INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: MICHEL BETTANE (FRANCE)
Hugely influential in France, Michel Bettane, judge at the Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show, talks to Marianne Holtman about greatness, garagistes and his cellar back home. "O, no, non!" France's most respected and prominent wine writer shakes his head emphatically, creasing his mouth into a moue of dissent. Clearly, he does not like my New World/Old World line of questioning at all, but he is prepared to explain, courteously, why not.
"There is no Old World and New World. There are only great wines and wines that are not so great. Wherever you are in the world, the standards are the same. When a wine like Pinot Noir, for instance, is really great, I find it hard to tell if it comes from France or the United States. What you taste is refinement, elegance, balance, and it may not be possible or necessary to distinguish with certainty its origin."
Sublimity, in other words, transcends even notions of terroir and uniqueness.
Michel Bettane has been expressing his opinions with authoritative eloquence for nearly 20 years in the monthly La Revue du Vin de France. Since 1996 he's also co-authored with Thierry Desseauve an esteemed annual guide titled Classification of the Best Wines and Estates of France. A former professor of the Academie du Vin as well as a graduate in classical literature, his standards are famously high and traditionally Gallic. For example, he resists awarding top ratings to newcomers, even gifted newcomers, because he believes it takes years for a producer to fully understand and refine his terroir. And it is Bettane who led the move towards the blind tasting of the en primeur wines of Bordeaux, a move that did not go down well with all producers.
Most in the international wine industry would agree with Anthony Rose that Bettane is "a class act", but there are some who wonder if, like Robert Parker, he wields too much influence in France. The French press, ventures Jancis Robinson, may be "too much in thrall" of him, while UK wine merchant Roy Richards of Richards Walford does not mince his words. Bettane is, in his view, "Stalinist and pernicious".
But during our meeting in South Africa, he demonstrates only even-handedness and fairness. He may have disparagingly dismissed the majority of the Cabernet Sauvignon entries he tasted, for instance, but he tempered his disdain by lavishing praise on the top performers as well as the Pinotage winner and the Tempranillo and Touriga Naçional wines, which he considers well-suited to local conditions.
When our talk veers in the direction of the garagiste winemakers of Bordeaux, Bettane brightens up visibly. (Curiously, this is the only moment during our interview that he glances in my direction. The rest of the time he directed all his replies and his gaze into the middle distance on the other side of the room. Reserve? Fatigue? Or the ennui of a man who's been pontificating for too long? I have no idea.)
Bettane not only coined the terms garagistes and vins de garage, but he was the first to recognise their quality too.
The phenomenon began with, among others, Jacques Thienpont of Le Pin in Pomerol and Jean-Luc Thunevin of Chateau de Valandraud, he recalls animatedly. With neither money nor premises, but with strong ideals and access to fine grapes from low-yielding, old vines, they made small quantities of wine in old garages. Grapes were picked ripe and very, very selectively, while methods were improvised and partly dictated by necessity: manual breaking of the cap, long maceration, long malolactic fermentation, no fining, no filtration.
Bettane raved about the results in 1991 in the La Revue du Vin de France. The term garagistes started as an affectionate joke, he says, but quickly caught on, inspiring a major mindshift in winemaking in Bordeaux and causing the complacent blue-chip chateaux to refine and rethink their methods.
Nevertheless, it was a wine from one of these chateaux, a Haut Brion 1962 consumed while staying with a Swiss family at the age of 21, which converted him from Burgundy to Bordeaux overnight. Like his father, he'd been a Burgundy drinker, but this experience, he says, "was pure emotion. I hadn't realised until that moment that it was possible to make this kind of wine".
Just over 10 years old, the wine was "not very old", by his standards, but it was great. Is ageability still very important to him? "Of course. It's necessary to express the complexity of the varietal and the soil, and for balance. Even for whites."
His own wine collection of more than 15 000 bottles are stored in two cellars: a big one near Versailles and one at his home in Beaujolais, where he lives with his partner of 15 years, Linda, a wine buyer in Paris. His home cellar is a classic, underground one. Cold and humid, it ages his wines very slowly, but it's "in complete disorder", he confesses. Dank, mushroomy, not clean and with many labels either rotten or missing. Finding a particular wine is a bit of a haphazard process, but rustic is how he likes it.
Though his schedule is hectic, four or five times a month he makes time to prepare food and pair wine for family and friends at home.
"I cook with a particular wine in mind, adapting the ingredients and amount of garlic and butter to suit it."
"Wine belongs with food," he says. "There's no other way to drink it. Salmon with Chenin Blanc. Lobster with dry Riesling. Chocolate with Port. Sometimes a combination doesn't work, but when you get it right, you are so happy!"
Michel Bettane smiles and sighs, longing no doubt for home.
