Michel Rolland was a French oenologist and wine consultant, widely regarded as the world's first "flying winemaker". He died on March 20th 2026, aged 78.
Rolland was born into a family of vintners in Pomerol, on Bordeaux's right bank. His grandparents founded Château Le Bon Pasteur, which still produces reds. He spent his school holidays riding the tractor and helping with the harvest. He studied oenology at university, and in the mid-1970s joined a laboratory with his wife in Libourne, on the banks of the Dordogne, to chemically analyse wines.
Rolland began consulting for local wineries in the mid-1970s, during a bad stretch for Bordeaux when poor weather had led to a series of bad vintages and rumours of adulterated wine had crippled sales. He stressed the importance of waiting to pick grapes until they were fully ripe, avoiding the lean, thin flavours that once defined the region, and reminding vintners that winemaking starts in the field, not the cellar.
He was known for his gift for blending grapes. He also began visiting California just as Napa and Sonoma valleys were coming into their own, and eventually consulted for vintners as far afield as India, South Africa and Israel. His preferred style—ripe, plush and fruit-forward reds, high in alcohol and low in acidity, aged in new oak barrels—dovetailed with the tastes of the critic Robert Parker, whose favourable ratings boosted sales of wines made in that style.
Rolland's critics accused him of homogenising wine. "Mondovino", a muckraking documentary about wine and globalisation released in 2004, featured him being chauffeured, barking into a mobile phone and calling himself, in English, a "flying winemaker". The film showed him advising a chateau owner to "micro-oxygenate" her wines. Small-scale winemakers derided modern Bordeaux for worshipping "only money"; Rolland in turn dismissed the "peasants, bumpkins and hicks" standing in the way of progress.
Rolland maintained that he did not impose a style but simply helped ambitious vintners understand what their terroir could produce. He said the documentary was good for business.
Kime's Law for the Reward of Meekness: Turning the other cheek merely ensures two bruised cheeks.