They are the wines I look for.”Įven back then, Ms.
But only a few winemakers are making wines with these qualities.
“It’s intricate, full of nuances, complexities. “Burgundy is byzantine,” she told The Times in 1982. “If we don’t drink it, we don’t sell it,” was the mantra for what became known in the 21st century as Becky Wasserman & Company after her sons joined her in the business. She wanted wines that expressed her sense of Burgundian culture and flavor. Often, she was the conduit by which a new producer could be introduced to the rest of the world.īut she was not solely motivated by commerce. What began as a gradual movement accelerated during Ms. Over the course of the 20th century, such actions compelled farmers holding unsold grapes to begin bottling wines themselves, under their own labels. The merchants prospered, not the farmers, who were often subject to arbitrary price changes or decisions not to buy grapes at all, if the merchants decided the market warranted such a drastic step. “The content of a barrel in the end was more enticing than a barrel itself,” she said on Levi Dalton’s wine podcast, “ I’ll Drink to That.”īack then, Burgundy was still dominated by big négociants, merchants who bought grapes or wine from vignerons and bottled and sold it under their own labels. Slowly, she transitioned to identifying promising young producers and putting them together with American wine importers. This led to an increasingly clear understanding of the intricacies of Burgundy terroir and wines. She began selling French barrels to California winemakers. Wasserman began her business in the 1970s after an earlier marriage had broken up, leaving her a single mother with two young sons, Peter and Paul. In the process, as the greatest wines, the grand crus, reached stratospheric prices, she fought against fetishizing them, promoting instead the region’s more earthbound, humble bottles to a world that looked only to the skies. She witnessed Burgundy’s metamorphosis from a weary, insular society, still beholden to suspicion and distrust fomented in World War II, through an unfortunate embrace of modern technology and chemical shortcuts in the 1970s and ’80s to, finally, embracing the crucial importance of conscientious agriculture and transparent winemaking, and so becoming the world’s most prized and influential wine region. Wasserman’s wisdom was in part the result of timing and experience. I didn’t realize they had thought about the vineyards so personally.” “He said, ‘My vineyards were here before I was born, they will be here after I die, it is up to me to honor or dishonor them,’” she told me. She once quoted to me Hubert de Montille, an influential vigneron in the Côte de Beaune, with whom she worked. Instead, good wine was something personal, cultural and historic, produced by people with the deepest respect and understanding of their land and vineyards. Nor was it a collector’s item, to be invested in for profit. To her, good wine, especially Burgundy, was not merely a tasty beverage in a glass.
Not only did she introduce Americans to a wide array of vignerons whose bottles would become among the most coveted and treasured in the world, she helped people learn how to think about wine, not by instruction but through example.
Wasserman often served as a sage, sharing knowledge hard-earned in her early days, when she was often the only woman in the room. Throughout her long career in wine, which began a few years after she moved to Burgundy in 1968, Ms. It’s nice to have natural things that react.” “Burgundies react differently according to their age, according to the weather, according to the ambience. “Burgundy is and will always remain the anti-product,” she told me.
She agreed with my overall point, but she cautioned me not to make too much of consistency. In 2008, when I was writing an article countering the long-held reputation of red Burgundy as a frequently disappointing minefield of unreliable quality, I visited Ms. And she could explain things in a way that was enlightening, offering not just answers but insights. She understood wine and she understood people.