For the 48th episode of the Wine Makers Show, I had the chance to meet Jean-Baptiste Ancelot of Wine Explorers. If you have travel cravings, this episode should make your mouth water. I loved recording with Jean-Baptiste and I hope you’ll take great pleasure listening to this episode.
I suggest you start by introducing yourself.
Jean-Baptiste: With great pleasure. Jean-Baptiste Ancelot. I was born in 1985 in Senlis, in the Oise in Picardy, where there’s only sugar beet and not a single vine. In a family of teachers, professors, and so without apparent connection to wine. I had a wake-up call for wine late, after my 20s. Everything started in my life after this trigger. It’s a bit like in a story, that’s funny. A Gypsy Jazz concert in my hometown, in Senlis, with Thomas Dutronc and a wine merchant who had a cellar called caveau de Valentin at the time. And we drank a few wines together during and after the concert, and we had completely different social backgrounds and that brought us closer together. Wine was at the center of everything, and at that moment I told myself: “But, this product I don’t know, speaks to me, intrigues me and this sharing makes me want to investigate.” I started doing research on wine and everything started from there.
What happened exactly, everything started from there, tell us? You were 20 at the time at that moment?
Jean-Baptiste: Listen, it’s funny because I tell myself: “The wine world looks nice, but it’s super vast.” I started doing research on the internet on wine professions and schools affiliated with this profession. You realize there’s a range of possibilities that’s not infinite, but so wide. It can range from the vine, to production, through sales and marketing, consulting and a huge number of professions. I was completely lost. It happens that one school at the time was number 1 in the Figaro ranking; it was INSEEC of Bordeaux which did a master’s in wine and spirits trade. I couldn’t do oenological studies, which would have been my dream, because I had picked up a 3/20 in math at the bac, and that was eliminatory. In the trade part I could touch on the wine universe, and enter afterwards as self-taught into everything that was more viticulture-oenology. I went knocking on the door of this school. They saw I had stars in my eyes and they told me: “Listen, we’re going to give you a chance, but you’ll have to work.” I bought a lot of books on the subject at the time and I crammed all summer. I arrived with some knowledge, and everything started from there. Finally I did a master’s and an MBA in wine. During this time, I did a lot of internships that were interesting. Notably a first one at GustoWorld in Belgium. It’s an importer of world wines, and it helped me a lot to understand that there’s wine in Japan that’s delicious, that there are wines in China that are fantastic, in the New World, etc.
I who already knew little French wine, realized that in fact the world was capable of producing fantastic things.
I continued working a bit in Hong Kong for a négociant, I worked in Bordeaux for the Duclot group, which taught me a lot too during those 2 years. I finished my studies with a V.I.E. for Michel Chapoutier. I was his ambassador for the United States and Canada. It was based in New York. After everything happened very quickly. Michel Chapoutier asked me to come back to take care of export for his second house called Ferraton Père et Fils in Tain-l’Hermitage. I was export director for 2 years, and I always had this dream of launching Wine Explorers which we’ll talk about after. Wine Explorers started around my 28 years.
Can we go back a bit on the main learnings you had in the meantime and on this internship in Belgium? And then, on your experience at Chapoutier in particular in North America. It must have been quite crazy to be Brand Ambassador, you must have been 25, 26, 27? Let’s start with this experience in Belgium, was that your first contact with the wine trade?
Jean-Baptiste: Yes, it’s the first contact. I forgot to tell you something important, I’m a bit off on the ages. It started rather around my 24-25 years. It’s something I often tell people because it reassures them, before that, I didn’t know what to do with my life before falling into this wine anecdote. I was in physical education for 1 year and then I stopped, in economics faculty but I stopped. And I was even a plumber for 1 year, I learned on the job and then finally I stopped. My life was chaotic for a while, then wine arrived. This internship for this Belgian importer was a trigger. I was in charge of developing Switzerland. It lasted 6 months. I was based just next to Zurich. The idea was to present world wines to restaurateurs, to wine merchants. It made my palate, on many grape varieties I didn’t know, on absolutely fabulous countries. This allowed me to perfect my knowledge on all this encyclopedic part of grape varieties, etc. It was 6 very rich months and which were also an upheaval in my life as a consumer. I always had crazy happiness drinking French wines and I love this chauvinism that can characterize me sometimes. But it was an upheaval because I had this state of consciousness that you could perhaps go discover gems in new terroirs or slightly unknown places. Sometimes unknown grape varieties, sometimes wines with different types of vinification. It was the trigger that made me say: “Start doing research and look a bit at what’s being done in the wine world.”
You must have had enormous freedom during this first experience, it must have been incredible. How did it go, you went knocking at restaurateurs’ doors?
Jean-Baptiste: Yes, I went knocking at restaurateurs’ doors, and it was too much freedom for me at the time. I like being a bit framed. Plus, it’s a part of German Switzerland where they speak a bit of English, and me I spoke like a goat at the time. They also speak Swiss German, I love the Swiss Germans and I embrace them, but it’s one of the worst languages in the world, it’s very guttural. So I struggled and I didn’t make too many sales I think. I wasn’t the best intern in the world. But knocking on doors and having restaurateurs who took the time to taste and exchange, it was very enriching. You realize that a sommelier doesn’t have the same approach as a wine merchant, who doesn’t have the same approach as a chef, etc. It allowed me to know this professional world with whom I work a lot today, 95% of my time, and which has specific codes so that was very rich.
You continue your journey, your studies… I’m not going to do all the experiences you’ve had, because I want us to be able to focus afterwards on Wine Explorer. But during your V.I.E at Chapoutier, you must have been 26-27 at that moment, when you arrived in New York as Brand Ambassador?
Jean-Baptiste: There was a call for tenders that was published in all the business schools in France and which mentioned “V.I.E. for Chapoutier - United States and Canada, based in New York”. It was the offer that made everyone dream. So I think there must have been a lot of applicants and I really didn’t believe in it. And it happens that I’m the one who got it. The day I learned that, I jumped on a plane and I dropped everything I had behind me in France. It was a fresh start and New York is a very tough city, contrary to what people might think. It’s very big, very competitive and at the same time with a lot of restaurants, so you have to focus well. It taught me rigor. I have enormous respect for Michel Chapoutier, for his wine ranges. I worked also on his Roussillon wines at domaine de Bila-Haut, which I always loved. In fact, already when you love the product it’s fantastic. It was a bit similar to the same job I had when I was an intern in Switzerland. There were dinners to host, tastings on Saturdays where we had clients taste the wines, you confront yourself, you exchange… This sharing was fabulous. I loved it. Antoine: We embrace Michel Chapoutier in passing.
So you arrive in New York, and there, it’s the same job you do, you go knock at all the restaurants to offer the wines?
Jean-Baptiste: Yes, and there we tried rather to sell by the case and there are still sales objectives. It’s really both a sales and ambassador job. You also learn that the codes of New York, are not the codes of France, nor the codes of Paris. On the other hand, it’s a milieu where, when you enter the networks, word of mouth happens very quickly. You can quickly get introduced. On the other hand there’s no secret, you have to work a lot. You don’t count your hours. But it was passionate and I loved this part of my life. But it didn’t last long because after six months, Michel Chapoutier called me back to France. He needed me to take over the direction of his other domaine so I packed my bags in 3 days, I closed the accounts. It’s an incredible story, I went from New York to Tain-l’Hermitage. From one of the biggest cities in the world, I found myself in a tiny village with the Valrhona factory, it smelled good of chocolate. It was fantastic. Antoine: Yes, the contrast must have been a bit brutal.
And you must have traveled a lot then in North America and Canada?
Jean-Baptiste: I had 35 countries in charge. So indeed I was a lot in transit. In export, there are a lot of customers. There were more or less big markets. Antoine: Yes, when you joined Chapoutier. You must have traveled enormously. Did you have a particular zone? Jean-Baptiste: Yes, I started accumulating Miles at that time. Mainly Europe, the United States and a part of Asia. So it’s quite vast.
Of all these years, which are the beginning of your wine adventure, what are some lessons you would keep and that you would like to pass on to someone who would start or who would launch into the wine world?
Jean-Baptiste: These are lessons I learn every day. We continue to learn all the time. The first is that wine, is fermented grape juice. That brings enormous humility. First because it’s the work of a winemaker, male or female. It’s work of soil, of human, of at least a year behind each bottle. You don’t have to pray when opening each bottle, but there’s still a kind of respect for the juice that’s nice. Then everyone has the right to give their opinion, that I think is a fundamental rule in wine. The hardest for people sometimes, is to take the plunge. I lived it with people close to me, who said: “I don’t dare talk to you about it, I don’t know much about it.” Me that frustrates me. The most important is to say “I like, I don’t like.” Everyone has the right to give their opinion. We can do it on a painting, or on music. And then, it’s an infinite world. The more you travel, the more you learn and the more you realize you know absolutely nothing. You learn every day. Antoine: It’s something I learn too in this podcast, is that you can tell yourself: “I’m going to do a podcast on wine, ok it’s going to be rich, but maybe after interviewing 20 or 30 people, you’ve covered the subject. You have to move on to something else.” In fact not at all, there I think we’re at 50 or 60 episodes recorded. In fact, every time you meet someone, they tell you new things, they tell you go see so-and-so who will talk to you about something else and it’s endless.
It’s a quite spectacular world as you said. You go from working the land to selling, sometimes through architecture or barrel-making.
Jean-Baptiste: The worst is that sometimes, it takes us too far. That is to say when we’re too geek, it happens that we’re having lunch and drinking wine with friends and we’re already talking about dinner and what we’re going to drink tonight. While we haven’t even finished the meal. Antoine: There are days when I’m very happy to know that in the evening, I’ll open such or such bottle. Jean-Baptiste: That’s clear.
Let’s go back to your adventure, how does it go? You were export director at Chapoutier, at one moment you decide you’ve had enough and you want to dedicate yourself to something else?
Jean-Baptiste: Not at all, I had a good situation, a very good life and everything was going very well. Except that, at one moment things happen in life where you have to make decisions. Stay in my comfort zone which was my position or quit everything to launch into the biggest dream of my life. From the start of my studies, I started doing research on the wine world, because I was thirsty for knowledge, no pun intended. After 2-3 years of research in my free time, I had realized that there were at least 80-90 countries that could produce wine. But in all the atlases, all the works, or the publications I had been able to read, we often spoke, even almost all the time, of about 20-25 countries that called the shots between what we call the old and new world. There was on one hand, a frustration of telling myself that I couldn’t find information on everything, and on the other hand a real curiosity to tell myself: “What is the wine world in the 21st century?” What is it composed of, who are the actors, why do we make wine here or there, etc. On the other hand, it remained a question and after a while, it became a dream to tell myself: “And what if, instead of being frustrated, I transformed that into an opportunity and I went to meet winemakers, male and female, in the four corners of the world to better understand?” Because there’s nothing like putting your feet in the vine and discussing with people on site to see a bit what’s happening.
At one moment when you do the math, you realize that when you have about 90 countries that make wine, even if you want to spend on average 2-3 weeks per country, that gives you 4 years of travel.
I had set the thing aside telling myself that it was crazy. And then we’d have to raise funds, it was a bit complicated. So I launched into this active life. Until the moment I was discussing in Bordeaux with my friend Jean Moueix, and I tell him: “I have this idea in mind, it’s completely crazy maybe, I don’t know.” I expose the project to him, he told me indeed you’re crazy but I love the thing. And I told him: “Listen, what I’d like, is for you to be the honorary patron of Wine Explorers”, because I already had a name for the project. He’s someone I love a lot, who has values of humility that I appreciate enormously and then he’s a great person. He has a name that resonates in the wine world, and I wanted to lean on this aura to also open other doors thanks to his benevolence and credibility. He told me yes after half a second with overflowing enthusiasm.
I told myself: “Wow. What do I do now? I have someone who touches me and whom I love a lot who would support me, but do I stay export director for this domaine I love or do I quit everything and launch into research for financing?” I thought a bit but I took the plunge, because I can’t stand regret.
Antoine: It would have nagged at you, impossible to survive. Jean-Baptiste: Yes, exactly. So I started doing research for financing and it took me 2 years of life. There was a lot of money to raise, with a photographer to find because I wanted to do beautiful images. You don’t improvise as a photographer, it’s a sublime profession and I don’t know how to press a button. When you look at the book and the articles we wrote, you understand that it’s hyper important when we have such beautiful landscapes to document them well. And so, you had to finance for two. After 2 years, I don’t know by what miracle, but there are about ten multinationals that said yes and which gradually put money on the table, whether for market studies, having visibility, we did conferences for some. We had a camper, that was our biggest partner, Pilote, who had brought out a factory prototype for us that was 7 meters long, and in which there were 4 beds. It was completely incredible. We did 42 countries with it, it was both our home, our car and our office. So all that means that the sponsors finally came and we hit the road with my first travel companion the photographer Ludovic Pellet heading for South Africa in January 2014. It ended in December 2018 with Cape Verde. In the end, we will have done 88 wine countries. There are only Syria and Venezuela that we didn’t cover, and that for geopolitical reasons. But it was better to take care of ourselves than to go.
How did you find a photographer crazy enough to follow you?
Jean-Baptiste: That’s an excellent question, I had never been asked that. I love it. It wasn’t just anyone, it was a friend from high school to whom I had spoken about the project. He also wanted a travel challenge. The chemistry happened like that. After 2 years, our collaboration stopped. He needed to do other projects. That’s when I had other photographers afterwards who came on the project. But I understand him. Following someone for so long to do nothing but vines in the end… Where it’s a bit torturer of me, is that we never did a single tourist visit during the whole Wine Explorer. That is to say I didn’t know how to do anything other than visit vineyards. And, it’s a digression but an important one, I already knew we couldn’t visit everything. I wanted to optimize the time. I had done a small approximate calculation telling myself: “If I want to visit all the world’s vineyards, it would take 13 generations, doing one vineyard a day, Monday to Sunday between my 20s and my 50s, and that without creation of new vineyards of course.” There was a choice to make and we knew we were going to visit only a few domaines. We often did visits Monday to Sunday. For a companion who isn’t necessarily from the wine milieu, after a while, it can become a bit boring. Me on the contrary I found it great, but we didn’t have the same appetite for the product. What’s fantastic is that today in the book we published, we have these five photographers with their own touch. They all brought something different to the work. It makes a huge sum of skills, that’s nice.
And for you it also allowed you to change partners.
Jean-Baptiste: Yes, because in the end everyone has their personality and so we step back a bit, because everyone has different requirements, everyone their way of working. Each time it allows to also question yourself and then it allows to rework better. When you launch into a project, it’s like everything, there’s this first phase where we’re a bit messy and the more it goes, the better we are. And when we do the ultimate last task, we’re too good and everything goes well. For us it was the same. That is to say at the start, the vineyard visits organized themselves more or less well and then finally we became experienced.
You spoke about the world tour you did. So you didn’t do Syria, nor Venezuela, but you said two things that contradicted each other a bit, which were that it ended with Cape Verde on such date, and at the same time you said it would take many generations if you wanted to do everything. So, do you consider Wine Explorer is over? Or do you think actually it’s endless work?
Jean-Baptiste: If my wife is listening, she has to cut the podcast now. I think I would love to continue traveling, indeed. We had to calibrate. Four years actually, why? That is to say when we do about two to three weeks per country, we select about between eight and twelve domaines per country, it depends on the size. But we’ll do a lot of small ones, a little of medium and one or two big to have a representative panel. So we don’t necessarily do everything. So we still have a deadline that saves the spirit a bit, because going for four years without doing anything else, is still dedicating part of your life a bit crazy to adventure and not to other concrete projects. That’s also why I set a deadline. Of course I now leave again occasionally, Covid hasn’t necessarily helped lately, but at the same time, it was very beneficial since there were many projects to develop. There were notably the imports that were launched last year. I also needed time for digestion, because all this information takes time to digest. And then also to prepare the concrete since, this travel phase, when I imagined it, was to make many small ones, a kind of octopus with a wine tourism part here, books there, giving courses, importing wine, perhaps creating wine bars… There are lots of ideas behind.
When you were in these domaines, and especially at the start, you tell them: “We’re going to sell your wine in France, but in four years.”?
Jean-Baptiste: So no, I especially don’t tell them, because already, there are many I would never import. Not because it’s not good, but either because it’s not at the level, or because it didn’t give me emotion. When we contacted the domaines, it was a lot of upstream work since each visit was planned, we just told them “We’re going to talk about you, and we’re going to write about you.” It’s a promise we always kept. If the wines weren’t up to scratch or didn’t please us, we talked about the winemaker’s story or the place. There was always something positive to tell. Antoine: If you flip through the Wine Explorers book and we don’t talk about your wine… Jean-Baptiste: Oh no, because we can’t put all the wines, so there’s only a micro-selection. Otherwise we could have just made a wine guide. It’s a sample of the visible part of the iceberg. We talked positively each time, there was always something to tell. Sometimes, when I’m asked: “Which memory marked you most?”, it’s not always memories related to wine, but more human and meeting. Because sometimes the wine wasn’t necessarily transcendent, but the place was magical, the people brought something… I’ve always been very sensitive to the human. It’s a quite complex equation. Antoine: That’s quite interesting what you say, because actually earlier you asked me the question “Which podcast marked you most?”, and I forgot to mention one to you. So, I reassure all my former guests, I mentioned a lot of them, don’t worry.
All the podcasts marked me one way or another, but there’s one that’s not yet published at the moment we speak but which will be published when our episode comes out. It’s the one with Jean-Michel Cazes, it was a crazy episode.
We talked very little about wine, surprisingly. It was a bit of a conversation obviously about wine because his life revolves around wine but it was especially about his life, about everything he did, about the wine landscape in general, about the opening of the United States, about Asia… Not about the product as such, and yet it was quite spectacular as a conversation. So I completely agree with you that there can be stories that create memories. Jean-Baptiste: And that’s the beauty of the thing and it’s the wine world that allows that. I’m not sure even though I haven’t done all the different universes in the work world. The wine milieu allows this meeting, this sharing on lots of different levels and creates enormous emotion. We’re not in finance. We may not earn a lot of money but at least, we have this wealth that’s not calculable. My job gives me crazy energy. Every morning I wake up energized. I tell myself that I don’t know how long it’s going to last. We never know how many years we live on this planet. It seems we only have one life, so might as well enjoy it and the wine world brings that.
Did you have a particular hassle during the trip?
Jean-Baptiste: Yes, there were some. In this global world tour of wine countries, lots of juicy stuff necessarily happened. By the way one of my big dreams would be to take the time one day to put on paper in a slightly fictionalized way all these juicy anecdotes. I think it would delight many readers. One that comes to mind, would maybe be in Thailand. I often walked, you mustn’t say it, but I really like walking in flip-flops in the vine, I was walking with my flip-flops and then after two days at the domaine, the owners told me “You have to be careful because there’s such variety of venomous snakes, so I quickly put on high boots. After anecdotes where we were in danger, we never had any. We really have that luck. Antoine: That’s rather positive. Jean-Baptiste: Yes, and then it’s quite funny because my mom, by the way I embrace her, she’s both the biggest fan and at the same time, she had fears when we went to certain destinations of the world that weren’t necessarily founded. But sometimes from the outside, we have lots of preconceptions. I often felt safe in places of the world that had been described as not necessarily safe. Sometimes I walk near my home, in the Paris suburbs and I feel less safe. That too is paradoxical and the world is beautiful, and there are many places in the world where it’s nice to live and actually there are many good people everywhere. You just have to make the right meetings and everything goes well.
I traveled less than you, but it’s true that’s something travel teaches you, the fact of moving and realizing that you’re well elsewhere too.
Jean-Baptiste: That’s it. And it inspires me something I absolutely want to tell you. In Cambodia, there’s a wine domaine. The gentleman did oranges before, and he knew everyone did oranges in his country so he wanted to differentiate himself and make wine. He started from zero, he read two or three books and he started making wine. Today, it starts working but his domaine is really not known. He has no website, etc. I got his Facebook contact thanks to a domaine in Thailand. We exchanged on Messenger with his son who translated a bit in English, because he doesn’t speak a word of English. We had a quite approximate exchange. And, at one moment, I’m in Thailand and I’ll be able to go to Cambodia. I can go see them on such date go see them, but we have no exchange other than Messenger. I still take a plane then two buses and I’m lost in the middle of nowhere. So I hope that on arrival of this second bus, there will be someone to wait for me, because in the bus I no longer have signal. The second bus breaks down, and we find ourselves for six hours in the middle of nowhere. I start turning all white because I tell myself: “I don’t know anyone, and I think that with six hours late at the meeting, it’s not necessarily going to go well.”
The bus leaves again, we do a few hours in the wilderness and we arrive at the final point in the middle of the afternoon when I had a meeting very early in the morning. There’s no bus stop, it’s just the driver who opens the bus door. There are fields around me and I tell myself: “Does he really want to throw me there?” I get off the bus not very proud, I retrieve my suitcase, well it was my big backpack, and there we look at each other with the photographer and we say: “What do we do?”
And actually, behind the bus, there was a car I hadn’t seen. There were people waiting in front of the car: the dad, the winemaker and his son. They had been waiting since morning. When they saw me, they smiled and they were happy to see us. They never complained that we were late, they understood and never asked anything. We spent three days at their place which were marvelous. This kind of human meetings makes you tell yourself: “Wow, I have to learn patience, I have to learn many things.” It’s a life lesson, it gave me chills and even today.
So you wandered around the whole world for four years?
Jean-Baptiste: With small breaks from time to time anyway. In case there are people wondering if I did this for four years, we did trips of two months maximum in general and then we came back to recharge the batteries, prepare other trips.
So writing a book, that was sure. Did you already have the idea of importing wine afterwards? Or was it one of the ideas, but it wasn’t sure?
Jean-Baptiste: It was in a corner of my head to be honest, but it wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to do right away. It’s a really complex profession, apart and that I saw rather as literary options, like writing books or making videos. One of my big dreams one day, would be to shoot a documentary series. If Netflix is listening, I think we have things to do together.
You’d want to produce that?
Jean-Baptiste: Yes, a lot. I think there’s a lot to do and we could do episodes around wine. Wine would only be a pretext, it’s a backbone in the end, and we could create episodes with a lot of emotion, culture, cuisine, etc. I have lots of ideas.
Did you already have the idea of importing wine or not? Because you knew the four years were going to end actually.
Jean-Baptiste: Actually you’re right, it came quite naturally. The book was published in September 2019. On release it works very well. We had a lot of feedback. Among this feedback, there were many people who told us: “But you’re cute with your wine, but now that we read, what do we taste and when?” The page is pretty but I want to put something in my glass. This positive pressure, we’ll call it that, made me accelerate the mental process. So, I started looking at which were the domaines that marked me most in the world. I started making a list of all these gems which was finally only a tiny part of what I had tasted, let’s say 1.5 or 2 percent. I started contacting them and getting the machine going.
Today, since September 2020, Wine Explorers is officially importer and distributor of world wines. We specialize in many endemic grape varieties, because I love going to look for slightly different varieties.
The adventure started simply with a first domaine in the Czech Republic, to whom I said: “I’d like to launch but I have no customer file, I have nothing. You’re not yet on the French market, would that interest you?” For each domaine I import, I know either the winemaker, or the owner well, and most have become friends. There’s a relationship of trust with all, they all said yes. And so, that allows me to import them exclusively, and that’s important. We’re the only ones to have them and they’re our protégés. Since then, we have nine domaines, from nine countries in the portfolio. From Romania, we were talking about our friend Laurent Pfeffer, to Bosnia, through Lebanon or Malta. And actually, all these domaines are only small family domaines that are often organic or biodynamic, certified or not. There’s a real promise behind, and the response is starting to be good. We started this in the middle of Covid… It wasn’t the best timing in the world. We still created a small website, Wine-Explorers.net. We have a tiny portion of wine for individuals, but 95% of our business is professionals, sommeliers, wine merchants, chefs… Because you have to take time to discuss with people to talk about world wines. You have to take the customer by the hand and what’s better than having ambassadors on the ground precisely to take time to do the approach. There if I have you taste a Bosnian žilavka, but I don’t explain it to you a minimum, it can scare.
Was there a moment during these four years where you got anxious and thought of stopping the project? And when you told yourself: “In 6 months, it’s over.”, you already had a bit of the blues?
Jean-Baptiste: Yes, that happened very often. For several reasons, and it’s a question that moves me a lot because it reminds me of lots of very difficult moments. It’s true that we always talk about the positive of the project but it’s true that there were quite a few hassles. Already, we wonder at moments if we’re going to continue because the body is still a bit tired. And when you do trips Monday to Sunday… Actually it was a trip in three dimensions. That is to say we live the present moment and we try to be all-in for the winemaker. We spend on average at the domaine one to two days, to try to really understand the place. You have to give all your energy, because we don’t want to miss anything. You have to be all-in for the people to respect them. At the same time, we were preparing all the other trips and other countries we were going to do. I was also all the time on my emails in the evening, in the morning and before and after the visits. And, at the same time, you work in the past since for each country we had crossed, we wrote for ourselves, we wrote for Figaro Vin with which we had a partnership for the entire duration of the project. We wrote for other types of magazines like Bettane+Desseauve, we were asked for conferences, etc.
It was fantastic but the days were too short. It often happened that fatigue made me say: “Are we going to be capable of going to the end?”
And actually each time we visited a new vineyard, and we had this welcome and this energy that people gave us we were re-boosted. It recharged our batteries. That was perhaps the great factor that allowed us to go to the end, with two other things. The first, is the support of my mother. She has always been in back-office, and she’s extraordinary. The second, is meeting my wife in the middle of the project. She lived in Paris at the time. It was a very nice meeting during one of my returns. Actually, it’s she who, during the last years of the project, brought me, perspective and wisdom I sorely lacked. There you go, many factors that make us realize that a project we don’t do alone but in the end, we do it as a team. And that, when we manage to advance with the right people, we can go very far.
How did you manage to meet your wife on a return between two trips? You’re not obliged to tell it…
Jean-Baptiste: Yes, because it’s very funny! Actually, I was in a restaurant called Marcel, avenue de Junot, where she was director. I was supposed to meet a friend and I was eating a small cheesecake at the counter, and it happens that she was director and she was behind the counter. I had a coup de foudre and then I gave her my card. I told her: “I’m doing a world tour, I’m traveling.”, I dazzled her a bit. It was very stupid, but it pleased her. We saw each other again and it started like that. I still very often returned to France. And she supported the project a lot. She accompanied us in her free time in about ten countries. She came as a spectator to understand a bit what was happening. From Greece to the Caucasus through countries like Turkey for example. All that put end to end, even though it was an extreme challenge to lead both a sentimental life and a professional life on two fronts with so many trips, it worked very well. So well that I finished the project in December 2018, and in January 2019 my wife gave birth to Louis, our son. We can do crazy stuff when we’re crazy, I don’t know. Antoine: That’s incredible. Bravo, it must have been intense. Jean-Baptiste: It’s because we don’t think about it before, but if we start thinking about everything we do, we don’t do anything anymore.
When you finished the trip, the separation with the photographer must have been quite difficult, you arrived at Charles de Gaulle and then..?
Jean-Baptiste: No, it’s not a definitive farewell. It’s Brice Garcin, who brought a lot to the project. He redid the visuals and the logo. He was fantastic. As we collaborate a lot on projects like the book, or articles in the press, we always have contact. Even though today, we’re on completely different universes, the trips leave this invisible trace. We lived things together. It’s never a real goodbye.
So there, you settled at home for a few days, and you told yourself: “Now, I have to write.” You still had a base on each domaine I suppose, since you took a lot of notes, and you had all the photos in addition. Did you write the book gradually, or did you redo everything at once?
Jean-Baptiste: So, during the trip, I had two ways of working. During visits I had Moleskine notebooks. I must have filled 18 big notebooks during the 4 years, to write a whole bunch of things, both journalistic, technical information about the vineyards and then about anecdotes, restaurants, etc. I also had Excel tables for tastings on a computer. All this database was kept very preciously. It helped me a lot in the elaboration of the book for the history part and for the wine part. But, the book started from a blank page. That is to say it took me a few weeks to digest. I already had an editor who was ready to do the book, so that was nice. He left me a bit of time to get back on my feet a bit, after all these trips. It was still a brutal and violent moment in my life, the fact of re-sedentarizing myself. I quite liked sleeping each evening in a different place. Today I appreciate the calm of having my own place. This book was a very nice work in four hands.
We didn’t really know what to do at the start, I wanted to make a book but I didn’t know what type. When you have so much material you can make a graphic novel, a wine guide, an atlas, a beautiful photo book…
The projects can be multiple, but you have to start with one. So, we tried to make a hybrid. It’s today a book that’s 336 pages, and in which we have a chapter for each wine-producing country in the world. We don’t have all the wine regions present because it would have been 800 pages. We had to make choices. You find both beautiful photos, that means full-page photos, both anecdotes, extremely technical information. We worked with all the wine organizations in the world, with the OIV. And that allowed us to update all the figures after the 4 years of travel. And that to have clean data to present to consumers. If you’re a wine geek and you want ultra-pointed information, you can find it through all these figures, or through the history part because we took up the history of each wine country. I’m lucky that my editor is a historian by profession. We had this desire to make the book accessible to everyone. If you don’t know much but you still want to flip through it, as it’s organized in alphabetical order, you can open it and go see beautiful images, take a section at random, a portrait of a winemaker, an anecdote “Did you know?” or go read things a bit more technical. It’s a kind of UFO but which brought me a lot of satisfaction and I’m happy with this book. Antoine: When you published the book, the feedback was excellent, people ask you where to find these wines. You told yourself it could be smart to start importing.
It must be difficult to import wine in France. There must be a lot of regulations. I dare not imagine. Already if it’s inside the EU, it must be a bit simpler but it must be a pain?
Jean-Baptiste: Yes. It’s really a profession in itself for a whole bunch of reasons, whether administrative, regulations… We’re talking about products with alcohol, so they’re extremely controlled goods with taxation systems, etc. Without really getting into logistics, you have to inquire well, surround yourself well and then know how to delegate. I’m surrounded by a very good service provider who has what we call an under-customs license. So we sublease this approved warehousekeeper license. That allows to import in complete tranquility. He takes care of customs clearance, storage and reconditioning. That allows me to breathe a bit and to be able to continue my background work, which is to source these new gems, to also go meet future customers and to work on lots of other projects. And then also because I didn’t see myself in this life I love, doing an administrative and logistical job. It’s not at all my thing and I quite respect that profession. But as there are people who do it better than me, I delegated. And that was important.
But yes it’s frightening. Today, I love this profession. But when you start, you don’t know how to do it. There’s a first pallet that arrives and you have to find customers, and then you have to taste. That’s the most stressful, because when we taste the wines we love.
Me when I had my first tasting, and by the way it was with a gentleman I love a lot called Gérard Margeon. He had helped me a lot with his advice during the project but who is also very demanding in tasting. And so I knew it was a top-notch taster I was going to confront on this first tasting. Plus he came with his two sons so I had a bit of pressure. They liked some wines a lot, others less but the overall feedback was very positive. It gave me a lot of energy to continue and it was this first trigger that put me in confidence, and the foot in the stirrup to start. But I really felt naked in this tasting. We tell ourselves we loved wines, we traveled, we imported. But now, this fermented grape juice, will it please? Now I have more answers, but at the start I wasn’t proud. Antoine: Yes, especially a first tasting with Gérard Margeon, that mustn’t be the easiest. At least, once you’ve put that as a base, it’s easier afterwards.
How long has it been that you’ve been distributing in France?
Jean-Baptiste: If we count the months during Covid or if we don’t count them, it changes a lot. If we count them it must be two months. And otherwise, we started in September 2020. We were on hold for quite a long time. We work with some wine merchants, but our core business is still restaurants. Some of our gastronomic wines are placed in nice places. So it’s the very beginning, and on the other hand, at the moment we record this podcast I’m doing a tour in Paris to do tastings and we have very positive feedback. It gives energy and desire to continue. We’re placing pawns a bit everywhere. The idea behind all this, is to make world wines known to as many people as possible. And also to make all these slightly endemic grape varieties known to the average person. And that’s really nice because we discover stuff with unpronounceable names. I’m thinking of fetească regală in Romania. The idea is that tomorrow, you or anyone, can say: “I tasted something, it’s called fetească regală, it’s awfully good.” That’s the objective. Antoine: Yes, that’s super cool.
You said you had lots of projects, do you want to talk about them?
Jean-Baptiste: There are some that have already materialized. Antoine: You already told me about the Netflix series. Jean-Baptiste: Yes, it’s good to remind it. That way, the one who picks up the podcast in the middle, says to himself “Ah, there’s maybe something to do.” In the other projects, perhaps a wine bar prototype. It’s not yet very clear. I like leaning on lots of partner wine bars, but if we did a wine bar it would be to create a concept. It would be a kind of UFO, you’d have the impression on entering of doing a mini world tour by the décor, by the atmosphere and by the way people would be taken by the hand. I caught lots of crazy ideas in the four corners of the world. When we travel, we see something, we take a photo and we tell ourselves it’s great. It gives lots of other ideas and it would be a big dream to be able to put that one day on paper. So where to do it I don’t know. When even less, but it would be nice.
I’m also thinking of doing a wine tourism agency and offering a 360° experience.
I would bring information and have people taste the wines. But if they want to go further and go in the vineyard, they can go. Either by their own means, we’d put in place packages. People would be autonomous but we program a Wine Explorers visit. They would be treated a bit VIP with advantages. Or perhaps, we’d organize small trips with a real return to the source. We’d go sleep and eat at the winemaker’s place. There you go, quite incredible things, that many people need. We have a real need for return to the source for something simpler. We want to know people’s stories. If we have the chance to have behind-the-scenes that we don’t have access to from the outside but that we can open for people, I’d love to do it. There are lots of other ideas I won’t divulge today but it’s not projects that are lacking. Antoine: This travel agency, of wine tourism activities and this wine bar look incredible. Jean-Baptiste: Yes, and then it’s good timing to think about it… We wanted to launch this a bit earlier but we’ll see. There’s certainly a moment when we’ll be able to start traveling again. You have to take the projects one after the other, and then set objectives, prioritize. We start with this and then we’ll see little by little. We’ll also recruit gradually. Today, Wine Explorers is an SAS, and so we have associates arriving, we’ll also have employees. Once everything falls into place, we’ll go step by step, and we’ll move forward like that. There, we’re really in pure startup.
Is there a question you’d have liked me to ask you?
Jean-Baptiste: Tell me, for example the question you’d like to ask me? Antoine: No, there it goes too far, it’s Inception. Jean-Baptiste: It’s done on purpose. Wait, that one I hadn’t prepared.
Ask me the question: when you hear about a travel project, would you have liked to be in the shoes of the one who traveled? Because I want to ask you the question. Or do you tell yourself that four years is too long?
That you wouldn’t have wanted to put four years of your life on hold Antoine: It’s a good question. So you’re the second person to ask me a question on this podcast. The first, was Laure Gasparotto. It’s a good question. I don’t think I would be ready to do it right now. I do lots of things and I dedicate myself to them 100%. And telling myself I have to put everything aside, to dedicate myself to a single thing, even if it’s very varied, I don’t know. I hear the inconveniences you mention, or the difficulties you encountered. I think it’s something we don’t necessarily have in mind at the moment we launch into the project. We must idealize a lot the fact of doing a world tour. But it still looks incredible. If I had the opportunity to do it, I think I would do it. In any case, the things I would put aside, would give me a lot of pain for some of my projects. But when you have the opportunity to travel so much in such a short time, what happens at the end can only be positive. When you’ve discovered so many things, exchanged with so many people, you don’t know what’s going to happen to you afterwards, but you know it’s going to be not bad and that you’re going to end up doing something that will be nice, that you’ll like. And you’ve surely had even more time to be with yourself, to be sure that what you’ll do next will really please you.
Did you talk about this project to Michel Chapoutier when you left your job and what did he tell you at that moment?
Jean-Baptiste: Wow. Yes, I talked to him about it indeed because you have to when you leave a position especially at responsibility, I found it deontological and respectful to announce this project I was going to position myself on. And so yes, I talked to him about it at that time, but it was still a bit fuzzy. I talked about it saying I was going to try to create the first global census of all wine-producing countries, and that stopped there. Because at that time, it was just a paper project.
Have you talked to him about it since?
Jean-Baptiste: No, we haven’t had the chance to talk about it again but I would love to. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been to the Côtes du Rhône, because I haven’t taken the time. But I love going there and I promised myself I would go eat just next door at Anne-Sophie Pic in Valence, it’s one of my biggest dreams. By the way I would love to have him taste wines on occasion. So, yes, I should go back. He’s part of those people I admire a lot. Already, because he gives a chance to young recruits to make their start and that’s not the case for everyone. And then, he makes wines that are part of these great French UFOs, I’m thinking notably of his Hermitage whites and reds. The wine world is microscopic so we’ll probably have the chance to chat about it soon.
Did you ever want to stop somewhere? To tell yourself: “I’m going to make wine here”, or just to make your own wine?
Jean-Baptiste: I wanted to ask myself these questions at one moment, and then I didn’t manage to answer them. Where would I like to make wine? There are islands that marked me in Croatia for example, in Greece or places a bit like that, insular. Where you have the impression that time has stopped. People on islands don’t live at all the same way as on the continent. They don’t have the same time issues.
And I told myself that would make me dream, but I got scared telling myself it would cut me off too much from the world. Plus, I realized after doing all this tour, that France is still one of the most beautiful countries in the world. I’m so proud to be French. I love our wines, gastronomy, cocorico a thousand times! We’re crazy lucky to be French, it’s mind-blowing.
So if I have a vineyard, in the end it would maybe be here. On the other hand I couldn’t be on the vineyard. I have too much energy, I’m fired up, I need to do lots of things. Ideally if it happened one day, I’d be co-manager of the vineyard with friends, some would be on site all the time, and me I’d participate only in the good moments: pruning, harvest. But occasionally and when I will have decided. That’s a lot of criteria anyway.
I have three questions left that are very traditional here. The first question is: do you have a wine book to recommend to me?
Jean-Baptiste: There are almost only wine books in my library, I could cite you many. There’s one, that came out a year or two ago, that’s incredible to understand wine a bit. It’s “L’incroyable histoire du vin”, by Benoist Simmat. I’ve already talked about it elsewhere too so I’m going to cite two. The second, is the manifesto on biodynamics that Willy Kiezer just released at Editions Omniscience, who is the publisher who published Wine Explorers. I talk about it for two reasons, first because I’m proud of this publisher. Wine Explorers was his very first book in wine and it was a bit of a bet for the two of us. Today, he caught a passion for the product. He launches authors and this manifesto on biodynamics touched me a lot. And I’m very sensitive to the lunar calendar, to energies so it was made to speak to me. It’s very well written, it’s a small pocket book, it costs 15 euros. You have to have it at home. Antoine: Super, the message is passed. The link will be in the podcast description if you want to procure it. Jean-Baptiste: You have to dive in, what I didn’t say on the first, “L’incroyable histoire du vin” in graphic novel, is the best way to understand the history of wine from its genesis to today. Antoine: The book looks quite incredible, I absolutely have to buy it. Mea culpa, I haven’t yet.
Do you have a recent favorite tasting?
Jean-Baptiste: So, many and notably in world wine, but since we were talking about France earlier, we’ll go to a vineyard that’s dear to me, from Bordeaux, I’m a lover of Bordeaux wines. Domaine de L’A, by Stéphane Derenoncourt, 2015, decanted for 3 hours. That was a little candy. Antoine: I gladly believe you, I was telling you that I have one in the cellar, that he kindly gave me after I interviewed him. It’s waiting wisely for me, and I often want to open it but I tell myself “No, you have to wait a bit longer.” Jean-Baptiste: Yes, it’s part of these satellite wines, of Saint-Émilion or sometimes lesser-known appellations whereas there are fantastic terroirs, and then the touch of the winemaker, since it’s a fantastic couple that produces it, makes us enjoy it and we understand that there are great terroirs in Bordeaux. End of digression, we won’t get into the debate. I see you coming.
And my last question is: who should be my next guest?
Jean-Baptiste: If he says yes, it would be top that you receive José Vouillamoz. He’s a fantastic gentleman, he’s probably the ampelographer; ampelography is the research and reading of all grape varieties in the world. He’s perhaps the strongest ampelographer today. He co-wrote notably with Jancis Robinson a book called “Wine Grapes”. It’s the ultimate global bible to know everything about almost all grape varieties in the world. I tease him because we found two or three grape varieties at Wine Explorers that weren’t yet in the book. He’s a luxury guest. He has a vision of the vine that’s fantastic. If you can have him one day, the listeners will love it. Antoine: Stay tuned, since you’ll surely have the opportunity to listen to my interview with him… Thank you very much for this sharing, for your time and for coming all the way to my living room for this interview. Jean-Baptiste: With pleasure. It was a nice meeting, so thanks to you. Antoine: For people listening to us, if you appreciated this podcast, share it around you, send it to two of your friends, who I hope will do the same. Give it five stars on Apple Podcast, it’s super important to make it progress, to have it discovered. And then go to WineExplorers.net. I think we won’t have too much trouble finding you. Get the book which is indeed very pretty. Jean-Baptiste, see you soon!
