the best of the best:
AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHEL ROLLAND
By Lia Tolaini-Banville
Michel Rolland, enologist extraordinaire( photo courtesy Sandro Michahelles, Firenze, Italia)
In February of this year, I had a chance to sit down with Michel Rolland, undoubtedly the most famous and sought-after enologist in the world. I have had the great fortune of getting to know Michel through his work as the consulting enologist at Tolaini Estate, our family winery in Tuscany.
Born, raised, and living in Bordeaux, Michel Rolland is an incredibly charming gentleman with a French accent that adds to his debonair flair. In his late 50s and a dedicated family man, Michel has two daughters and a beautiful wife, Dani, of over 30 years. He moves through his work and everyday life with an enviable joie de vivre.
In a sense, Michel was born into the wine business.“ My father and grandfather owned( Chateau) Le Bon Pasteur and a few other wineries in Bordeaux so I learned about wine early,” he shares. When Michel graduated with a degree in enology in 1973, he found work in a regional enology lab situated in the now ultra-premium Right Bank Bordeaux appellation of Pomerol. He and Dani purchased the lab in 1976 and today it serves as the home base for their consulting business. The laboratoire receives samples from wineries around the world and is entrusted to perform the many analytical tests needed to ensure the production of healthy wines and, more importantly today, quality wines.
Michel recounts,“ In the early days, the customers of the lab did basic analyses of their wines and did not want any advice. The job of an enologist was straightforward. No one spoke about quality, they just wanted a safe wine with no volatile acidity, no bad smells, et cetera.” Michel explains that it was the highly-regarded warm Bordeaux vintage of 1982 that changed things.
In subsequent vintages, producers strove to repeat the quality of the 1982 vintage and Michel Rolland quickly became the man to ask. His approach to vineyard management, grape maturity, and vinification rose to the vanguard of contemporary wine production. Rolland advocated severe grape selections, yield reductions by green harvest( early removal of grape bunches to reduce vine fruit load
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