The French do explicitly distinguish between vigneron and viticulteur. How would you translate these two words?I think he may have thought the French word has some added mystique in English, in the way Parker always referred to the scent of toast in a wine as they scent of pain grillé. It is an odd bit of mystification.
Cellar-master is perhaps a better translation of vigneron?
Very few CA winemakers have time/energy to visit vineyards. So many are caught up in administration duties, logistics, HR and sales (including road trips) that it’s hard to focus. I’ve had many clients over the years that might want to walk their fields in late summer and have a lunch. By that time numerous decisions have already been made on our end, that a walk thru is just exercise.
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Atlhough in French, maitre de chai is another word for vigneron, in English, as I understand it, a cellar-master manages the cellar and can be distinct from the winemaker. Really, these titles are mostly specific to the domaine or the organization, though. On a French wine bottle, you will find the term proprietaire viticulteur, which means a property owner who raises the vines and makes the wine. Those people would naturally and easily refer to themselves as vignerons. There are also people who farm vines they don’t own and make the wine from them. They are also winemakers, as are Americans who do the same thing. Both vigneron and maitre de chai can be used to designate employees who make wine for an owner who is a different person. One can go on. Getting back to the original question, I think the answer is that whatever Christophe had in mind, the distinction he was making doesn’t designate the difference.
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Only if they fly.
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AFAIK, and in my area and among my colleagues, vigneron is never used for an employee.
A vigneron is always an independent farmer that makes his/her own wines.
A viticulteur is always an independent farmer that does not make wine but sells grapes to negociant or coopératives.
A maitre de chai (a winemaker that works full time for an estate or a group of estates that belongs to the same propriétaire), a chef de culture (vineyard manager) or ouvrier viticole (vineyard worker) are always employees.
An independent winemaker who buys 100% of the fruit is always named ‘negociant’ in France, though this word is also used for people who don’t make wine, like in Bordeaux where a negociant is mostly a wine trading company.
The official administrative french word for winemaker is negociant-vinificateur, which is almost never used in common language.
Since a lot of vignerons are now buying fruit to make some of their wines, negociant is not anymore a pejorative word in the wine world in France, except when used for big industrial wine companies.
Of course there are a lot of nuances in those definitions according to the region, the cultural and historical context.
Remember, France as over 1000 different types of cheese. We just hate simplicity. 
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Oh sure…Eric here with facts!
Thanks Eric.
There’s a lot of ways that things happen. We’re connected to Whistling Ridge beginning with pruning, and through the growing season. I’ve also asked the other growers that we work with to make changes in farming for our needs, and we walk all the vineyards routiely begiining mid-July to first of August. But I have made very good wines on several occasions with fruit that I didn’t see until late(and once only when it arrived at the winery). There are some vintages that almost anything works, and others that make our connection to the fruit a very good thing.
That said, I can’t imagine being tied up in HR over going to the vineyard.
About fifteen years ago I was visiting a winery in Pauillac with two American winemakers…rather pretty ones at that, I might add. The PR lady who was taking us around spouted off that there was no French word for winemaker. I wanted to say, Well, that is a weakness of your language. You need two words, ‘directeur technique’. Instead,I said, we have no words for ‘chef de cuisine’ because cuisine is made on the farm and the cooker’s job is to let the terroir shine through. Then I asked what the guys in a big glass walled room were doing–they were doing blending trials–were they making wine??
Anyway we got out of there pronto and two days later we were at dinner with some Burgundian ‘winemakers’…including Rolland Masse from the Hospices de Beaune and Laurence Jobard from Drouhin.They thought the word winemaker described what they did. They oversee/saw the vineyards and the vinification and the ageing of the wine through bottling.
In American winemaking there is usually an owner/boss who hires the person who oversees the winemaking. In septridionale France this has been relatively rare until recent times.
The French have and have had different models of wine production. In Bordeaux, before everybody got rich, a chateau had a general manager–the regisseur–a cellar master, the maitre de chai, and maybe a consulting oenologist and a bunch of badly paid folks who worked everywhere.Was there a winemaker in the American sense??Maybe not…Of course, nowadays they have a famous consultant, some whiz kid who went to university, a chef de viticulture, and maybe a lab director. Hmm…sounds like winemaking to me…
In Burgundy you had negociants who either made wine or got wine in bulk along with domaines, where the owner usually oversaw everything. Employees who oversee the winemaking used to be rare at Cote d’Or domaines but now they are quite common.
My friend at Cayuse is from Champagne. There you have big companies that really have winemakers, whatever they are called, and you have small growers-bottlers etc. who have to oversee everything. They could be called vignerons. I think that is why Mr Horsepower calls himself a vigneron.
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Everybody got rich in Bordeaux?
Everybody?
D@vid,
Just the lucky ones!
Jonathan makes a good point, that if you say something about wine in French it sounds cooler.
I used to sell French bottles, or as we say, bouteilles. Indeed, our newsletter was called ‘Bouteille Call’…The French guy I worked with noticed a bottle of wine in a store with a label that read something like, ‘Calistoga Wine Estate, Jack Sprat,Proprietaire’…he bought the bottle had used it as a paper weight. Sadly the proprietor went bankrupt, or 'Chapitre Onze, as we like to say.
“If they didn’t get rich, its because they didn’t take my fashion advice” - Robert
Why did you ever leave the bottle business? You could be making a fortune in the current shortage.
More importantly, the title of your newsletter should have been reason enough to keep going.
A couple of French vigneron friends have mentioned that there is not direct translation for the word “winemaker”, the job title being dependent on various factors (as Eric points out).
Once or twice it has been suggested that the term implies a philosophical bent endemic to New World wine regions where the act of turning grapes into wine is unhealthily separated from awareness of the vineyard.
[NB: Don’t shoot the messenger… I’m just passing along what has been said.]
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard these same people use the word “winemaker” as a perjorative, though.
“Oenologue”, though… in some circles calling someone the O-word is an outright provocation.
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John,
I quit the bottle biz when my aspirin bill was greater than my commissions. I represented a french company and when they union staged a wildcat strike, I got to tell winemakers,“Hey, Remember that vacation you were gonna take before harvest…??”
Bruce makes a good point. To French ears ‘winemaker’’ can sound like somebody who just takes grapes and turns them into wine, as though the grapes were a surprise.
A friend of mine worked at Louis Martini maybe 45 years ago. Louis Jr called the place ‘the plant’ and my friend’s title was ‘wine chemist’.
It seems to me that I her ‘vignerons’ used in an imprecise manner, as to mean anybody who grows grapes and/or makes wine. Sometimes I will visit a domaine and then tell people at the cooperage that the people I visited were unhappy about something…sales…prices…etc…Then somebody will say,Oh those vignerons…always complaining…
How good are the wines? That probably is the only question I am interested in. The rest is marketing.
I think the wines range from excellent to breathtaking. His enthusiasm, energy, and love for his work are obvious in abundance and infectious. I’d call him whatever he wants if it would help ensure he keeps making wines like he’s done so far. Cheers.
The notion that words in one language translate completely, implications and all, into another is linguistically quite naive. The notion that words in a language have absolutely stable implications, from one person to another, is equally linguistically naive. I think Eric’s explanations are good ones, but I have heard the word vigneron applied to a hired wine maker and the term maitre de chai applied to the member of a family team that works together who is in charge of the winemaking. Two French people, even ones who speak fluent English, are reporting how the English word sounds to them, but may not be accurately reporting what the speaker said. The attempt to pin these terms down with regard to a fairly complicated business is either Sisyphean or idle, depending on one’s attitude. Nevertheless, if you are translating, the word for vigneron is winemaker and vice versa.
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Jonathan makes excellent points.How do professional UN type translators do it! When I am translating (badly, I should add) people say things I find almost un translatable.
I looked up ‘vigneron’ in my Cassell’s, and they used the words ‘wine growers’ and ‘vine dresser’.
I like the term ‘wine grower’ as it describes what winemakers really do, even if it sounds pretentious.
Wow, what an intellectual and deep thinker you are, pal.
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You’re right, it works!
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