannot tell in this short of a time. You have to ask in 100 years, not three or four years.

BG: Do you hope that your kids take over Domaine Fourrier one day?

JMF: It's a job of passion. You cannot do things well without passion. I want them to travel the world, and if they want to come back and make wine because they love making wine, then great. But what's the point of giving something to children that really is a chore?


Thanks for reading.

A Conversation with Jean-Marie Fourrier - Part 2

When I left off, Jean-Marie Fourrier was about to describe what he changed about the Domaine Fourrier wines, since the days when his father made the wine. He said that it began with the 1997 vintage...


JMF: It was 1998 and I'm tasting my 1997 wines and I thought the wines were fragile, with such purity and beauty. In the 1997 vintage everyone racked after malolactic fermentation. I didn't want to rack the wines. My father, who always watched what I was doing, said "No one else is doing that, I never did that."

BG: He was worried. Were you worried too?

JMF: Yes, a bit. Wine school teaches you all the fears of what can go wrong. Take filtering and fining, for example. The wine school definition of filtration that I learned is this - 'filtration is the acceleration of the process of sedimentation.' To me, that meant that if I do nothing, sedimentation will happen anyway. There are two sides to everything - tradition is great and I do a lot of things like my dad did them, but sometimes I don't know why I do it that way. I do things differently if I think there is a better way.

BG: So, what did you say to your father when he didn't like your idea about not racking the 1997's?

JMF: I said that I thought racking might do them more harm than good. I would leave them on the sediment, and if they start to taste wrong, I'll rack them. If not, I'll continue to leave them on the sediment.

BG: What happened?

JMF: They tasted fine, we left the wines on the sediment, and the wines have held up very well. I learned that carbon dioxide, a byproduct of malolactic fermentation, protects the wines against oxidation and I didn't need to add much sulfites. The balance of the protection can come from CO2. And something happened that made me wonder. When you rack a barrel of wine after after 9 months, after malo, you remove 7-9 liters of sediment. But when I racked my wines in 1998 after not disturbing them at all for 18 months, I had only 4-5 liters of sediment to remove. Where had the rest gone? It's as though the wine re-absorbed the sediment!

BG: Was this a theory of yours, a philosophy that you wanted to enact with wine?

JMF: No, no, no. I just thought the '97s seemed perfect without racking. I was not sure what would happen and I tried it. Even with the 1998's when I did the same thing, I was not sure what would happen and was not operating with a new philosophy. I was trying to make the best wine that I could. I tasted the wines and thought "that's what I want to drink myself, that's the wine that I want to share." And by the way, 1998 was a much different vintage, warmer than 1997, riper, the tannins sometimes were overripe and could dominate the purity and the elegance of Pinot. Today I prefer the 1997's, they have amazing freshness. Even after the 1998's were made, I didn't say that I had a new philosophy. I was just seeing what works.

BG: Was there anyone in Burgundy that you could talk to as you were thinking about this? In retrospect you know it was a great decision and your wines are defined by this amazing purity. But it must have been nerve-wracking back then. Was there someone you could ask for advice?

JMF: Really, no. There was only my father's generation to talk to and for the reasons I talked about earlier, they didn't share information like that. My generation went to school together. We were friends, we tasted in each others' cellars, we opened bottles together, we really got to know each other. I would bring a friend over and my father would take me aside and say "What are you doing with him here? Isn't he such and such a wine maker's son?" I would say "Yes dad, and now we help each other and it's good for everyone." No one is copying their neighbor, wine making in Gevrey-Chambertin is still very personal. We still swap bottles, still see each other for tastings.

BG: So you were kind of on your own in 1998, making those decisions.

JMF: Yes. Well, I was reading Jules Chauvet when I started to age wine on the lees. He said that it is not the free sulfites that are dangerous in wine, but the total sulfites. The cumulative effect of all of the sulfites from the day the fruit comes into the fermenting room. You put sulfites in the fermentation room, and then a bit more for the long, cold maceration, which is something you do to extract more from the fruit (the sulfites break the skins), and at the end, you have increased levels of sulfites in the wine. Sulfites for wine are like drugs for people. If you start with big doses, the addiction comes faster. The free sulfites combine with polyphenols and stop protecting the wine against oxidation.

BG: Phenols, like in tannins from skins and pits?

JMF: Yes, the free sulfites combine with them and stop protecting the wine. Then, during elevage, the wine requests more sulfites for protection. If you start with a very small dose, the need stays very small. Chauvet said that the combined phenol/sulfites in your glass are broken up by your stomach acids and become free sulfites again! This is when sulfite levels become quite high and you get a headache.

BG: So what's the best way to do it?

JMF: The best way to use less sulfites is to do it like our grandfathers did it. Use older casks, don't rack the wines or stir the lees, let the natural CO2 protect the wines. It's the new wood, by the way, that needs the sulfites first, as new wood is more porous.

BG: So do you add sulfites to your wines?

JMF: I use a tiny bit in the fermenting room and a tiny bit at bottling, that's it. I don't rack my wines and I don't stir the lees. But to do that, you need a cold and humid cellar. You know, there are people now who say "I rack my wines but I keep the fine lees." They're racking the clear wine and then pouring the fine lees on top of the racked wine, into the new barrel. That mixes the lees, the same as stirring. I never mix, never rack. My wines spend 16-18 months with no disturbing them. The more you are a biologist, the less you have to be an oenologist.

BG: So in with time and success, it's become a philosophy for you.

JMF: Yes. And I'm still thinking about it and still learning.


To be continued...

A Conversation with Jean-Marie Fourrier - Part 1

Jean-Marie Fourrier of Domaine Fourrier was in town recently for the big La Paulée event and I was honored to spend a few hours talking with him one morning. Fourrier makes wine mostly in Gevrey-Chambertin, and also owns plots in Chambolle and Morey St. Denis. His wines are prized for their incredible purity and transparency, and also for their combination of intensity and grace. I've noticed that when I ask a Burgundy lover to name their favorite producers, Fourrier is on everyone's short list. And this is interesting because although the Domaine is quite old, it is only in the last 15 years or so that the wines have experienced a resurgence in the United States.

I did my very best to record everything faithfully during this interview. I did not use a tape recorder, instead taking careful notes. What follows is a paraphrasing of Jean-Marie's comments during our conversation (and sometimes a paraphrasing of myself, for the sake of condensation).

BG: When you were a kid, were your friends the children of wine growers?

JMF: I grew up in Gevrey-Chambertin, village of 3,000 people. Some of my friends were not involved in wine, and some were. But I didn't ask a lot of questions of people. You know, the trauma of World War II was not that far away. My father was born in 1943 and when he grew up he was told not to talk to his neighbors. His parents would say "This one was cooperating with the Germans, that one didn't want to give us a rabbit when we were starving for food." Everyone stayed private and this really affected the people of my father's generation. It remains with them today.

BG: Did your father like being a wine maker?

JMF: Not at all. My dad lost his father when he was 14. He wanted to be a mechanic. At 14, after his father died, he was told "Go make wine with your uncle." All his life he made wine out of obligation, not out of pleasure. He still to this day wished that he could have been a mechanic.

BG: That's hard to imagine.

JMF: He's my tractor driver now, my best employee! He'll be 70 in two years.

BG: So, how did yo get into making wine?

JMF: For my generation, we all had to go to wine school in Beaune in the 1980's. But I wanted to be a pilot, I studied for it. In 1990 there was an economic crisis and the airlines weren't recruiting, so there was no point in continuing. I did one year in the army, it was an obligation in France at the time. I was based in Dijon, I was a truck driver, driving things up north to go to the Air Force during the first Gulf War. When that was finished I worked for my father. He always told me "Do whatever you want, do what you love. Don't come into the wine industry because it's crazy." But I worked for him for two years, and it was a difficult relationship. I decided to work in Oregon for the Drouhins. I wanted to go to the US, to learn English, to get far away from my parents. I stayed for 8 months, lived in Veronique Drouhin's house, used her car, and all that. I was a cellar worker, punching the cap, doing everything like that. I was a trainee. Suddenly, I realized the privilege of having a winery in Burgundy, and it took having some distance from Burgundy for that to happen. I suddenly understood the beauty and the potential of it, I saw where I came from with a different eye.

BG: So you wanted to go back?

JMF: Well, I had become critical of my culture. "The French are always on strike," things like that. I loved the US and I wanted to stay and work here, but if I didn't go back, five generations of business would end, no one would take over. I went home and I wasn't expecting it but my dad really missed me and he said "I've been working here since I was 14 years old. It's your turn now. You are in charge of everything now. Just let me drive my tractor."

BG: So one day you're in Oregon, and the next you've taken over an estate in Burgundy.

JMF: Yes, and it's unusual in Burgundy. Usually the father likes to keep control, and the son inherits the business when he's about 40 years old. I was 23 years old in 1994, my first vintage. I was scared.

BG: How were the Fourrier wines thought of at that point in 1994, when you took over?

JMF: My dad is one of the least diplomatic men you can meet, and the reputation of the wines suffered because of this. Fourrier wines had been imported to the United States for years, but then in 1986 Robert Parker came to visit my father and he said "You should use 100% new oak on your wines." My father kicked him out of the cellar and said to him "My job is to make wine, your job is to taste it, not to tell me how to make it."

BG: That can't have ended well.

JMF: No, it didn't. Parker wrote that Fourrier's is the dirtiest cellar in Burgundy, that the yields are way too high, that the wines are not worth looking at. The reputation suffered and we stopped shipping wines to the US, as no one wanted them. When I took over in 1994 there were five vintages in the cellar! I had to get rid of the stock and make some money, so I sold the wines in supermarkets. I would go in by day and stand there, promoting the wines. I drove to Belgium, a 6 hour drive, tried to sell wine, and drove back the same night to avoid the hotel cost.

BG: You're telling me that you stood in a supermarket next to the cheese and meat displays, probably, pouring Fourrier wine, hoping people would buy it? That is honestly very hard for me to imagine, given the way your wines sell now.

JMF: Yes, but that's exactly what I did in 1994.

BG: So how did things change for you?

JMF: Well, I was good friends with Romain Lignier (wine maker at Domaine Lignier who tragically died of cancer in 2004 at the young age of 34). Romain told me that his US importer was looking for a new supplier in Gevrey-Chambertin, and asked if I would like to receive him. Neal Rosenthal came to visit in 1996 and he tasted the wines and said that the wine was good, but not overly exciting. He was tasting the 1995's. He said that I had potential and that we should start working together with the '95 vintage. This cash allowed me to buy important new equipment, like a cooling system for the vats, better pumps, and I invested in replacing some of the older barrels.

BG: Interesting, why replace old barrels? I thought that you don't use a lot of new oak.

JMF: I don't - I use 20% new oak for all of my wines, from the Villages to the Griottes-Chambertin. But the barrels I replaced were 15 and 16 years old. For each cuvée I try to have one new cask, one 2-year old barrel, one 3-year old barrel, and so on. I like to turnover the casks without imparting oak aromas or flavors to the wine.

BG: Okay, so once you started working with Rosenthal, you invested in new equipment. What happened after that?

JMF: Well, once I could stop worrying about selling my wine, I spent a lot more time making the wine, I did a lot of work in the vineyards. My father always watched what I was doing and noticed any changes I made, and he would ask me about them.

BG: Was there a big change?

JMF: I think so, yes. It started with the 1997 vintage...


To be continued...

A Conversation with Neal Rosenthal - Part 3

This is the final post about my conversation with Neal Rosenthal. It was a great experience for me to spend time with him, and I hope that you've enjoyed reading about it.

We talked a bit more as we finished our lunch.

BG: So if you don't do trade tastings, how do you get the word out about your wines? How do you grow your business?

NR: The best publicity is word of mouth and longevity. I've been doing this for over 30 years and I've hung around by doing a really good job, and by respecting the customer, by the quality of service that I offer. I've been able to make a nice living doing something that I adore, and without compromising my principles.

BG: Aren't there a load of new restaurants opening all the time, places with local and artisinal sensibilities? How do you draw new venues into the fold?

NR: That's why we added Clarke (Boehling), the first new sales rep I've hired in seven years. We realized that we wanted to get everywhere that we should be, and Clarke is helping us do that.

BG: I don't know how anyone can keep up with all of the changes.

NR: You know, I think that young consumers and young people in the wine trade have been cheated out of opportunities to drink old wine. I remember when the great old restaurants in the city like Lutece and La Caravelle would buy their bottles of Bordeaux, and they would put it directly into their cellars. They bought the wine but they had no intention of selling it for years. They wouldn't even put it on the list! That's not happening anymore and it's really a shame. And it's part of why wine is made differently now. Wine is made to drink young now, to gobble down. They relax the tannins, keep the acids low, bring the fruit forward. There's no point in aging those wines, and now it's hard to find old wine that's been stored properly.

BG: Do you keep old bottles of your wines?

NR: Yeah, we can go down and have a look in my cellar in a little while.

BG: (Wiping drool from mouth) That would be awesome. So have you ever had experiences where you like a wine and want to import it, but you think that people won't buy it?

NR: Of course, but I usually buy the wines anyway. You go out and find an audience for the wine. Especially now that my customers are so savvy, so experienced. My Swiss wines, for example. It's hard to sell a $30 bottle of Swiss wine. How many Swiss restaurants are there to sell it to?

BG: Are you successful with those wines?

NR: Not yet, but we will be. It's exciting to work with a group of people growing those grapes and making those unique wines. Eventually people will drink them and find joy in them. And listen, you can have convictions, and still be wrong. I believe in these wines and I enjoy the challenge, so I do it.

BG: I want to ask your opinion on a few hot-button issues, of late. What's your take on the Natural Wine phenomenon?

NR: To become obsessive is bad. What point does it make when you open a Lapierre Morgon without sulfur and the wine is undrinkable? What's the purpose of that? If my sense is that the vineyards are taken care of, if I know the person who grows the grapes and I like them, I'm satisfied. You can go too far with these things...

BG: What about the debate over shipping wines over state lines?

NR: I think it's a phony issue. There is a viability to the three-tier system. Distributors have a role to play because they get out on the street. They're the ones who open the wines for potential customers, they make sure the wines are placed, they take the re-order.

BG: But if I were to move to a state that doesn't allow out of state shipping, I couldn't buy your wines, for example.

NR: Yes, there should be a more open market, but access to wines happens because one person in Memphis demands a wine, other people too, and then a distributor buys the wines.

BG: I guess so. What are the things that you still want to accomplish in your business?

NR: Hmmm. (Thinks for a moment). I'd like to fine tune the portfolio, to ensure that our growers are making wine the way we're used to, that they're not compromising.

And with that, we started walking through the house to the stairs that lead to Neal's underground personal wine cellar.

ND: By the way, what are your hobbies outside of wine?

NR: I'm a long distance runner and I'm quite serious about it. I'm an age-group winner in a half-marathon and I've run several marathons. I've been politically involved, but I'm giving that up in frustration. I still love to write, and farming - I spend a lot of time on that now. And I love to follow my daughter's career, she's the editor of the National Interest journal. Her name is Justine Rosenthal.

BG: How did you get into beekeeping?

NR: Some of the winemakers I work with keep bees and I always found it fascinating. A few years ago I decided to try it myself.

BG: What's your take on the mass bee die-off a few years ago?

NR: There are lots of scientific theories about that, but I think it's pretty simple, actually. Here's what's actually happening with the bees. There are people who keep bees and they travel around the country with the seasons, and sell their services to farms all along the way. We are overworking them, plain and simple. They travel all the time and work all the time, and that's not the way it was meant to be. The more they work, the weaker they become, and the more susceptible to disease.

We walked into the wine cellar, a large room with two aisles, gravel floors, and cement slabs for shelves. there are boxes piled up and piles of wine in the shelves. It's a beautiful thing. And it is not temperature controlled - Neal says that because it's underground, it's not necessary to regulate the temperature.

BG: Oh, so those are just some magnums of Carillon Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet.

NR: That's very good wine.

BG: Man, nice Gaudichots!

NR: Do you know about Gaudichots? It was part of La Tâche, but then DRC bought most of it up and had it re-classified as Grand Cru. Gaudichots is a great vineyard.

BG: It must be so much fun to have a cellar like this.

NR: Yes, it really is.

Thanks for reading.

A Conversation with Neal Rosenthal - Part 2

More conversation with Neal Rosenthal:

Finished with our tour of the grounds, we went inside the house for a look around. Neal showed me his root cellar, where he grabbed a bunch of his potatoes for our lunch. There were rows of jarred tomato sauce and other preserves, made from the fruits of his farm.

Also many rows of Italian food products - anchovies, honeys, olive oils, and more.

NR: These are food and cooking products that we import from Italy. I haven't figured out how to sell them yet (he shrugs).

BG: (picking up a jar of utterly beautiful rosy pink anchovy fillets) These look beautiful! Are they for cooking or for eating?

NR: I cook with them, but you could just eat them.

Then we passed a large shelf where 50 or more bottles of wine stood.

NR: These are wines that we'll drink soon.

BG: Nice! I have a bottle of that wine, the 2004 Pradeaux.

NR: The Longue Garde?

BG: Yup. I have the regular wine too.

NR: The Longue Garde is a very special wine. It's made only in the best vintages, and it's old vines pure Mourvedre. It's a spectacular wine (he smiles).

At that moment, and via that exchange, I felt like I understood something about Neal Rosenthal that cannot come through simply by reading this dialogue. He was genuinely happy. Perhaps because I have the wine, perhaps because he enjoys telling people about his wine, but it seemed to me, that he was happy just because the wine exists.

BG: You'll taste these all in the next few weeks?

NR: Kerry and I drink a bottle of wine with dinner every night. We have to drink our wines in order to see where they go, to keep up with them. They are evolving constantly and I need to understand them. I've made a career on tasting wines young and having a sense of whether they will age well, or be better young, but I have to check on them to follow their development.

BG: Do you drink wines from outside of your own portfolio?

NR: Of course. It is the height of hubris to think that your own wines are the best or among the best wines if you don't drink the other wines.

Now we walked upstairs and through the living room, into the kitchen. Neal told me to sit down at the table, and he began to make lunch.

He opened a bottle of wine for us to share, the 2005 François Gaunoux Meursault 1er Cru La Goutte D'Or. He began washing and cutting potatoes, and cooking them in a cast iron pan. He seasoned them simply with salt, pepper, and a bit of dried red chili flakes. Neal made the egg batter for our omelets, and we talked some more while he cooked.

I noticed that there were no lights on in the house. There was no need - it was a sunny day and the windows allowed in a lot of natural light. We didn't discuss this, but I'm sure that he enjoys not having to turn on the lights.

BG: So, do you read about wine on the internet?

NR: I do, but not so much. The thing is, I'd rather read online than read the boring repetitive useless stuff that the critics write in those magazines, you know the ones, they come out every three months or so. Their wine vocabulary encompasses 20 descriptors and a point score. That is useless. Wines shouldn't be written about that way. They write only about the physical characteristics of a wine, but they don't discuss the exuberance and joy of drinking the wine.

BG: So what are the internet sites that you like?

NR: There are a few, but you know, on the other hand, a lot of what's online can be fairly uneducated and that can be dangerous. I'm occasionally tempted to write a response when I think that some one is misunderstanding a wine, misinterpreting it. But I don't because once you do that, it becomes argumentative and that's not where I want to be.

BG: So how do you keep building your wine knowledge?

NR: By tasting and drinking. I cannot spend as much time tasting as I used to, there's just not a lot of time. Most of the tasting I do is in Europe with growers, the growers I work with and others who I don't work with too.

BG: I know that you don't do trade tastings. Can you tell me your thoughts about that?

NR: The only way to understand what we do is face to face, not in a mass group tasting experience. We like to get 10-12 people together and drink wine, talk about it. If you have hundreds of people in a room sipping and spitting hundreds of wines, what's the point of that? You cannot understand our wines that way. Not only don't I need to do tastings like that, I despise them. They reduce wine to the most base commercial level.

Neal stopped cooking and looked at me.

NR: We have to protect what's best about wine. It is ancient in our civilization, it is a perfect mix of the intellectual and the sensual, it enriches our lives. The beauty of great wine is that it lives inside of you after you've had it. It's a stimulus for memory. What it tasted like, but more importantly, what it made you feel, why you drank it, what you talked about while drinking it, and with whom. Wine is a social event, not fodder for criticism.

We sat down to lunch. There is no yellow or orange food coloring in that omelet - the eggs were very fresh.

NR: Do you like the wine?

BG: I really do. When you opened it I could smell it before you even poured it.

NR: It's very old-school.


To be continued...

A Conversation with Neal Rosenthal - Part I

Almost a year ago now, I interviewed Becky and Peter Wasserman. It was a great experience - I learned a tremendous amount and I feel like I helped to share a tiny bit of an interesting story. Recently I had a similar opportunity. I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon at Mad Rose Ranch, the domain of wine importer Neal Rosenthal. He kindly opened his home to me and we walked around, ate, drank, and talked.

I did my very best to record everything faithfully. I did not use a tape recorder, instead taking careful notes. What follows is a paraphrasing of his comments during our conversation (and sometimes a paraphrasing of myself, for the sake of condensation).

Before I get into our talk, though, I want to share a few preliminaries. Neal Rosenthal has worked in the wine business for 34 years. He shared the story of those 34 years in his book, Reflections of a Wine Merchant. He has been interviewed before too - many times.

My point is, although I'm very excited to share with you the things I learned, I'm not trying to suggest that I can condense 34 years of bold work into three blog posts. So take this as what it is - I spent a few hours talking with the guy in his home. We got along really well, and I'm going to try to paint a picture of him as I understand him to be.

It was a gorgeous fall day and the countryside near Neal's ranch looked impossibly lovely. We walked through a few of his 57 acres together before we began the interview. He met me outside of his house, a former barn that he and his life/work partner Kerry renovated and built onto.

I wanted to meet him at his house instead of calling him or meeting him during one of his NYC visits, because Neal Rosenthal's home is interesting, and it's a big part of who he is. He is an old school and iconic wine importer who lives on a ranch somewhere in mid-state New York.

He keeps bees and chickens. He grows a lot of his own food. He has strong opinions about things and knows exactly how he wants to live, how he wants to interact with the world.

Neal is comfortable with himself and seems not to be interested in whether or not other people share his opinions. He emits what I can honestly describe as a child-like joy in showing the visitor around his home and property. "We try to grow everything from seed," he says. "Here is where we do a lot of it," pointing out a small greenhouse.

He wasn't always a country boy, however. Neal is 65 years old, and he spent the first 9 years of his life in Manhattan, in the eastern part of the upper east side, away from Madison and Park avenues, east of the third avenue elevated subway line. His father owned and worked at a pharmacy on Lexington Avenue off 72nd Street and his mother worked there also. The family moved to Teaneck, New Jersey when Neal was 9, and he grew up there, attending high school and college nearby. His parents kept the pharmacy, and his father commuted to Manhattan.

BG: What did you do before you were in the wine business?

NR: When I was in college I thought I'd be in government. I was a politically aware guy - I come from a classic eastern European Jewish family and I had socialist ideas. I majored in history and I thought I'd be a history professor. Then, for reasons that I still don't fully understand, I went to Columbia University for law school. I did exceptionally well - I was on the law review. After school I worked at a big corporate firm doing corporate international tax law.

BG: Why did you leave that work?

NR: The theory was challenging but the practice wasn't so interesting. I didn't have the feeling that I was serving a bigger purpose. I worked for 7 years in that job, got married, had a daughter. But I was miserable and in the end I spent more time daydreaming than doing my work. I knew I wouldn't make partner, and one day they told me "Neal, you're not going to make partner," so I decided it was time to leave.

BG: And what happened?

NR: I left my job, got divorced around the same time, and wanted to write fiction. But I had to pay alimony and I had to find a way to make a couple of bucks because I knew that you couldn't make money writing fiction.

BG: So you got into the wine business to make money.

NR: Not at all, I never got into this to make money. I never could have imagined this, what I have now. My father had a pharmacy, and in those days a pharmacy had a luncheonette, a long counter and you could eat lunch there or have a soda at the fountain. At some point my father sold the pharmacy and kept the luncheonette, which he then converted into a liquor store because he thought it would be easier to make money. I bought it from him and tried to make a couple of bucks while making it as a writer. We never drank wine at home, but the upper east side was a high class neighborhood and we had to sell wine.

BG: How long was it before you fell in love with wine?

NR: Not long at all. Working retail, everyone wants to sell to you. You see lots of wine, you make choices, you see all of the crap that's out there, you see some of the good stuff. This was when wine was much cheaper than it is now and I could drink some of the greatest wines in the world.

BG: And so how did you go from selling wine out of an old pharmacy on the upper east side to becoming an importer?

NR: I'd read these wonderful things that Frank Schoonmaker wrote about an appellation and its wines, I'd find the wines, and they didn't move me. Have you read Frank Schoonmaker?

BG: No.

NR: You really should read him. AJ Liebling too. These guys weren't describing how wines taste. They wrote about their travels, and what they were doing and thinking about when they drank a wine, who they drank it with and why it meant something to them. You really ought to read these guys.

BG: Okay (makes a note in little book).

NR: Anyway, the wines I tasted in NYC didn't move me, so I went to Europe to find the wines that moved those guys. In January of 1980 I went to Piedmonte and I drank the wines of Luigi Ferrando and DeForville, and I brought the wines back to America. Now 34 years later I am still working with both of these families, and I am very proud of our long and loyal relationship.

BG: That is a long working relationship.

NR: It is. You don't see a lot of this anymore. There are a couple of other folks, like Kermit Lynch and Bob Chadderdon, who are old school like this, who started the way I did. They have a real identity, they know who they are, they're not trying to be something to everyone, they buy the wines they want to put their names on, the wines they like to drink.

BG: So, what do you do that works, how do you run your business?

NR: I buy the wine, ship it, store it, and sell it. That's what I do. It's a capital intensive business, but it's the right way to do business. You have to pay your bills on time. You have to...are you Jewish?

BG: And how!

NR: You have to be a mensch.

BG: So what's the other model? How are other people doing it?

NR: They ask a producer to hold 50 cases for them, to reserve the wine. They don't commit to buying it. They try to sell the wine, and once it's sold they pay for it. That's not what I do. I buy wine up front, and then I bring it here and store it and sell it. I have a big warehouse in Queens where I store wine. I pay to store wine while I sell it, and if something doesn't sell, so what? If I have some great Burgundies that wait three or four years in the warehouse before I sell them, so what? They get better.

BG: But you're taking a risk buying the wine up front, right? You have to be very careful in picking which wines you buy.

NR: Yes, of course. I cannot have three thousand cases of cheap white wine hanging around, that's a big loss. I have to buy carefully. When you put your hand in your pocket and spend that money, you have to be disciplined, to know what you're buying.

BG: Come to think of it, you don't really have many cheap whites in your portfolio...

NR: You have to understand, I've never had a contract in my life - ever. It's all handshakes. I started by buying 25 cases of Sancerre from Lucien Crochet - that's 300 bottles of wine. I took the wine and 90 days later, I paid him. That's the way I do business, and I have to know what I'm buying.


To be continued...

Conversation with Becky Wasserman - Part 3

This wraps up my recreation of our conversation, and I hope it's been half as interesting and edifying to read as it was to actually sit and talk with Becky and Peter.

BG: What is the biggest change in Burgundy from 30 years ago until now?

BW: It's a generational change. The kids went to viticulture school and their equipment and wine making is super clean. Clean is an inexact word, because when you walk into the cellars they're still covered in the beautiful furry mold, but everything is clean. And they're interning with wineries all around the world. They taste at each others places now - Roumier, Grivot, and others, they go to each others' places for lunch and to taste. That wasn't common in the old days. Another issue is land pricing. Real estate price is now more important than the revenue you can earn from the wine on it. Land is so expensive in Burgundy now that its out of the hands of Burgundians, and that was never the case. You have to have financial backers if you're buying decent land in Burgundy.

PW: There has been change in the wine making too. There were pioneers - Lafon, Roumier, Arlot, Dujac - their first focus was on achieving a base level of cleanliness (Becky again doesn't exactly agree with the word 'clean'), but then they realized that you don't make a wine in the winery, you make better wine with a better vineyard and a better plant.

BG: Where do you stand on organics and biodynamics?

BW: We check the biodynamic calendar before opening a fine wine.

PW: (Chuckles) Yeah, but we have no dogma on this. You don't have to be biodynamic for us to work with you or to make great wine, there are no technical requirements. We never say to wine makers that they should do this or do that with their wines. The biggest intervention we ever have is to introduce a young wine maker to another wine maker whose wines we like, and hope that they hit it off.

BG: What in your view is the biggest threat to Burgundy as we know it?

BW: My 4:00 AM fear is that genetically modified yeasts will take over.

BG: You mean the yeasts that you can buy in bags at wine making stores?

BW: No, not just the industrial ones, genetically modified yeasts. Yeasts are invasive and they have a lot to do with the taste of wine. Each vineyard can have its own yeasts, and that's a lot of the taste of the wine from that place. I'm afraid of the market pressures that result when people say 'We don't want to wait 10 years to drink this wine, we want to drink it quickly,' for example. Yeasts used for things like this can take over the taste of wine.

BG: You've done 30 years in this business. What are your goals for the future?

BW: (Without hesitation) To spend more time in the vineyards. To stand there, to absorb, to look around, to touch, to feel.

BG: You want to work the vineyards? What would you do there?

BW: (Looks at Peter and speaking French, asks him how to say a word that sounds like 'Resourcée')

PW: You want to be a resource for them.

BW: Yes. I want to be in the vineyards more.

PW: I want to find a way to communicate more effectively, to create educational opportunities. I've been working with people on a project in New Orleans, the Independent Champagne & Sparkling Wine Invitational, and I'm really excited about it. I want to create more opportunities like this to showcase the kind of wines we believe in and to help educate people.

BG: How do you feel about blogs and other new media in the realm of wine writing?

PW: Blogs need to be more accountable. The blogosphere is helping to perpetuate the fallacy that flaws can be terroir. I've had wines that are flawed - plain and simple, but I'm seeing a small niche in the blogosphere that is confusing these flaws with terroir. Many bloggers just don't have enough classic tasting knowledge to be able to understand the difference between funky wines that show terroir and flawed wine. On the other hand, it's much harder to get things into Wine Spectator than it is to get things into blogs.

BW: I like the blogs. There are some you want to read because their voice appeals to you, others don't. I'm glad that there's a lot of wine talk out there.

BG: What do you find yourselves drinking these days when you're drinking wine?

PW: We get equally excited drinking Passetoutgrains as we do drinking Clos de Chênes. It depends on the food we're eating. If we're having a simple Sunday roast chicken lunch, we drink Passetoutgrains or Bourgogne and we love it - those are great wines. For me it's about context and about the wine being ready to drink.

BW: Yes, that's very important. Drinking Grand Cru or 1er Cru wines when they're young is a shame. Young wines are like young people - they haven't found their personalities yet.

BW and PW: (Plaintively) Can we go now?

BG: Yes, and thank you for talking with me

Conversation with Becky Wasserman - Part 2

More conversation with Becky and Peter Wasserman:

BG: By the way, thanks for spending so much time talking with me.

BW: It's my pleasure. All of this is pre-obituary and it's good for me to do.

BG: (Nervous laughter, followed by throat clearing and vigorous subject-changing) So, I'd like to learn about pricing in Burgundy. How do you decide the prices for each bottle?

PW: We don't, we're sent a price list each year and that's basically it. If we feel that we want to change the prices some, we can work with the producers on that. We might feel like we want to come down on the villages pricing, and to compensate we'll go up on the 1er Crus, for example.

BG: Are you selecting the barrels that you want and the wines that you want?

PW: No, we're given an allocation and that's what we take.

BG: Why would you want to adjust the pricing - why down on the villages, for example?

BW: You have to understand something - it is always easy to sell the top wines. The Grand crus and the top 1er Crus sell out very quickly, there's never a problem. Even in off vintages, even in a recession, these wines sell. Restaurants buy them, good retailers buy them, there's just never a problem. It's the everyday wines, the Villages wines, the Bourgognes, that are hard to sell. It takes 3 visits a year from me and eight months on the road for Peter to find the right home for those wines every year.

BG: Wow, I'm surprised to hear that. I guess I understand that Lafarge's Clos de Chênes should always be a pretty easy sell, but you're saying that his villages Volnay, and his Bourgogne are tough?

PW: Always. People buy based on the lofty reputation of the wines and not on what's good to drink in the near term, what's appropriate for current drinking.

BG: Can you give me an example of how this works with one of your producers?

PW: Take Freddy Mugnier. I can sell Musigny and Amoureuses no problem. Marechale, which I think is one of the best Nuits st. Georges 1er Crus out there, that wine is very hard to sell. His Villages Chambolle, which is a blend of young vines from great vineyards (he said which ones but I didn't note them), always a hard sell. And this is great wine - I 'm always super excited to drink Freddy Mugnier's Villages wine. But to sell it, I have to tell people "You want Amoureuses, no problem. But you're going to have to step up to the plate on Marechale."

BG: Wow - that's the same kind of bundling that's in the news now with the cable television industry. You can't buy only the channels you want, you have to buy a huge package that includes hundreds of channels you don't want in order to get the ones you do want. And people think that if the channels were available individually, the prices would come down. But I'm not so sure...

PW: If I let anyone who wanted it buy Amoureuses and only Amoureuses, the price would absolutely skyrocket.

BG: Yeah, I guess you'd lose a lot of Villages sales, and also there would be much greater demand for Amoureuses if it wasn't bundled as part of a much larger purchase.

BW: Exactly.

BG: You mentioned the economy before and that it doesn't impact sales on the top wines. I feel like it impacts the market for those wines somehow, though. I'm seeing top wines I don't usually see on shelves. I've seen 2007 Mugnier Musigny on two retail shelves in NYC recently, and I haven't seen that in a long time.

PW: Which stores?

BG: Chambers Street and Uva, in Brooklyn (and since this conversation I saw it online at another NYC area store called Grapes the Wine Company).

PW: I think Chambers' is gray market, but that's great.

BG: Yeah, but here's another issue with pricing. I'm not questioning the greatness of that wine and others like it. But I think it's sad that people who come to wine now, like myself, unless we are very rich, will never taste a Mugnier Musigny. The '07 vintage is something like $450 a bottle. And it's sad because people who love art can go see it at a museum for a reasonable price. People who love opera can pay various prices to hear it live. But Musigny - an incredibly tiny portion of the wine loving population will experience it, and it's sad.

BW: (A frown darkens her expression for a moment) Yes, it is. But you need to know that people like Freddy Mugnier and Christophe Roumier are horrified at the prices charged for their Musigny. Some of this is the awful dollar. It's hovering at about 1.5 to the Euro now, and that makes it very hard. But there are ways to drink these wines. I remember teaming up with seven or eight people and going in together on a great bottle so that we could all taste it (but good luck reconvening those 8 people after the 15 years it takes to properly age that wine - ed.).

PW: Do you realize that these people make maybe 3% profit? Mugnier cannot afford to drink his own Musigny.

BG: That is absurd. So are there still undiscovered producers in Burgundy?

BW: Of course there are! Kids come home and their parents used to sell to the négoce, but they want to make wine under their own label. Brothers and sisters inherit vines and begin to produce wine, things like that.

PW: Do you know how we select who we're going to represent? We eat lunch every day with our staff and we drink wine. If we're moved by the wine then we go to meet the people to see if we want to work with them. Our business is very personal and we have to want to work with the people we represent. We literally do not sell what we do not drink ourselves - the lowest wines too, from Bourgognes to0, We happily drink everything that we sell.


Stay tuned for the final installment of a conversation with Becky and Peter Wasserman...

A Conversation with Becky Wasserman - Part 1

The American wine icon Becky Wasserman is in New York City to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Le Serbet, her wine exporting company. Becky got started when very few people here in the United States knew anything about wine from Burgundy, and when very little was available in retail shops. She is considered to be one of the architects of the Burgundy wine market and she is respected and admired by everyone I know. Becky works in Beaune and lives with her husband Russell in a village called Bouilland, in "the back coast" behind Savigny-lès-Beaune.

I was lucky enough to spend a few hours the other day with Becky and her son Peter. It was my first time meeting her and it was a wonderful opportunity to hear the story of how she created her business, to hear about her and Peter's experiences as Burgundy wine merchants. I found them both to be absolutely lovely people, easy going and down-to-earth. They are wine rock-stars, but they are the gentle folk who you want as your neighbors (although I don't know how loud she likes her music), your co-workers, or your lunch companions.

I did my best taking notes, but my transcription of our conversation is mostly paraphrased. Also, both Becky and Peter were answering my questions and our discussion was lively - I am not always sure whether it was Becky or Peter who said certain things, and you'll just have to forgive me for that. They share about 50% of their DNA, so who said what isn't so big of a deal, is it?

BG: How did you get started in the wine business?

BW: (Lots of awkward laughing with Peter immediately ensues) I was an artist's wife. We moved from Philadelphia to Burgundy in 1968 for my husband's art. As a girl in Manhattan, anything French made me shiver, so this was a dream for me. I had two young sons. My husband was a wine connoisseur - there weren't many wine collectors back then. He was, however, a collector of mistresses, and so our marriage was ending. I knew that I needed financial independence so I wouldn't have to rely on my husband after we parted ways. I was thinking about work as a bilingual receptionist at one of the Beaune hotels, but I knew a cooper in Saint Romain who asked a favor of me. He was owed a debt and he asked if I would go to California to get the money from this wine maker.

BG: Was this a pulp-fiction underworld kind of assignment for you - did you carry a pistol?

BW: (Smiles generously) No.

BG: (Shifts uncomfortably in chair) Okay, go on. Sorry.

BW: I developed a small business brokering sales between this cooper and California wine makers. I would take the California wine makers to taste at the famous domaines, I would translate for them, and translate their negotiations buying barrels. I can't remember who it was, but I think it was Diamond Wine Merchants in California, he asked me for a list of producers to import, and that was the first list I did.

BG: Which producers were on the list?

BW: Pousse d'Or, when Gerard Potel was making the wines, Aubert de Villaines wines from Bouzeron, Burguet, Bachelet, Roty, although that didn't last long, some producers from the Mâconnais and something from Corbières. This was pioneer work - they bought a few cases and tried to place them. Then a second importer asked for a list, and then a third took my selections. I was Kermit Lynch's agent in Beaune from 1977 - 1981 also.

BG: Were you working on your own business at the same time?

BW: No, he liked to keep things exclusive.

BG: How long did it take to make your's a workable and successful business?

BW: (laughing) 20 years.

BG: Honestly?

BW: Yes, it's hard to earn money when you only work with quality.

BG: What was the biggest challenge you faced in business?

BW: In any business, the lovely parts are lovely, and people always think that my business is all lovely. But that's this much of it (holds up two fingers pinched together), and then there is a lot of work that's just business. Getting people to pay their bills was difficult at first. The French union rules weren't easy to navigate - we had truckers who would arrive at a domaine, but wouldn't load wine onto the trucks. Or they wouldn't unload it. There could be an old lady and her grandchild and no one else there, but the driver would not lift those cases.

BG: Wait a minute - how could people just not pay their bills? Wouldn't that mean no one would work with them?

PW: It happens all the time. People pay according to a schedule, not upon delivery. And if they didn't pay, it could take years to sort out a resolution. Nowadays our importers are fantastic about this - they all pay on time. If one runs into trouble and cannot pay, we work something out together. but in the beginning, this was a real problem.

BG: You mentioned that the lovely parts are lovely. What are those parts?

BW: There are moments of unimaginable and gorgeous pleasure. Standing in the vineyards, realizing that the interaction between soil and vine has been going on for hundreds of years in this spot, feeling like I'm part of the cycle.

PW: And knowing that we contribute to the family lives of our 96 producers - they send their kids to school, they live their lives, and we have something to do with that.

BW: And knowing that we're fighting against the death of individuality. Despite the rise of artisinal cheese and things like that, there is a lot of pressure against individuality, and we're fighting that in what we do.


To be continued...