Farewell to the most influential enologist of our time: Michel Rolland passed away

A mourning for the world of wine: today, in Bordeaux, at the age of 78, Michel Rolland passed away, the most influential enologist of our time, a great professional who, over 60 years of a prestigious and leading career, became “the man who invented modern wine”. He elevated the very role of the enologist and rode at the forefront of the decades in which fine wine became a symbol of desire for the world elites, starting from his native Bordeaux, but also through California, Argentina, Chile, and Italy. There, he offered his consulting and collaborations to estates such as Caprai, a leader and true beacon of the Sagrantino di Montefalco territory, the magnificent Tenuta di Biserno in Bolgheri, which brought together the three Antinoris (Piero, Lodovico, and Ilaria, now headed by Niccolò Marzichi Lenzi); the new Bolgheri star, Tenuta del Nicchio by Lodovico Antinori and his daughter Sophia; and previously, estates such as Ornellaia and Masseto, now owned by the Frescobaldi family, also in Bolgheri.
An absolute “champion” of the wine world, but also a sharp observer and often a forerunner of many changes in the sector, engaging with him had become a pleasant tradition for WineNews during our annual meetings among the vineyards of Umbria (as in the most recent, when we gathered his vision of today wine world).
Marco Caprai remembers him as “the one who created modern wine: if so many good wines are produced around the world today as never before, the credit goes to Michel Rolland. Along with the great critic Robert Parker, founder of “The Wine Advocate” and the “100-point system”, he was among the first, starting in the 1970s, to change the taste of wine globally, revolutionizing our sector. He was truly a gentleman, an extremely cultured person with immense talent, curious, ironic, who loved the pleasures of life and always sought excellence, in wine and beyond”.
“A monument of world oenology - comments a moved Lodovico Antinori to WineNews (today producer of Castello del Nicchio, and a longtime friend of Michel Rolland, with whom he worked from the 1990s at Ornellaia, Masseto, Biserno, ndr).
Adieu Monsieur Rolland. (are)