Michel Lafarge

We were asked yesterday what Michel meant as a Burgundian vigneron. But why he was so special, why he touched so many, is not because of what he meant to wine or to Burgundy. It was because of what he meant to humanity. Michel was the most dignified person we knew. He had the metal of a founding father, of a sage, of someone who would have come into our lives straight from the pages of the Old Testament. We privately referred to him as Gandalf. White hair. Baritone. Calm. Rigidly honest. Wise. And also very funny. Though we visited him in his cellar in Volnay, we might as well have been seeking the counsel of a Druid under an ancient oak tree. And if we asked him about the vintage because he was a repository of knowledge of every harvest going back to the twenties, we might as well have been asking him what to do, how to act —about life. What we never spoke about was commerce. Our most sincere condolences to the Lafarge family, to Burgundy, to humanity.