Tim James: From Pauillac to Stellenbosch – the grand, guarded life of May de Lencquesaing

Unfortunately, I can’t give my financial advisor much to do, but Peter Hawker is a serious wine lover and we have stuff other than money to chat about. Recently he gave me lunch at A Tavola in Cape Town, sharing a bottle of St Leger Chardonnay 2022 he’d brought (very good it was, though deserving more time in bottle), and lending me this book: My Journey with Wine, by May-Eliane de Lencquesaing.

Mme de Lencquesaing’s subtitle is From Bordeaux to South Africa – meaning, more specifically, from Château Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande in Pauillac (which she inherited in 1978) to Glenelly in Stellenbosch (which she bought in 2003 and established as a fine wine producer). A journey with quite a number of diverse stops on the way, especially pursuing family business interests in places like the Philippines and accompanying her husband, a senior officer in the French Army, from Algeria to the American midwest and elsewhere and back home.

The book is rather charmingly divided into the four seasons. Spring is largely for May’s childhood and youth in the landowning haute bourgeoisie of Bordeaux (we’re told rather a lot about the history of the families of her parents), a period which seems to have been governed by a firm Catholicism and a repressive father who shared with the Church clear and hidebound ideas about the role of girls and women. Not that May complains. She seems to have accepted traditional ideas of family, church and state (with class always implicit), and there’s no indication in the book that she ever challenged them meaningfully – though her own splendid career in the world of Bordeaux wine was itself a pretty fundamental affront to patriarchal ideas about female limitations, and, while her social involvement seems to have been largely seigneurial, it was done with generosity and concern.

Spring takes us to the end of the war, and concludes with an extraordinary report of her marriage in 1948 – extraordinary, that is, in its blandness (something which characterises most of her brief accounts of personal and emotional life). She’d met the man in question just twice, and tells us nothing of even whether she liked him. This is what followed, she says without comment: “my father announced that Captain de Lenquesaing had asked for my hand, and that he had accepted in my stead! They had already set the wedding date for the following month….” That’s it. C’est ça. There’s a lengthy account of her husband’s aristocratic background – perhaps that suffices. Later in the book, after his rising in the military hierarchy, and his clearly playing a significant role in Pichon business, May refers to him as “the General” probably more often than as “my husband” or “Hervé”. (It may be a depressing French thing – apparently Madame herself is widely known in Bordeaux as “La Générale.) His final disease and death came in 1990 – “a difficult and distressing year”, but after “the General lost his final battle”, again, that’s that: “I returned to Pichon soon after the funeral”, writes May calmly, where the vintage “promised to be sumptuous”.

Summer, therefore, is about the different military posts, having children, etc – with rather overlong accounts of the armed conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front, and of various historical moments in the Phillipines (where May’s mother’s family had been rich businesspeople).

It’s with the onset of Autumn that the book starts to get more interesting for those wanting to hear about May’s stewardship of Pichon Lalande and about modern Bordeaux in general. Again, there’s a loud silence about family stuff. We are left to infer that there was a significant family squabble after the death of May’s father. Thanks to an intractable mother, the family assets had been “stuck” for 20 years. Then May and her brother and sister, having sorted out the mother (I don’t think any one of the three is mentioned ever again), drew lots for three chunks of property, and May got Pichon – or, rather, the majority share in the investment company that owned it. “And so, my life once again took a new and unexpected direction.”

In fact, it was a nicely timed shift. Bordeaux was pulling itself together and about to enter a decade of splendid vintages and a whole new relationship to the market, with America now a vital player. The description of these developments, and of the development of the Pichon domaine, still showing the effects of the war and of presumably inadequate management, with major investments under the new director’s guidance furthering its fine reputation, must be fascinating to those with an interest in Bordeaux – and in the growth of the international fine wine market that we know and possibly love.

Along with that of her domaine, May’s personal reputation, as ambassador for Pichon and the Médoc as a whole, grew immensely. Her book is replete with accounts of dealings with the rich, famous and influential in the international wine world. Many important tokens of recognition came. But the accounts of magnificent tastings, grand dinners, dealings with the smarter kind of auctioneer and critic, and relentless lists of great wines (plus tasting notes), are wearying, to me at least. They are, though, probably here more to be put on record in one place than intended to educate or entertain.

Thus Autumn, which also included the flowering of May’s splendid collection of glass and  – another dubious lengthy excursion – a potted history of the medium. Winter inevitably followed, and, as we know, it was marked for May by the sale of Pichon (and Ch Bernadotte, acquired in 1997), and the purchase of an orchard estate in Stellenbosch and the establishment of Glenelly Estate in 2003, when May was a remarkably vital 78. There’s an accompanying short history of post-settler South Africa, and a longer one of the Huguenot settlers in the late 17^th century. Too-extravagant claims are made for their influence on Cape wine “as seasoned wine-growers”. Cabernets sauvignon and franc, merlot and petit verdot were emphatically not “introduced in the past by the Huguenots”. Historical mistakes apart, the account of the birth and development of Glenelly, and of May’s sympathetic and constructive confrontation with the social realities of rural South Africa, is indeed worth reading. And of course, there’s the building of a fine new collection of art glass to find a home there.

I must add a note on the translation (published by Glenelly, and available from there online for R385), because I suspect that the book might read better in the original French. I haven’t looked at that, but there are too many obvious awkwardness in the English for me to imagine it’s a job well done. “Grandiose” is not a suitable word for a landscape, however impressive it may be; “castle” is very seldom a good translation for château (it doesn’t need a translation anyway, nor does Madame need to be rendered as Mrs);  few domestic servants are “nannies”; “second great growth” is not how deuxième cru should be rendered in English – second growth is enough. Decent English prose does not allow for the generous scattering of exclamation marks present in this book. Etc.

The title of the original version of My Journey with Wine was Les vendanges d’un destin (The Harvest of a Destiny), which is rather more poetic and therefore, perhaps, less appropriate, as this is a pretty businesslike book. There was, though, a passage which moved me, and reminded me that perhaps May’s tale is heavily influenced by a private reticence protected behind a public career. She’s speaking of the need to “give a full and accurate account of the life of a wine-making estate”, including the failures and pitfalls, and writes that “the visible takes precedence over what goes on behind the scenes, the anguish, sleepless nights, vulnerability, fragility, solitude”. A touch more of that evidence of sensibility throughout would have made for a warmer effect in what is offered as a memoir.

Madame de Lencquesaing turned 100 last Saturday and celebrated her centenary at Glenelly. She’s made a difference to Cape wine in her years here, and it’s been a good difference; we must congratulate her, and wish her more years of health and involvement.

• Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. His book Wines of South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013.