• Image of the cover of From Bordeaux to the Stars
  • Image of the cover of From Bordeaux to the Stars
Info
  • Format:Hardback
  • ISBN:9781913141486
  • Publication Date:03-04-2023
  • Pages:320

From Bordeaux to the Stars

Jean-Michel Cazes

The Reawakening of a Wine Legend

From Bordeaux to the Stars

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‘Your book is a delight! Entertaining from start to finish, with so much to learn along the way.’
Jancis Robinson (in an email to the author)

‘These pages are full of insider stories and personal histories told with warmth, humour and honesty… A front row seat on more than wine.’
Jane Anson

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Jean-Michel Cazes’ powerful description of the transformation not just of the Cazes family’s estate – the renowned classed growth Château Lynch-Bages, one of the Left Bank’s most treasured crus – but of Bordeaux’s entire wine scene. Witnessing radical change in the vineyards over the last 50 years, breakthrough vinification technology, and a sequence of stellar vintages that reignited a global passion for the wines of Bordeaux, he charts the path of this wine to a new look that shook the world... literally, from provincial Pauillac to the fringes of outer-space!

  • Translated by leading Bordeaux writer Jane Anson.
  • How the Cazes family survived danger and deprivation during World War II, and struggled through the brutal economic downturn of the 1960s and ’70s when even the finest grands crus ‘could not be sold’...
  • Working with the ‘revolutionaries’ who changed Bordeaux’s fortunes: Alexis Lichine, Philippe de Rothschild and the legendary Emile Peynaud...
  • How Jean-Michel’s skills as a young IBM ace helped him develop the first broking programmes for Bordeaux’s dawning En Primeur scene
  • Taking Bordeaux to the world via New York, Napa, Texas, Canada, Hong Kong and then – ‘you never know where wine will take you!’ – into space!
  • 1982 and the Parker Era: Bordeaux’s turnaround and new-found stardom in the eyes of the world.
  • Pauillac, Margaux, Sauternes and Pomerol: Jean-Michel’s influence extends beyond his home vineyards to the beautiful Châteaux of Pichon- Longueville, Ormes de Pez, Petit-Village, Suduiraut and Haut-Batailley...
  • With a bit of Bordeaux ‘know-how’: Jean-Michel’s unflagging interest in the global wine business takes him ‘abroad’ to the Languedoc and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Portugal, Australia and Hungary...
  • A family affair: a new generation of the Cazes clan greet the mid-2020s by fulfilling Jean-Michel’s dream of ‘Cordeillan-Bages’ – a gastronomic and vinous haven in the Médoc.

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Additional information

  • Weight1.02 kg
  • Dimensions170 x 240 mm
One of the most famous figures in the Bordeaux wine world, Jean-Michel Cazes quit a promising career as an IBM engineer in Paris and in 1973 returned to his native Pauillac to join the family business, which not only included insurance but the somewhat neglected Premier Cru vineyard of Château Lynch-Bages. Over the next 40 years he presided over a transformation in the vineyard’s fortunes that mirrored that of the Bordeaux region as a whole, from the way its grapes were grown and harvested to the quality of the wines themselves. He also became a global ambassador for the Médoc, presenting its wines and methodologies to a rapidly growing worldwide audience of winemakers, critics and afficionados, as well as making friends and investing in new business ventures wherever he went. Now retired, having left the family business in the capable hands of his son, Jean-Charles, Jean-Michel can look back on an extraordinary career that helped to put the wines of Bordeaux back where they belong – at the very top of the winemaking tree.