Vino Business by Isabelle Saporta

Author:Isabelle Saporta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2015-10-19T15:26:01+00:00

15

The Long March of the Pomerol Exiles

On the sublime soil of our greatest vineyards, behind the golden gates of these beautiful châteaux, Shakespearean tragedies play out every day. These wine-country sharks are like the feudal lords of old. Their daily battle is to increase their territory at any cost. Too bad for the little people who find themselves in their way. They are the prey the sharks won’t hesitate to swallow, very cheaply if at all possible.

The sharks recently decided that it was time to get rid of the peasants on the prestigious Pomerol plateau. To do this, they relied on the usual strategies. The first one is always to get hold of the wine syndicate. It’s especially easy since the Pomerol wine syndicate, like the others, has reestablished voting by property ownership: the more hectares and properties you own, the more votes you have. Next, they just had to get the trick approved by the wine industry watchdog the INAO. So all they needed was an excuse to get rid of the people in their way. In 2009, the syndicate leaders finally found the thing they needed: requiring all the Pomerol producers to build a wine aging cellar within the Pomerol region.

For many, this new requirement, approved by order of the INAO (and signed by the minister at the time, Bruno Le Maire), is impossible to fulfill. Winemakers with very small plots of land simply don’t have room to build a cellar. Plus, even if they had the space, they don’t have the money. Requiring these winemakers to build a cellar means forcing them to invest around €500,000, money that most of them don’t have.

It’s a cruel blow, especially since, for decades, these winegrowers, and their parents and grandparents before them, made their Pomerol wine a few kilometers outside the appellation area without it bothering anyone. Casting tradition aside, the syndicate suddenly decided that this practice was extremely harmful to the quality of the wine, and thus to Pomerol’s reputation. Twenty-three properties out of the appellation’s 150 found themselves excluded. In its great mercy, the INAO granted them the possibility of continuing to make their wine until 2018. That would give the sharks time to make offers on the properties. Until then, the exiles (a term the syndicate’s president Jean-Marie Garde rejects, claiming they’re all part of the same family)1 can fight and make their case, although in the meantime, as benevolent future buyers kindly explained to them, “the closer they came to the fateful date, the more their land would lose value.” For just before the harvest in 2018, the winemakers would have only one option left: to sell at whatever price the sharks offered.

The exiles moved heaven and earth to try to put a stop to this decree. First, they turned to their syndicate, hoping it was simply a misunderstanding. When they contacted Jean-Marie Garde, who was also general secretary of the Interprofessional Council of Bordeaux Wines, he preferred to let Christian Moueix handle the matter. He’s

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