Honestly, not a single Bordeaux on that list that I actively seek out. Did not know he’s involved in Ausone, and I have had some amazing bottles (likely pre-Rolland), but it’s outside my price range anyway. I will admit to liking Pontet Canet. The right-bankers, and a couple lefts, some of them are just plain terrible (I’ve highlighted those that fall in that camp for me).
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Heidi made those. Rolland is recent.
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A long list of wines that hold no interest for me as well.
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Fair enough but my point is that not all of those wines fit a “Rolland” mold and that most BDX lovers would likely find wines that they like in his portfolio.
I think Tex is right. It was Heidi, then Mia Klein, and now Andy Erickson. I’m not 100 percent certain but I think Rolland came in sometime around when they did the replanting. He’s still there according to their web site.
In that list, Poyferre, Giscours, and Pontet-Canet stand out to me as wines I’ve enjoyed in multiple years. They can have a modern gloss/sheen but don’t seem sterotypically ‘Rolland-ized’ like some of the right bankers on the list. Of course I don’t know what years he consulted for, and if he’s consulting people don’t need to take all his advice.
There are wines on this list I like and wines I do not like. They are not all the same. Not by a long shot.
This.
Just my opinion, but I think he has had more of a positive effect on the California wines he helped in blending than his involvement in Bordeaux wines. I know he helped Realm a great deal in the last 2 vintages.
Would be interesting to know if those who have problems with Rolland are able to identify “his” wines in blind tastings.
This for me as well but my question is how do you work for 50+ wineries? Unless half of them are in the same custom crush environment which I know is not the case. Adding in travel, eating, and sleeping you end up at some pretty small hour per winery numbers.
Interesting that this became a “yea or nea” on Rolland and his consulting/winemaking rather than questioning whether there’s any merit to the idea/rant that wine writing in general is stagnating and/or deteriorating.
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Hi Folks,
When looking at the list of Michel Rolland’s Bordeaux clients, you have to take into account that he has varying degrees of input into the winemaking and final blending decisionmaking process at each estate. By all accounts, he has the best lab on the Right Bank, so for a property like Corbin (whose wines I really love stylistically), it is his lab and his team there that is most readily utilized by Annabelle Bardinet Cruse and he is not really involved in the winemaking decisions. Similarly, he does not do a lot on the winemaking front at Phelan-Segur and is no longer at Latour-Martillac, who ended their association with his firm a few vintages ago. At other estates he is far more active in the winemaking decisions and his stylistic penchants are more evident in the finished wines. Not every estate is paying him the same fee as well, and one is not going to find him personally in the vineyards and cellars if you are one of the clients paying a lower consulting fee. I would also imagine that some estates he finds far more interesting to be hands on with his consultancy, due to their historic import and place in the pecking order on the Gironde, and others, where he is content to allow his staff to handle most aspects of the relationship. Some producers want to hand all the decisions over to him and his team, while others want the security of a top flight lab and perhaps good crisis managment if things go wrong. So a Rolland Consultancy is hardly a homogenous affair from property to property.
Would be curious to know why he was so strident in his comments and attempt to defend the 2015 vintage though, which was not clear from what I saw in the link. Not that I went to taste at En Primeur this year, but it seems from afar that he is circling up the wagons to defend a vintage with overripe characteristics. We still seem to live in this hangover world from forty years ago when many regions struggled to attain ripeness and the hottest summers were earmarked ahead of time as the “great vintages”. In an era that has been living with ever mounting global warming, it really seems that it is high time we develop a different paradigm for “great vintages” beyond hot summers, as there is scant evidence in the 21st Century that the hottest summer weather actually correlates into great wines. This was certainly not the case with the lamentable 2003s and is quite debatable in 2009 and 2010 in Bordeaux as well. As he observed, one way or the other, it all will get sorted out in ten years’ time, though I would suspect that he and I might come to different conclusions when the day comes.
All the Best,
John
![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
)I’m still wondering what and whom he is so angry at. Nobody has identified it yet in this thread.
Me too. Those are some strong words, even for a high paid consultant.
Amen. I mourn Figeac’s move to the dark side.
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It is very simple, and eminently fashionable, to dismiss anything Rolland or Cambie has done anywhere. The reality is, as Mr. Gilman points out, much more nuanced.
But pretending otherwise certainly wins applause in certain circles.
Awesome, I love being simple, fashionable and a pretender! It gets one a golf clap!
Some interesting comments by Gilman on Rolland in this article, mirroring the criticism raised by some here (the “McDonald’s mentality”):
It certainly does. No doubt you have actually talked to producers who have worked with consultants and asked what they were looking for in the conversations, and what advice they took and what they modified and what they ignored?
One-size-fits-all, especially when looking for Internet points!