For this 23rd episode of the Wine Makers Show, the Wine Makers Show goes to meet Laure Gasparotto: author and journalist at Le Monde. She looks back on her career and on the link between wine and writing. If you enjoy this episode, I invite you to leave it a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. Enjoy!
Can you start by introducing yourself?
My name is Laure Gasparotto. I’ve been writing about wine for 25 years. I started out as a historian in Burgundy. I began in the attics of the wine houses in Burgundy: at Bouchard Père et Fils and at Louis Latour. I always say that I started in the attic to end up a cellar rat. At the time, I was a history student at the Sorbonne and I really enjoyed wine. I realised I had a real taste memory. It has to be said that 25 years ago, it was very easy to recognise wines blind. When you drank a wine with exotic aromas, you could immediately identify Viognier and therefore Condrieu. As soon as you tasted a wine that resembled a Syrah but not quite a French one, you could tell it was an Australian wine. I got caught up in the game of tasting and I began writing for wine guides. I did the harvest, I met people who make wine. I’ve always loved writing: wine and writing have always been linked in my career. It wasn’t necessarily intended but that’s how it happened. I didn’t finish my history doctorate on Burgundy in the Middle Ages. I became a correspondent for Le Figaro Vin in Burgundy. I had chosen this region as my first wine region. Understanding Burgundy well gave me the keys to understanding all the vineyards of France. Today, I’m a journalist at Le Monde, I went through Le Point. I’ve been working for Le Monde for almost 10 years. For the past 5 years, we’ve been writing 12 to 32 pages a month on wine and I must have written a dozen books on wine. My best seller is the atlas of the wines of France. This morning, we’re in July 2020, and I signed the contract for my next book with Grasset on Burgundy in the Middle Ages.
How do you discover the world of wine?
It was by doing the harvest. I’d had to pass all my exams in June and the university didn’t start again until October. I was in Burgundy and my parents had told me “rather than doing nothing, do the harvest.” I found an estate. I discovered a vat room. There’s been much more change in winemaking in recent years than between the Middle Ages and the moment I started making wine. Chemistry hadn’t yet entered the vat rooms, we’d get into the tanks in our underwear to punch down the cap. Today we wear harnesses, we protect ourselves, which is very good, but there was a straightforwardness to things, a self-evidence. I was very lucky to discover wine before oenology took over the taste of wine. Burgundy was very rural and country. I think that when you’re young, the best way to discover wine is to do the harvest. Once you’re at the estate, you hit it off with a winemaker. He’ll take you to meet lots of people. And that way you build up your local address book. I find it’s really good to discover wine through a local approach. You learn the taste of wine from the inside, not through wine merchants. What’s a shame today is that young people discover wine through wine merchants. I have a lot of wine merchant friends but it’s the easiest profession in the world of wine. You see lawyers or financiers who are fed up with their files and who want to make wine their job. They open a shop. I know many who’ve opened a shop but who closed it because having a passion isn’t enough, you have to sell the wine. Often, I find, wine merchants have a somewhat homogeneous taste among themselves. Right now they go mainly for natural wines. Urban youth discover wine via drinks that aren’t in the culture of wine as I love it.
So what is the culture of wine in that case?
What I love in wine is also history and geography. What’s fashionable at the moment is the vins de France. I have nothing against the vins de France because you can have a vin de France alongside a Gevrey-Chambertin to have a bit of the freedom that an appellation doesn’t give us. There are sometimes wine merchants who only want to do Vin de France and for me that’s denying the origin. The culture of wine is the place and the origin. Denying the origin of the wine and its history is denying the culture of wine. When you go towards natural wines or table wines you annihilate all that and you can compromise the survival of certain estates. Having had a vineyard myself, I understood how important it is to fit into a family of winemakers. Even when you’re a new winemaker, it’s important to fit into places that speak to you. You need strong ties: wine is a life. I was in Corsica recently and we arrive at an absurdity. The Corsican vineyard is undergoing an extraordinary renaissance. First of all, for me, it’s one of the most beautiful vineyards in France and it gives some of the best wines in France. There are very good winemakers and the terroirs are superb. For about twenty years now they’ve gone off in search of grape varieties they’d forgotten. Today, the greatest Corsican wines are vins de France because they have grape varieties that weren’t present in the specifications as they were drawn up in the 1950s. There’s nothing more Corsican than these wines, with people who carry the history of their region. It’s a very strange absurdity. Maybe the INAO will take this matter in hand. Between the experiments and the quality of the product, there can be years that go by. These true vins de France carry a place and others are chardonnays that can come from anywhere. You can have a good product, often affordable, but it’s not, for me, the true culture of wine. The best advice I can give to young people is “go do the harvest.” On top of that you can sense the vintage and understand the whole sensory notion that can come out of it. When I discovered these smells and this touch, I had the history of Burgundy alive. You can shut a postcard inside a bottle, and the soul of the people who made this wine. When you open a wine 100 years after it was made, you can taste the era. The taste of wine can transport you into history. One of the best tastings I’ve done was for the 100th anniversary of Château Talbot, two years ago. We’d done a tasting from the Cordier family’s purchase in 1979 up to 2018. We tasted 2 or 3 vintages from each decade. It was an incredible moment to see this evolution of the wine over the years. In fact, Stéphane Derenoncourt, with whom I did this tasting, told me he’d understood a lot of things beyond what he already knew. It had given him new lines of work. For example, 1919 wasn’t old. It had lovely notes of faded roses. There was something alive, of an incredible elegance and finesse. You want to take your time to discover that. We tasted 1945. It was a wine of incredible exuberance and joy. It was very aromatic and eloquent. I’d say it was a victorious wine and it wasn’t old. I think that in 10 years we can still drink this 1945. There’s an energy in wines that can show through 30 or 40 years later. Go do the harvest, it’s a very intense moment and you’ll learn a lot. Wine is only made once a year, it’s not like in cooking. I admire chefs who do it all over again every day. But when you’re a winemaker it’s once a year. When you’ve done the harvest of a vintage, you understand a lot of things.
You finish this harvest and you become a student again. What happens for you at that point?
When I came back from my first harvest, I called my master’s supervisor. I wanted to change my doctoral subject and I wanted to do the history of wine in the Middle Ages. He refused. It was a great frustration for me. I kept studying but it wasn’t the subject I wanted to do. I found other ways to write about wine. There was another magazine being created: Bourgogne Aujourd’hui, which still exists. It was Pascal Marchand at the Clos des Épeneaux in Pommard at the time, now he’s in the Côte de Nuits. It was my chance to write about wine. I wrote in the very first issue of Bourgogne Aujourd’hui and my article was on the containers of wine. It’s surely my best article because I took three months to write it. I ended up being hired by Bourgogne Aujourd’hui part-time and I went to live in Beaune. Of course, that wasn’t enough for me so I went to see the local paper called Le Bien Public in Dijon. I spontaneously offered to do a weekly page on wine. The director at the time told me “deal.” Thanks to that, I worked for 4 years and I trained myself a lot. I dropped my doctoral supervisor but I knew I wanted to write about wine. Every Thursday, I had to fill a page of a daily paper even though I knew nothing about wine and nothing about the press. Those four years allowed me to get to know both well. When you’re a journalist, the luck you have is that all the doors open. I was able to discover all of Burgundy, all the way to the coopers, the research. There was the group of young vine professionals and they did a lot of research. There was something very collective. After my harvest, I told myself I had to do my harvest at the biggest estate in Burgundy. So I went to do the harvest at Romanée-Conti and that’s how Aubert de Villaine became a friend. Doing the harvest is entering a very solid network.
You start writing at that point for four years?
Yes and that’s how I meet Joseph Henriot who had just bought Bouchard Père et Fils. He asked me to do the audit of his archives. And Louis Latour had come to Bouchard to meet me. I was among the first to work in the archives of the wine houses. That’s how I wrote my first book at Louis Latour. Then the mayor of Meursault hears about me. He comes to see me and tells me “I’m coming to see you because I believe Meursault has no history.” Naturally, I answer that I’d be surprised. He offers me the chance to write a book on the history of Meursault. That’s how I was able to have all the archives opened. Since then, with the father of my children, we bought a house in Meursault. This year, on 1 January 2020, there was a note from the mayor offering, twenty years later, a book on Meursault. I didn’t know and I myself only had one copy left. I went to the town hall to get my copy. When you write, it stays. I saw people leaving the town hall with a book I’d written when I was young. I also realised that when you write something in Burgundy, it stays too. Burgundy accepts all the strata of history. The Meursault tourist office still sells these books, or otherwise on Amazon. I’d also written a crime novel set in Beaune: Hôtel d’yeux. I had fun with this book. The Year 8 pupils of Beaune studied my book. Even if it’s fiction I based it on historical facts and I described the buildings very precisely. I was in a Year 8 class and the children were astonished that an author can be alive.
After these four years, you arrive at Le Figaro?
In the meantime I’d worked with the Florus wine guide. I made myself known at Le Figaro. They offered me the chance to be their correspondent on Burgundy. One day they hired me completely. I had a weekly page in Le Figaro. When I started, there weren’t as many people writing about wine. It was quite exciting because everything was new. I always wanted to work for a general-interest press. I told myself that making others understand would allow me to know better. Thanks to Le Figaro I was able to broaden my Burgundian horizon. I don’t like cliques and I wanted to talk with everyone. Today the relationship is different. At the time, winemakers didn’t necessarily need to be talked about. If anything, the less we talked about them, the better. Today it’s not the same, there’s a real need on their part. There are also other ways of talking about wine, like with your podcast for example. I love new things for communicating about wine. There isn’t just one way of communicating about wine. Here you stage an encounter and it’s wonderful because wine is an encounter. Sébastien Burrier’s show on the wines of the Loire is as much of a tastemaker as a Robert Parker. It’s an extraordinary show that I advise you to see. It lasts 7 hours but he managed to find a format for talking about wine that’s really incredible. There isn’t only writing about wine. That’s what’s magical about wine. There, you see, we’re not even drinking wine and we manage to talk about it. And you always want to drink even if you’re not thirsty. It’s incredible to see that each generation has its means of communicating about wine.
You go through Le Point right after.
Jacques Dupont offered me the chance to join him. I said yes because I really liked his way of tasting. I told myself I’d have a lot to learn from him. I really liked his very principled way of approaching the world of wine. It was a time when we slept at the hotel: we didn’t even sleep at the winemaker’s. To preserve our independence, we had to be as unattached as possible. The approach appealed to me even if there are limits. I really enjoyed working with Jacques. After four years, Didier Pourquery, the editor-in-chief of M magazine, contacts me to offer me the chance to join Le Monde. I was still working in Jacques’s shadow. I told myself I could be more myself and Le Monde really suits me. I’ve now been working for Le Monde since 2011, writing both for the magazine and for the daily. We even put together a wine team with a colleague, Ophélie Neiman, and my editor-in-chief Michel Guérin. Le Monde du Vin has been established for 5 years and is well established in the wine media landscape.
What is the work of the wine journalist at Le Monde?
We have a policy in which we don’t rate the wines. I prefer to tell stories and talk about culture. We have this editorial line of not rating. We’re out in the field a lot. We did a summer series on landscapes and wine. I was in Chinon recently to understand the geology and talk about the puys. For our readers, I try to describe the landscape, to understand the soils. I met several winemakers who explain the microclimate to me. I taste, I travel and I meet people. My son tells me: “Mum, that looks pretty good.” Then, you have to accept not being at home all the time. Between January and May 2020 I wasn’t home much and even during lockdown I was in the Terrasses du Larzac where I was a winemaker, and even before that I was in South Africa for a piece, in Corsica, in Savoie, in Auvergne, in Bordeaux… I follow the news of wine and you can’t tell me just anything. I can judge the information I’m given to know whether it’s a real event or not. I also have a real established network that trusts me. So I can gather confidences to really understand what’s happening in the world of wine. That’s how I was able to write, with Lilian Bérillon, Le jour où il n’y aura plus de vin. I understood that things had been hidden from me for 20 years and that there’s a mortality of the vineyard in France that no one talks about. To sell wine, you have to make people dream so you mustn’t talk about the problems. However, there’s a kind of tsunami on the way.
How does Le Monde’s editorial team go about discovering a wine?
There are quite a few press agencies already. In fact, it’s funny because a lot of them are twenty years old this year. At first I had a bit of trouble with them but I learned to work intelligently with them. I’m on networks like Facebook, Instagram and I’m at Le Monde. People can write to me to offer me a tasting. Sometimes I talk about it, sometimes I don’t. I give feedback. In any case, I only think about my reader.
Do you manage to have a connection with your readers?
Le Monde has a very loyal readership. It’s not our paper, it’s our readers’ paper. We’re at the service of our readers and something very intimate has been created between the paper and the readers. We have a mail service that passes on to me the messages intended for me. There are sometimes people who are very happy. For example, once, I’d done an interview with Lambert Wilson. The reader absolutely wanted to pass him a message so I made myself the messenger between the two. Another time, I got my knuckles rapped because I’d said that a wine was biodynamic and the reader thought I was sectarian. In general it’s still kind things. I really like getting feedback, and even from winemakers when we feature the wines.
You were also a winemaker, how did that go?
I wrote about wine for years but I told myself that at some point I was missing the point of the subject. I wanted to go over to the other side and really understand things. There’s something I can’t break through during my encounters because I’m a journalist. In 2014, every week for M, I did a benchmark tasting of an appellation. I did that for 4 years. I’d receive about thirty bottles of an appellation and I’d select 5. It gave me an incredible snapshot of each appellation. In that context, I tasted the wines of the Terrasses du Larzac, which wasn’t yet an appellation. I didn’t know it. I loved their great freshness and their minerality. I went to see and I passed in front of a vineyard with a sign saying “for sale.” I asked the winemaker who was with me how much the vineyard was. It was 15,000 euros a hectare. I thought about it and told myself the adventure could be possible. I sent an email to a few friends to present the project to them, it was in 2011. In 2014, it became an appellation. When I started, there must have been barely 50 declarants, today there are 120. It’s one of the most dynamic appellations of recent years. I had a good nose for things. What I wanted was to make the wine myself. I made wine for four years but the question of where I was going to live came up. I had a double life for five years, one week out of two down there and one week out of two in Paris. Even though it’s a small estate, the cost price is high: especially if you want to work well. Wearing both hats was tiring and the economic balance difficult. I wrote a book about this story and it comes out next year with Grasset. It’s called Vigneronne. Writing and wine are definitively linked. Making the wine helped me have other angles. I understood with this experience that each region has a particular mental structure. To understand that I interviewed Olivier Jullien of Mas Jullien in the Terrasses du Larzac a lot. It gave rise to a book we did together: La Mécanique des Vins. I told myself, listening to him, that 30 years in the Languedoc was like 200 years in Burgundy, that’s how fast it goes. I understood why there isn’t the same permanence in the Languedoc as there can be in Burgundy. I understood plenty of parameters that come into play in the life of the winemaker and that go beyond wine strictly speaking. The big question is how the winemaker makes the intersection between his life as a man and his life as a winemaker. What I love to sense in wine is the intention of the winemaker. I think I can recognise the personality of the winemaker today.
Do you have a recent favourite tasting?
It happens to me very often. It’s not the last bottle I tasted but the Clos de la Dioterie in Chinon. It was about fifteen years old. I loved the texture of this wine and its spirit.
Do you have a wine book to recommend to me?
Lately, I really liked Vignerons Essentiels by Jérémy Cukierman, who is a Master of Wine. It came out at the end of last year with éditions La Martinière. It’s one of the most beautiful books to come out recently on the subject. It’s a beautiful object, the feel of the book is very lovely, the photos are by Carlsson and Jérémy’s texts are immense. It’s deep and deeply instructive. There are winemakers from all over the planet and the result is incredible.
Buy Vignerons Essentiels
To finish, who should be my next guest?
The winemaker who really gave Viognier back its momentum is Domaine Vernay in Condrieu. It’s run today by Christine Vernay and her daughter has joined her parents. I advise you to go meet these women winemakers. They’re very welcoming, the landscape of the estate is spectacular, the vineyard is spectacular. These people, who make dazzling wines, have a simplicity and a kindness that I adore. They carry their place and they carry it far. So I really recommend you go see them.
