Yes, he was a great bon vivant....yes, Marcel made great Beaujolais....yes, he helped reshape the Beaujolais.
I'm reading these truisms in all the obituaries that have appeared about Le Marcel. Lapierre was an exceptional vigneron and personality, but his influence spread far past Villié-Morgon. In the early 1980s, when industrial farming and winemaking had ravaged the French countryside, Lapierre lead a movement to fight back and champion nature.
Marcel was the generational transition, interpreter and ambassador of Jules Chauvet. It was Marcel who popularized Chauvet's ideas, after Chauvet died in 1989, and convinced younger vignerons that Chauvet's insistence on natural yeasts, working the land without agrochemicals, and using minimal sulphur would make beautiful and succulent wines. Les Vins Gouleyant.
An entire generation of vignerons wanted to make wines like Marcel. Wines with no sulphur, no additives, no spoofulation and no pretense. Wines overflowing with honesty, flavor and nuance. Marcel acted as this generation's leader with incredible generosity and civility - it was if he was born for the role.
Chauvet was a Beaujolais négociant and researcher who was never well known during his lifetime. A small group including Lapierre, Pierre Overnoy, Jean Thevenet worked well with Chauvet and appreciated his studies on yeast strains and aromatics. Chauvet's written works are substantive and too scientific for someone like me, but the best proof of his ideas was not a manifesto, blog or movement. It was a bottle of Lapierre's Morgon.
The Natural Wine Movement that Marcel inspired was never codified. There is no manifesto, no rules, no codes. It was very much a movement of copinage (I don't really know a good translation for this word, but you might try a google search). There were early excesses and there are current failures. But over the years, Lapierre mastered the craft of natural winemaking and his wines even became reliable. Reliably delicious.
Today's loss is more than a loss for his family and the Beaujolais region. Marcel revolutionized the French and Italian wine scene and inspired others to follow. He was generous with his time, his knowledge and his homemade saucisson (particularly, Le Petit Jésus Cuit).
It was a privilege to have known him, if only slightly.
There will be a tribute to Marcel at Ten Bells in NYC on Tuesday at 7 pm. Nothing fancy, no speeches and plenty of wine from Marcel and Ses Enfants.[/quote]