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Mittwoch, 05. Dezember 2007
alois kracher ist tot
Von wein-sigihiss, 18:38

alois kracher ist tot. hier ein link zur wine-times seite. helmut knall hat ihn sehr gut gekannt. ein nachruf.

www.wine-times.at/artikel.php

sigi hiss

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Sonntag, 15. Oktober 2006
Satan or Savior: Setting the Grape Standard
Von wein-sigihiss, 18:22

Owen Franken for The New York Times

Tastemaker The wine consultant Michel Rolland at Château Lascombes in Margaux, France.

Published: October 11, 2006

ENTER Michel Rolland, the world’s most famous wine consultant — perhaps the world’s only famous wine consultant. In his natty blue suit, close-trimmed gray beard, carrying a sleek leather briefcase, Mr. Rolland looked ready for the boardroom rather than the vineyard, the cellar or the airport, his usual milieu.

Owen Franken for The New York Times

Ready to Harvest? Michel Rolland, right, tasting cabernet sauvignon grapes with Dominique Befve.

He had arrived late this crisp September morning for a breakfast arranged by one of his American representatives at the Union League Club, a far cry from his stylish, very French hotel, Le Parker Meridien (no relation to his good friend, the wine writer Robert M. Parker Jr.). He had jetted over from France the previous day for a corporate tasting, and was dashing back to Pomerol, his home base, after our breakfast and a quick stop at the WNYC-AM studio downtown for an appearance on the Leonard Lopate radio show.

If he seemed a little out of breath, it was only natural. Bordeaux was in the middle of its harvest, and he wanted to get back to it. “It began a little earlier than we had expected,” he said. With more than 100 clients spread out over five continents, it’s hard to imagine Mr. Rolland not looking at his watch and whirling off.

Business these days is better than ever for Mr. Rolland, 59, who a year and a half ago had some reason to feel concerned. Back then, Jonathan Nossiter’s documentary “Mondovino” had come out in France and was about to be released in the United States. The movie somewhat polemically posed a conflict between a pastoral, distinctively local wine culture and a globalized economy threatening to overwhelm it with crass marketing and homogenized consumerism.

Arch among the villainy assembled by Mr. Nossiter was Mr. Rolland, who is portrayed as the author of rich, plush, sellable wines that taste the same no matter where they are made. He appeared as a chauffeur-driven, cigarillo-waving consultant who only put down his cellphone to disparage the locals, all the while laughing, as one French reviewer put it, like Mephistopheles.

Mr. Rolland went on the offensive, accusing Mr. Nossiter of manipulation and dishonesty, which Mr. Nossiter denied. Mr. Rolland’s clients and good friends rose up in his defense. As a result, Mr. Rolland says, he emerged sympathetically rather than as a laughingstock, as he had feared.

“In terms of business, ‘Mondovino,’ it has been very positive,” he said, laughing.

He does indeed laugh a lot, though not, as his friends take pains to point out, in a sinister way.

“Besides the fact that he’s a genius, he’s a lot of fun to have around,” said Andy Erickson, a winemaker who has known Mr. Rolland for 12 years and worked with him at Harlan Estate, Staglin Family Vineyards and Ovid Vineyards, an ambitious new Napa Valley estate. “He’s got a way of expressing things and getting people behind him that makes everybody feel as if what they’re doing is great, but maybe they can do it a little better.”

In person, Mr. Roland is informal and down to earth, dunking his croissant in his coffee as we talk. His affect is modest, and he often repeats self-deprecating bromides — “A winemaker never, never changes the character of a wine. The character comes from the grapes.”

Yet the laugh and the joking demeanor conceal a steely certainty and disdain for differing views.

We spoke about the rising level of alcohol in wines and the trend toward allowing grapes to ripen longer before they are harvested. The resulting wines are bigger and more opulent, with sweeter fruit, softer tannins and an absence of herbal flavors that were once commonplace in cabernet sauvignon-based wines. I mention Clos du Val and Corison, two Napa Valley producers whose wines adhere to a less upfront, more austere style, and Mr. Rolland is strikingly dismissive.

“Are they as successful in the marketplace? No,” he said, warming to the subject. “Wine is done for what? The public! Wine is a business. They want to make wine to sell wine. In the U.S. they are honest enough to tell you they want good ratings. They don’t want loser wines.”

MR. ROLLAND expresses astonishment that some people are nostalgic for the leaner, less ripe California style of the 1970’s. There were good bottles then, he allows, but very few. “I came to the U.S. in 1984 or ’85 and I did a lot of tasting,” he said. “Now a young guy like me coming couldn’t taste all the good wines in a week. Back then you could in an hour.”

Needless to say, Mr. Rolland does not make loser wines, at least not according to the critical lights of American writers like Mr. Parker and Wine Spectator, whose ratings can often drive the market for wine. His clients include St.-Émilion luminaries like Angélus, Ausone and Valandraud as well as Pape Clément in Pessac-Léognan, Pontet-Canet in Pauillac, Ornellaia in Tuscany, and Harlan Estate, Bryant Family, Araujo and Dalla Valle in Napa. But Mr. Rolland does not restrict himself to celebrated winemakers. He also assists estates in Bulgaria, Greece, India and Brazil. He and his wife, Dany, who is also an enologist and winemaker, own or have an interest in 11 wineries, extending from Pomerol to Spain, South Africa and Argentina.

Like Mr. Parker, he asserts that the wine market is far more diverse today than it has ever been before and, more important, the quality of wine has never been as good as it is now. He rejects the criticism that his favored style of ripe, voluptuous fruit flavors and supple textures is making wines taste the same from Pomerol to Napa to Argentina.

“We have less globalization now than we had 20 years ago,” he said. “The big brands were much stronger back then. There were far fewer small producers. We aren’t standardizing wines. We are just doing good wines.”

In “Mondovino,” Michael Broadbent, the legendary British wine writer and auctioneer, criticized the changes Mr. Rolland had made to Château Kirwan, a middling Margaux estate that now, Mr. Broadbent said, tasted like a Pomerol. He added, “I’d rather have an individual wine not up to scratch than a global wine that’s innocuous.”

It’s a sentiment that still has Mr. Rolland fuming. “I think English critics in general — the English are used to drinking older wines,” he said. “Michael Broadbent is always speaking about the 1940’s and 1960’s. It’s like they are stopped in time, like old people always looking back to the old days.”

For his expertise, Mr. Rolland receives annual fees that start around $30,000 but can go considerably higher, depending on how much time he devotes to his client. At Ovid Vineyards, a new winery on Pritchard Hill on the east side of Napa Valley, Mr. Rolland visits four times a year, said Dana Johnson, who owns Ovid with her husband, Mark Nelson.

“We always walk the vineyard,” she said. “He’s very involved in helping us to make small adjustments and changes.” The Ovid vines, planted in 2000 on a hillside with a stunning view of the valley below, are still young. The first Ovid vintage, 2005, won’t be released until 2008. As in many vineyards, each discrete section of grapes is vinified and aged separately until it is time to blend them for bottling.

ALMOST all his clients marvel at his ability to find just the right blend. But Mr. Erickson, the winemaker at Ovid, sees Mr. Rolland’s abilities as much broader. “The way he can taste the grapes and envision the way the wine is going to taste, it’s something that’s really learned,” he said. “Knowing when to harvest the grapes, knowing when to intervene in the winery and, more importantly, knowing when not to intervene.”

Mr. Rolland was born in Pomerol in 1947 and grew up in the winemaking business. His father ran the family estate, Château Le Bon-Pasteur, and he grew up drinking the aged wines that his grandfather selected. “We never drank wines younger than 12 years old,” he said.

Such aging was fine for those days, Mr. Rolland says, but people today don’t have the money, the storage or the patience to wait as long as his grandfather did. It’s a feeling that has shaped the way he makes wines.

“We had to change that,” he said. “Consumers today like to drink much sooner.”

Mr. Rolland’s enthusiasm for wine has taken him far off the beaten trail. He is a consultant to Grover Vineyards in the Nandi Hills in India, north of Bangalore, and while he says the wine isn’t much yet, he is proud of the progress he’s made in the 10 years he’s been involved. He has also explored Chinese efforts to make wine, though he’s not involved in any projects there.

“My curiosity is intact,” he said. “I love to see new vineyards and new projects.”

That curiosity has not yet led him to New Zealand and Australia. Why not? Mr. Rolland laughs. “Too much travel.”

quelle:http://www.nytimes.com

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Mittwoch, 14. Dezember 2005
biologisch - top winzer
Von wein-sigihiss, 21:20

einfach zum nachdenken fand ich eine kleine liste mit weltbekannten winzern, die ihre weine nach den prinzipien des biologischen anbaues oder gar den grundlagen von rudolf steiner produzieren. die winzer geniessen weltruf. bei zind-humbrecht & palacios konnte ich mich persönlich mit ihnen unterhalten - alles andere als spinner. ausser bio haben sie noch eines gemeinsam - das leuchten in den augen wenn sie über ihre weine bzw. deren produktionsmethoden erzählen. die weine sprechen für sich. um eines klarzustellen: viele wege führen zu weltklasse-weinen. . ..

burgund - leroy, comtes lafon und leflaive,

rhône:michel chapoutier

elsass:mark kreydenweiss, marcel deiss, andré ostertag, zind-humbrecht

loire: nicolas joly, 

österreich: nikolaihof,

Spanien: pingus, palacios,

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