For this 22nd episode of the Wine Makers Show, Vin sur Vin sits down with Gérard Margeon. The famous head sommelier of the Alain Ducasse group walks us through his magnificent career around the world. If you enjoy the podcast, don’t forget to leave it a 5-star rating. Enjoy the listen.
Gérard, can you start by introducing yourself?
I fell into wine when I was very young. I’m from an exceptional vintage: 1961. I was born in Beaune, at the Hospices de Beaune. I come from a farming family, like Alain Ducasse. I went to hotel school from 1976 to 1979. There was no sommellerie school back then. I learned everything: cooking, serving, cleaning, pastry, the lot. I had a hospitality teacher who was passionate about wine. She took us several times to wine estates, especially in the Côte de Nuits. Those three big domaines were already in organic conversion, but mostly I met people of the soil, like my father, who were already talking about respect for the environment. Whereas my father, a farmer, was waiting for the guy selling pesticides to come round so he could grow more crops. That really struck me. I came out with a CAP in hospitality.
I got hired at the Hôtel de la Cloche in Beaune. That’s probably the place that launched me. As the most junior, I was the one who had to bend down into the vaulted cellar 70 times a day to fetch bottles. At one point they offered me a sommelier role rather than a server role. When I went home, I dug into books. I came across a book by Pierre Coste. I read everything. I still have it in my office. I read the topography of all known vineyards by André Julien: an 1866 edition that tells the story of every vineyard in the world and the taste of wine across the world.
I had to go off to the army, and then I wanted to be a ski instructor. To make ends meet, I worked at a hotel as a server. I met my wife there. I worked the opening of the Miramar hotel in Biarritz with Louison Bobet. I met Pierre Coste’s salesman: Jacques Couecou. I asked him to introduce me to Pierre. He told me “you know, he doesn’t see many people”. He eventually agreed. I took my car from Biarritz to Bordeaux. I came face to face with Pierre Coste: picture a Roman senator. He asked me a few questions and asked what I did. I answered “I’m head sommelier at the Miramar hotel in Biarritz”. I saw he was strangely annoyed and he replied “so you’re a spectator of finished products”. From the height of my 21 years, I thanked him and left. So I’d driven 400 km to spend 15 minutes in Bordeaux. On the way back I told myself I was a bit of an idiot. I called Jacques back and asked him to find me another audience.
He received me on a Sunday morning in his family dining room. He had an enormous wooden table, very long and heavy. There were about 20 bottles, all open, two seats facing each other, pencils, paper and a glass. I picked up the bottle at the end of the table and he said “what are you doing?”. I told him I was going to pour and we’d taste. He answered “we don’t taste like that with me, put the bottle back. You told me you were head sommelier. The bottle at the end is a Haut Marbuzet 1978. You know the climate in Saint Estèphe in 1978 and you know how the owner works. Write your notes down on your sheet and then we’ll taste to confirm if it’s right”. I wrote down what I could, which wasn’t much. I’ve worked that way ever since.
I then found a head sommelier job at the Hotel Méridien Montparnasse in the great era when it belonged to Air France. It was the experience of a major operation with three big restaurants, banqueting and room service, at 25. I traveled a lot because I had Air France status. I went to look after the Méridien in San Francisco, so I moved around a lot. I was part of the coaching team for Faure Brac on the Burgundy section.
In October 1993, on a Thursday. My deputy was off. The restaurant was on the 2nd floor and the cellar on level -5. So that’s seven floors. I had a corked bottle in the middle of service around 1:45 pm. I came back up with my bottles and a hostess asked to see me. I told her I didn’t have time, and she told me “yes, yes, it’s important, Mr Ducasse wants to talk to you”. In my head, I only knew one Ducasse: Marcel Ducasse, the cellar master at Château Lagrange. I said “Marcel, this isn’t a good time”. There’s a silence and I hear “no, it’s not Marcel, it’s Alain. I’ll call you back at 3 pm”. He hangs up. I had a tough hour and a quarter. We’re in 1993, Alain Ducasse has had three stars since 1990: he’s the global star because it’s the first time a chef has had three stars in a hotel. I’m in my office at 3, and at 3:10 pm I get his call. He’d sent spies to the Méridien to observe me. He told me “I’m looking for my head sommelier in Monaco, we’re not going to talk for 10 minutes, the best is for you to give me a date when you can come down”. The following weekend, with Philippe and the whole team, we had an open day at Romanée Conti: it’s unique in the world. I answered “this weekend I can’t”. All our weekends were taken. In the end, he said “alright, listen, your ticket is booked, I’ll see you Saturday morning”.
I called Faure Brac, I called my wife. I had a tough night. In the night from Friday to Saturday I made a decision and decided not to go to Romanée Conti. I arrive in Nice and don’t hear myself being paged on the loudspeakers. At the bottom of the escalator a woman comes up and asks me to follow her. She takes my little travel bag and walks me to a limousine outside. We go to the back of the airport, take a helicopter to Monaco. Once in Monaco we get back into a limousine and I arrive at the Hôtel de Paris. And on the steps of the hotel, Alain Ducasse is waiting for me. I stayed the whole weekend, we had an extraordinary time and I started in April 1994. We came back to Paris in 1996 to open Robuchon. Since then, I’ve opened every house: we’ve opened 64 houses. It was the start of a great adventure, without knowing it.
Was it really without knowing it?
He knew. He told me “we’re going to grow”. We’d grown at the Bastide de Moustier and the development was already huge. Then we took on Robuchon and I quickly understood we’d move very fast. In 1998 we did Spoon. We’d open four or five houses a year.
What do you have to do when you open a house?
We go into the ecosystem at least three times, going in without ideas. On the way back, we propose ideas to Alain Ducasse, especially on products and personnel. We prepare a plan. Then Alain Ducasse goes in and we sign or we don’t. I handle the wine sourcing: depending on what we’ll do there, I prepare the wine. On opening day, everything works. We all go together a week before opening.
What was the first opening abroad?
It was Spoon Mauritius, in 1999. I was barely 30. It was pretty spectacular because there’s always press when Alain Ducasse is involved. Then we do soft openings with the staff to fine-tune the service and start up the kitchens. Today I spend two weeks a month abroad. The problems always come a few months in. For the wine side, I’m always the one who recruits.
You’ve been working with Alain Ducasse for 26 years. How has your relationship evolved?
In the inner circle there were four of us when we started. Today there are 1,800 of us in the world. At HQ there are 120. We couldn’t stay too small, we could only grow. We’re super demanding and it’s sometimes hard to work with us.
How do you get Gérard Margeon to taste a wine?
I have a tasting room at the Lyonnais restaurant in the 2nd, where I receive a lot of samples. There are the ones I ask for, which are obviously priority, and the ones I don’t ask for. Sometimes my deputy does a pre-selection for me. At certain points, we hit 60 bottles a week. We can’t buy every wine in the world, so I have a few set formulas. I never take a winemaker on the phone, and I have templates depending on whether I liked it or not.
Ducasse wants a style in his cooking. I want a thread running through my wine lists. I still leave my head sommeliers a bit of freedom on about 20% of the list. They have to be convinced to be convincing.
Editor’s note: to understand the work of a head sommelier, you can listen to the interview with Gabriel Veissaire, head sommelier of Le Meurice.
What’s the Gérard Margeon style?
Energy. There, I’ve said it all. It’s a vibration. I don’t care about smells and flavours. It’s with the structure of the wine that you build pairings. You need balance between every element of the wine. The new generation of sommeliers hasn’t had the chance to travel as much as we did. They often have a helicopter view. I teach my sommeliers to close their eyes and go down to the bottom of the glass.
I make wine myself. I have a vineyard in the Aegean Sea on the island of Tinos, opposite Mykonos. We replanted the first vine in 3,000 years on a plateau and it gives exactly what I wanted. I wanted to go very far back and rediscover the tastes of before. The wine has a violent energy that makes you move. Henri Jayer used to say “what is great wine? It’s a good vine planted in the right place”. There are a lot of bad vines planted in the wrong place.
So you went to replant in Greece?
We didn’t replant: we just planted. There had never been any vines. I drew everything. We planted in 1998. We dropped the grapes for 10 years, and it’s starting to give a little. When we have a big harvest, that’s 12 hectoliters. We have very small harvests. Stéphane Derenoncourt looks after the wine. It’s going to enter Galeries Lafayette, restaurants, airport duty free, and maybe Le Bon Marché.
How do you buy bottles like you do?
There’s an extra difficulty for me. The houses we buy bottles for are in different groups: Dorchester, ASBM, our private houses, Accord, or other private partners. I’m the financial team’s nightmare. We talk about numbers more often than wine. Guests dining at gastronomic restaurants want a great wine list. With fewer than 500 references in Las Vegas, we’d be jokers. We have over 4,000. Not only do I adapt to the local food and the staff, but I also have to fight with the financial team. I always pad my initial budget because I know they’ll cut it.
Every day, the financial plans of every house are sent to me. After a year I make a decision on what isn’t working. I don’t want any sleeping wine: we don’t have the means for that. I don’t want to be tied to estates. I’d rather skip them than be forced to wait.
What’s next for you?
I’m going to retire to the Basque Country where I have a garden. I also have my father’s farm with 20 hectares of garden near Beaune.
Do you have a wine book to recommend?
Mine. It’s Les 100 Mots du Vin by PUF. Writing for the 100 Mots series and for PUF, you really have to put in the work. I tell 100 words and start with a non-word that is “45 seconds” and I finish with a non-word that’s called Pleasure.
What’s your latest favourite tasting?
It was yesterday. A rosé that’s absolutely complete, perfect. It’s the Clos du Temple by Gérard Bertrand. There’s a magnificent story behind it. It’s all in there: the balance and the energy.
Who should I interview in upcoming episodes?
I’d say Stéphane Derenoncourt. He started from nothing. He set up in Bordeaux and today he’s a global star. I know lots of flying winemakers, but ones who actually go into the vines like he does, there aren’t many.
