Christophe Coupez
Consulting oenologist at OEnocentre
Wine is other people. Wine is initiating others. As Françoise and Jacques Capdemourlin did in 1988. They opened their doors to me, explained their work, showed me around Saint-Emilion, its properties and institutions. They taught me to love wine, from their latest creation to a Château Balestard-la-Tonnelle 1943 and a Château Coutet 1922. After my time with them, I kept horses for pleasure and devoted myself to my studies and my career in wine. They had converted me. Wine is offering emotion. Like the friend who invited me to taste a final vat of Cabernet Sauvignon in maceration. It was 2009. It was the first time that I asked myself how it was possible for a grape to produce such a result. It felt like something beyond imagination or our most fantastical dreams.
Wine is giving pleasure. It was New Year’s Eve. A dinner with friends to celebrate passing into the year 2000. The table fell silent. We had all just taken a sip of a Côtes-du-Jura after a piece of goat’s cheese fresh from the Romorantin. The pairing was perfect. Everyone felt it. There was no need for words. Just our eyes shining in complicity.
”wine is passing on a heritage. Saying that, come a certain age and level of experience, it’s time to train others, to communicate everything you know, so that the new generation can take up the baton, evolve, and pass it on in their turn.”
Wine is to become aware of the relativity of time. When that bottle of Chablis-Grand-Cru les Clos 1959 eclipses all other wines, so immutable does it seem. Impossible to follow with any other bottle. It concludes the evening, engraving the memory forever with the sense of wonder that it evoked.
Wine is learning. Constantly challenging your ideas and achievements. Adapting work practices, day after day. Understanding that nothing is ever the same twice, even when the situation may seem familiar. Listening, observing, reflecting, adopting, and finally bringing your own personal touch to it all.
What would wine be without other people? For wine, above all else, is sharing.