WHAT I’VE LEARNED | May-Eliane de Lencquesaing at 100
May-Eliane de Lencquesaing was born in 1925 – the same year that her family added Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande to its Bordeaux holdings, which already included Château Siran, with Château Palmer added in 1938. De Lencquesaing inherited Pichon in 1978, almost 20 years after the death of her father, following the drawing of lots with her siblings. In 2006, aged 80, she sold to Louis Roederer and invested all her efforts in a totally new property in South Africa, named Glenelly. Today, at 100, with 10 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren, she continues to act as figurehead of the estate
‘We all want to stay young. When I was 10, my grandmother gave me a special drink every day, made of melted sugar, to which she added a spoon or two of red wine, served with a biscuit. Today, at 100 years old and still happily hard working, I believe that the world of wine has helped lead to a long life.’
‘As children, we were taught to enjoy the colour and the aromas of wine in the glass. We listened to our parents’ comments. We walked in the vineyard. We picked the grapes during harvest. We enjoyed the smell of the cellar during fermentation. I loved it all.’
‘Today, the health lobby are campaigning against wine, and we are in the midst of a crisis. The younger generation don't drink wine. They have heard so much about how it is bad for the earth and bad for their health, and they are not taught about it as a cultural pursuit.’
‘Wine is part of the world’s heritage. It is the fruit of the soul and of man's labour, a great gift of nature. It has been part of man's life since the beginning of humanity. It was so important to the Greeks and the Romans that they deified it. It is mentioned throughout the Bible, and Christians put it at the centre of their celebration. But more than anything, wine is a symbol of love. It brings people together.’
‘When you put people around the table with a good bottle and they start chatting, they're happy. The leaders of our countries could learn from this – bringing people together instead of making war.’
‘All of us have to work. So we must make sure that work is something that makes us happy. I don't see any difference between working and enjoying life.’
‘I work a lot – a LOT – because I always want to do better and better. I rarely finish before one o'clock in the morning. I read, I write, I make notes. I read about the latest Burgundy wines, about the latest California wines, the new ways of pruning, the new methods of fermentation, the effect of temperatures on extraction… I wake at 7, read the newspapers, doze again, have a cup of tea at nine, and then start work again. ‘
‘I have started writing a book on glass, but I had to pause, as I was a little unwell. I don't know if I have the strength to finish it, but I hope so. I'm in love with glass. I have a museum with 700 vessels. Why? Glass is similar to wine. It comes from poor soil – sand, in fact. But it is magnified by the work of man.’
‘Right from growing up at Château Siran, I’ve always lived around farms. And I’ve always been very close to the workers. When I was in charge of Pichon, I was travelling a lot to promote the wines, and I would come back from Chicago or San Francisco or Washington DC and see the men pruning the vines in the fields, in the mud and the rain. I wanted my workers to feel happy and to feel equal, so I would always go out into the vineyards to tell them how much I admired their work, and to thank them, because if they didn't do this work, I would have no wine to sell.’
‘I studied political science, and I find politics, history and economics very stimulating. I was involved in local politics for a long time, and I always enjoyed the support of the communist and socialist voters.’
‘I planted Glenelly when I was 78 years old, and everybody told me I was crazy. A vineyard takes time, and with the value of the Rand and the price of South African wines being very low, I knew that it would take a long time to see a return on the investment. But I didn't do it for money. I did it for human reasons.
'I always remember what Nelson Mandela said – to develop South Africa, we must invest in it. I felt that if I could make a great wine in South Africa, it would support jobs and provide salaries and be a positive thing. We have even developed an after-care centre for our workers’ children. It's very little in comparison to all South Africa’s needs. But isn't it better to do something than to do nothing?’
'I never waste time wondering how we have done, and whether we should have done better. I'm too busy looking ahead to look back. But now it’s 20 years later – I don’t know how that happened – and I must say I'm very happy with the quality of the wines. But I'm even more happy about having put together a team that works, not like a business, but like a family. That is what South Africa needs.'
'South African wines are not in fashion yet, but they should be. It's mostly a problem of perception. When people think about South Africa, they think about apartheid, even though that ended a long time ago. There’s also a problem with the critics, who should cover the wines more. South African wines can be among the greatest in the world – and inexpensive, if you compare them to Bordeaux and Burgundy.'
'I am still very close to Bordeaux, but Bordeaux is hurting right now. They went crazy pushing up prices, because there was a demand, and places like the US were prepared to pay. The producers, the negociants are very responsible for what is going on now.'
67 Pall Mall London will be hosting a celebration of May-Eliane de Lencquesaing's life on Thursday 25th September, hosted by her granddaughter, Cecilia Gentry, and Glenelly cellarmaster Dirk van Zyl, and featuring a selection of Glenelly wines and the 2003 vintage of Château Pichon Lalande. For more details, see here
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