Spilt Wine

7. Laurent Grotkopf

Thursday 20 March 1986

Laurent Grotkopf is a big man, grossly obese, he looked more like a Florida tourist than a French winemaker He runs his family business from an impressive group of old buildings in the centre of Nuits-Saint-Georges, about six kilometres to the south of Morey-Saint-Denis. The business operates as a vigneron-recoltant-négociant, that is, in addition to growing grapes, harvesting them and making wine, they also buy grapes and bulk wines from other growers and producers. The results are blended, bottled and marketed.

They own just over a hundred hectares of vineyards scattered all along the Côte de Nuits, with parcels, plots, or even a row or two in most of the famous Grands Crus and many of the better-known Premiers Crus. Laurent began expanding the family's vineyard holdings in the mid-60s when he inherited the company from his father.

Louis père and I had often discussed the wisdom – or lack of it – behind Laurent's purchases. Though he bought famous vineyards, he chose the cheaper plots in lesser corners or along the edges of the appellations. He gravitated to inferior terroir. We had joked that Laurent had the finest assemblage of poorly sited vineyards in all of Burgundy.

But what Grotkopf did own were wines that could all legally wear the famous vineyard names on their labels: Le Chambertin, Clos de Bèze, Clos-de-la-Roche, Clos-St-Denis, Bonnes-Mares, Le Musigny, Clos de Vougeot, Echézeaux, and so on. Grotkopf's market was the label reader, not the knowledgeable wine lover.

The spread of supermarkets through France, gradually in the late '50s and then accelerating through the '60s and early '70s, had given Laurent a target audience. Without the informed advice of wine-shop staff, shoppers had begun choosing their own wines from the supermarket shelves. Laurent devised racks of little handout booklets detailing the most famous wines of Burgundy.

By this means, he built a substantial following among supermarket shoppers. Then he added a line of generic and regional wines, all of which carried the familiar Grotkopf label. The new inexpensive Grotkopf wines had flown off the shelves.

Encouraged by this, he expanded into less expensive wines from the Rhône and the Languedoc and shipped bulk lots of them by road tanker to his expanding facilities in Nuits-Saint-Georges. He blended, and as Louis père had often suggested, likely blurred the distinction between cheap Midi or Rhône wine and Bourgogne.

He is prosperous, he is aggressive, and he has a reputation for ruthlessness. His already ruddy face turned an even deeper red in anger when Louis told him he had no wine for him this year. "Impossible! Ce n'est pas vrai... Impossible! That is not true. You had a large harvest last year. Stop playing with me."

"I am not playing, it is all sold or committed. I wanted to tell you early so you can plan."

"But we have an agreement of many years with your father."

"Yes, informal, but not with paper."

"So, you come to ask me for more money for your wine?"

"No, I already have that, almost double." Louis looked at me and smiled. "I have no more wine to sell this year."

"Impossible! Nobody will give you that much for your wine." He sneered at me and flicked a hand as though shooing flies. "Not even rich Americans like him. I will give you nine thousand per pièce for the Grands Crus, four thousand for the Premiers."

"I tell you, Laurent, I have no more wine. It is gone."

"Stop playing with me, you young fool; your university degrees are all going to your head." Laurent squirmed and fidgeted as he fumbled with his huge hands. "Okay, I will pay ninety-five for the Grands Crus."

"But I can't – I have no more wine," Louis said calmly.

The veins on Laurent's forehead bulged as he grimaced. "Ten then, I'll give ten thousand, but that's it. No more. We shake on it," he demanded loudly as he lumbered to his feet and thrust out his hand.

"I tell you, Laurent, I have no more wine this year, it is all gone. Gone at fifty per cent more than that, gone at fifteen thousand for the Grands Crus, sixty-five hundred for the Premiers. I have no wine to sell you."

Laurent slammed his fist on the desk and shouted, "Get out of here, you impudent little bastard! You think you are superior to me because you have degrees and a rich American idiot. We will see who is superior!"