Meet Yann Rohel. You Already Know His Work.
Meet Yann Rohel. You Already Know His Work.
An interview with the influential natural wine oenologist, a former assistant to Jacques Néauport and a contemporary of Philippe Pacalet.
A native of Bandol in Provence, Yann Rohel has led a long and fascinating career in natural wine, helping to define the winemaking style at numerous important estates along the way. In recent years he’s helped make natural wine in Mexico with Bichi. Today he alternates oenological consulting with work as a gardener and landscaper, living between Villié-Morgon, Bandol, and the southern Rhône.
Quick facts:
Yann Rohel was a classmate and flatmate of renowned Burgundy négoçiant Philippe Pacalet at oenology school in Dijon. Through Pacalet, Rohel met Marcel Lapierre and Jacques Néauport.
Rohel would go on to assist Jacques Néauport for two years.
It was Rohel who introduced natural Bandol vigneron François Dutheil of Château Sainte Anne to Marcel Lapierre, helping connect the nascent network of natural winemakers in France. Rohel also put Thierry Puzelat in touch with Marcel Lapierre, while Puzelat was working at Domaine de la Tour du Bon.
Following the Dutheil’s death in 1996, Rohel vinified at Château Sainte Anne for three vintages, saving the estate.
Rohel also worked with Guy Breton, who created his “Ptit Max” cuvée at Rohel’s instigation in 2003.
Rohel is also credited with leading Marcel Richaud to embrace natural vinification, working with the estate from 1999-2009, in 2015, and again today.
THE PRACTITIONER
When I dropped in on Ptit Max one morning after harvest this past September, he was holding court in beneath the canopy of his front yard with his longtime cellar-hand, Kevin Fourmont and our friend Magali, Julie Balagny’s former assistant. With them was a reed-thin bearded fellow in work gear with the creased face and kind eyes of a road-weary apostle.
It took me a few minutes to place him as the figure briefly introduced in Provence circa 1991 by natural wine progenitor Jacques Néauport, in his weird, infamous 1998 book Les Tribulations d’un Amateur de Vins, as “Yann Rohel, a young talented oenologist.”
I’d never laid eyes on Rohel or seen him in a picture; nor did Max immediately introduce us. It was his conversation, his plainly decades-long familiarity with the working methods of the natural vignerons of the Beaujolais, that gave him away. He’d clearly spent more time in the vineyards and cellars of Beaujolais than an ordinary oenologist.
“I was among the only people he cited by real name in that book,” Rohel told me later, of his appearance in Néauport’s literary bridge-burner. “I paid dearly for that.”
Over the past decade’s travel among France’s natural winemakers, I heard Rohel’s name invoked often, by Marcel Richaud, Andrea Calek, Max Breton, and others. But his precise influence eluded me, as did the man himself. I heard he’d stopped making wine. I heard he was in South America, or Mexico. As with many shadowy figures from the foundational era of natural winemaking, no one could really quantify his contributions. The trail seemed cold.
This is why I overflowed with what were probably embarrassingly pointed questions that day chez Max, and on several later occasions. To his credit, Rohel didn’t brush me off. He has a serene nature, sanded down from the decades of working with highly abrasive vignerons. If in your career you’ve ever taken a lot of bullshit headaches and hassle from vignerons and simply smiled through it because you love them, you’ll find some kinship with Rohel.
YANN ROHEL: AN INTERVIEW
This interview is condensed from several interviews conducted in September and November.
How did you begin working in wine ?
I discovered the world of wine totally by chance. I went with my mother to buy wine from Château de Pibarnon. That was in 1986. I was 20. I’d quit school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
The first guy who gave me direction was Cyrille Perzinski [,then-cellarmaster at Château de Pibarnon]. We got along. I did vinification at Pibarnon in 1987. I was hoping to do it with Cyril. But Cyril had gotten angry with the owner. I arrived mid-July and he left August 1st. So I found myself all alone at Pibarnon, like an idiot. Then the owners, Henri Saint-Victor and his wife, really took me under their wings. I decided to do oenology school in Dijon.
When did you discover what we nowadays call natural wine?
I was just starting school in Dijon. When I came back to the south, a friend of my mothers said, “I have to introduce you to my neighbor.” And it was François Dutheil of Chateau Sainte Anne. It was a revelation. Francois Dutheil had always worked without sulfites. Since 1964. He was really the only one working that way in Bandol, or even in the south of France.
My mother’s friend dropped me there at 10AM. After an hour, she got fed up and left because we had started to taste and talk at length. When Dutheil drove me home, it was 10PM at night.
Speaking of Bandol, how did you wind up working with Domaine de la Tour du Bon?
It was the end of 1990. The brother of my girlfriend and his cousin wanted to harvest somewhere. So I called some domaines I knew of. I fell upon Agnes Henry-Hocquard at Domaine de la Tour du Bon. It was her first vintage, and she asked if I could find more people. I said I could maybe come for four days, but just for fun. So I met Agnès’ parents, and Thierry Puzelat, who had just begun working there. And they said, “We have an oenologist cutting grapes in the vines? Who is this guy?”
Twenty or thirty years ago, an oenologist was really someone. We were demi-gods. So Agnès’ mother, she was like the KBG, she kept coming up to ask me questions. We all got along well. I wound up informing or misinforming all the cellar masters at Tour du Bon. I accompanied Puzelat and then I accompanied his successor Antoine Pouponneau also.
How did you arrive in the Beaujolais?
I had the luck that Philippe Pacalet was in my class in Dijon. He oriented me, or disoriented me.
Pacalet and I were flatmates in the second year of school. After six months, he brought me to the Beaujolais. I met Marcel Lapierre and Jacques Néauport. And we passed an extremely nice weekend, as often happened in the Beaujolais during the grand epoch. It was very lively and festive. So I felt like returning.
Pacalet and I lost sight of each other in 1989. Because we didn’t have a lot in common. I don’t know about nowadays, but at the time, Philippe Pacalet wasn’t especially appreciated in the Beaujolais. He was tolerated, because he’s the nephew of Marcel Lapierre.
But Marcel and Jacques were of an extreme beneficence with regards to me. I was a vineyard worker for Lapierre in 1990, and again in 1992.
“Those were the pioneer years in the Beaujolais, the 1990s. Everything happened.”
How did you begin working with Jacques Néauport?
It was for very simple reasons. I was available, I was curious, I felt like it - and I had a driver’s license. [Ed.: Néauport famously does not drive.] So from 1989 to 1992 I travelled a lot with Jacques.
The thing with Jacques is, you ask him to take the density, and he breaks the faucet. Jacques is not a practitioner. He’s an extraterrestrial. A taster, a visionary genius, with an intellectual approach that was incredible for the epoch. But he’s not a practitioner.
How would you describe your own approach to oenology?
My big difficulty was to purge myself of oenology school. I wanted to relearn the entire metier of wine, after my oenology diploma. And thanks to Jacques, thanks to Dutheil, thanks to Marcel, I relearned the metier of wine. I was a vineyard worker and cellar worker for everyone. A practitioner.
“But for other oenologists, I was a failure.”
What else did you do during this time?
From 1995-1996, I managed Château Cambon for Lapierre and Jean-Claude Chanudet. Then I quit Cambon to work at Château Sainte Anne after the death of Francois Dutheil. I passed three years there. It was hell on earth. My career had been looking up, I was a consultant in Japan, I had the job at Cambon. Then suddenly I found myself a vine worker, a cellar worker, a tractor driver, just to maintain Château Sainte Anne.
But what makes me happy is that Jean-Baptiste Dutheil is a vigneron now. He was thirteen at the time.
After Château Sainte Anne, you began a collaboration with Marcel Richaud.
I have a long history with Domaine Richaud. I accompanied the domaine for ten years, starting in 1999. He came to see me with Antoine Pouponneau of Domaine de la Tour du Bon.
I work with Marcel Richaud again since last year. I accompanied the 2018 and 2019 vintages, and I help vinify the 2020 vintage. We work together naturally, because there’s a deep understanding. The purely technical part, the vinification, is only 15-20% of what I do. Today, what I do is accompaniment and management. But human management, coaching. I tell them, “Give me the means, and we touch the stars.” That’s what pleases me chez Richaud. I can only do projects like that these days.
You left the wine business for almost a decade, starting in 2009. Why?
Frankly, after 2005-2006, the world of natural wine evolved. We passed from a sort of niche to a big window. The salons, the off-salons, the off-salons of off-salons. Everyone got big heads, everyone became too in-demand.
I also had a sort of breakdown. When you work with these vignerons, 30% of what you do is technique, and the rest is therapy. It’s therapy with crazies who drive you nuts and live off your energy.
So I broke down. I was depressed for a year. I became a gardener and a landscaper.
“Until 2009, I gave everything for natural wine. It was night and day, twelve months a year. I think I gave enough.”
What changes did you see when you returned to oenology after ten years?
When I came back, I saw the same yeasts, and new ones. But they augmented the dosage. In my time, on the packets it was marked between 10 - 20g. And now it’s 20-40g. They doubled the dose. It’s business.
And similarly, they launched new ranges. Now there are new generations, combinations of products, including lysozymes, cocktails of antimicrobial treatments. So now there are lots of people who can say, “Now we’re zero-added-sulfites.” But at the end of the day, rather than putting in three chemical products to make people believe that you’re working without sulfur, well, you want to say to the guys, “Just put in a little sulfur.”
How do you spend your time these days?
I live between Bandol, the southern Rhône, and the Beaujolais. I work in wine here and there, and a little in gardening. I have other hats now. I have wine projects, but it’s no longer interesting for me to simply vinify. I’m no longer in the fine winemaker mode.
I know I’m good. I know I can do vinification. But it’s not what makes me dream, or get up in the morning. I had fifteen or twenty years of craziness, like Jacques Néauport, where all we wanted was to vinify. We didn’t really care if we were paid or not. At the time, thirty years ago, there were just twenty of us making natural wine in France. We were on a quest.
END
YANN ROHEL: A TIMELINE
1987 - Rohel begins oenology school in Dijon. He does his first vinification at Château Pibarnon. Through a friend of his mother, he meets François Dutheil of Château Sainte Anne.
1988 - Rohel finds himself classmates and flatmates with Philippe Pacalet, who introduces him to Marcel Lapierre and Jacques Néauport.
1989 - Rohel begins assisting Néauport on the latter’s consultancy trips around France.
1990 - Rohel works in the vineyard for Marcel Lapierre. On a whim, Rohel helps out during harvest at Domaine de la Tour du Bon. There he meets Thierry Puzelat.
1991 - Néauport vinifies with Rohel at Château Sainte Anne. Rohel takes a job for a Belgian company that owns Domaine du Dragon and Domaine Bois de Desmoiselles in Provence.
1993 - Rohel sets up his own consultancy company. He works for the Belgian company, and in the Beaujolais for the wine négoçiant Jean-Paul Selles.
1995 - Rohel manages Château Cambon for Marcel Lapierre and Jean-Claude Chanudet.
1996 - Death of François Dutheil. Rohel leaves the Beaujolais to manage the transition at Château Sainte Anne for next three years.
1999 - Rohel begins consulting for Marcel Richaud.
2003 - Rohel encourages Guy Breton to produce first vintage of the cuvée “Ptit Max.”
2004 - Yann Rohel meets Andrea Calek, who joins him working as a “mercenary winemaker” for a few years. Rohel introduces Calek to Gérald Oustric in Ardèche.
2009 - Rohel has a breakdown. He quits the world of wine and decides to focus on gardening and landscaping.
2015 - At the behest of Marcel Richaud, Rohel vinifies for Domaine Richaud that year.
2016 - Rohel moves to Mexico, planning to work in gardening and landscaping there.
2017 - After running into Louis-Antoine Luyt in Mexico, Rohel begins consulting for Bichi.
2018 - Rohel begins consulting again for Domaine Richaud.
FURTHER READING
An early mention of Yann Rohel’s work with Marcel Richaud in this 2004 Decanter piece by Beverly Blanning.
Alice Feiring encountered Rohel during her visit to Bichi in 2017.