MONSIEUR MICHEL BETTANE – WINE FROM HIS PRIVATE CELLAR BY DROUOT, PARIS

AUCTION BY OGER BLANCHET

4 APRIL, 2024 AT DROUOT, PARIS

_{MONSIEUR MICHEL BETTANE – WINE FROM HIS PRIVATE CELLAR
Lot 10 ©Courtesy: Oger – Blanchet / Drouot. Paris}

On April 4, Oger Blanchet will be selling part of the cellar of Michel Bettane, the world-renowned French wine critic and journalist. A considerable heritage, including some 1,300 bottles from his personal cellar, will be dispersed at Hôtel Drouot. For this unprecedented sale, there will be no estimate and a single price: €20 per bottle!

The quality of this collection of wines from France and abroad, selected by Michel Bettane, is probably unique in the world. For this first sale, the critic has decided to offer mixed cases of six or twelve bottles, in which one or two well-known and sought-after references will be complemented by very interesting wines from fine terroirs in France and abroad.

_{MONSIEUR MICHEL BETTANE – WINE FROM HIS PRIVATE CELLAR
Lot 40 ©Courtesy: Oger – Blanchet / Oger – Blanchet / Drouot. Paris}

Wine lovers will discover 1300 bottles, cellared between 10 and 40 years. These exceptionally good levels can be explained by the rare quality of conservation in the cellar, where cool temperatures and humidity are the norm. While the wine has benefited from perfect temperature conditions, the labels, whose paper cannot withstand a very humid atmosphere, have suffered. However, the names of the estates are known in 99.9% of cases, and the vintages and climates in 90%.

The range of wines on sale is extremely diverse: from Germany to the South West of France, via Alsace, Jura, Burgundy and Bordeaux. Within each region, they’ll see a sharp selection of top-quality vintages. And within each box, a mix of regions or vintages within a single region.

MICHEL BETTANE

“My job can’t be limited to judging and scoring a young wine, too often before bottling, when it’s still maturing. Unfortunately, this is the usual practice, imposed by the market. I have to check that in bottle, after sufficient aging, it lives up to the promise of the young wine. That’s why, right from the start of my career, I took it upon myself, like any wine lover, to buy many more bottles than I needed for my personal consumption. With the intention of monitoring their evolution and, above all, verifying the aptitude of the terroirs and winemaking techniques to produce a wine for aging.

To this day, I have never sold a single one of these bottles, which make up over 95% of my cellar. The vast majority of these bottles have aged in a large cellar in the Yvelines region, dug into the Kimmeridgian rock, where the temperature conditions are ideal for the wine, but unfortunately not for the labels, whose paper cannot withstand a very humid atmosphere. I thought that at my age, after all these years of accumulation, wine lovers would be happy to drink wines that had reached full maturity, but without the dramatic speculation that affects the trade in a few privileged terroirs. So I suggested to Etude Oger-Blanchet that they put together a mixed case, where one or two bottles of well-known, sought-after wines would be complemented by very interesting wines from fine French or foreign terroirs less subject to speculation. And as the labels are altered by the nature of the cellar climate, and sometimes difficult to read, to offer them at a very reasonable starting price, often reduced, of 20 euros per bottle.

I wish future consumers of these bottles as much initiation as I have had to the diversity of character and style that defines our rich wine heritage and that of our neighbors.”

A PASSION FOR OVER 50 YEARS

Michel Bettane, born in 1952, is a wine journalist and one of the world’s most influential wine tasters. He studied music, passed his agrégation in classics and began his career as a teacher at Ginette (Lycée Sainte-Geneviève in Versailles, France).

A wine collector from his days as a teacher, he followed Michel Dovaz’s courses at the Académie du Vin created in the early 1970s by English journalist Steven Spurrier. To this day, Michel Bettane recalls how much he owes to the recently deceased Michel Dovaz. Michel Bettane soon became a professor at the Académie himself. In 1991, he met Chantal Lecouty and Jean-Claude Le Brun, who had just bought the Revue du Vin de France, and from then on lived his passion as a wine critic and journalist.

In 2005, he created the “Bettane & Desseauve” tandem with Thierry Desseauve to continue informing and advising wine lovers through a Guide, Le Grand Tasting Salons (Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo and Hong Kong), numerous wine supplements in French newspapers and, more recently, their own monthly magazine “En Magnum”.