The public face of Bordeaux’s Institute of Oenology, Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon was one of a small number of French scientists who helped to transform wine in the years following the Second World War.
Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon was born in 1930 in Bordeaux. He came from a highly distinguished family of French scientists. His father was honorary professor at the University of Bordeaux (later Bordeaux II) who founded the Institute of Oenology there in 1949. Jean Ribéreau-Gayon was perhaps best known for working with Emile Peynaud in 1946 to identify malolactic fermentation — the secondary fermentation in the new wine that reduces its acidity by transforming sharp malic acid into gentle, creamy lactic acid. The discovery revolutionised wine.
Pascal’s great-grandfather, Ulysse Gayon, was no less important a figure. He had been assistant to Louis Pasteur in 1880, whose researches into yeasts had allowed science to grasp the process of fermentation for the first time. After he left Pasteur’s service, Gayon moved to Bordeaux where he, with the botanist Alexis Millardet, created “Bordeaux mixture” (copper sulphate), allowing viticulturists to combat the blight of mildew that was rampaging through the vines at the time.
Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon studied in the science faculty of the university before going on to the University of Paris. He qualified as an oenologist while teaching at Bordeaux University. His research centred on the enzymes present in healthy wine must (pressed grapes) or in those in musts affected by Botrytis cinerea (or “noble rot”) which are fermented to make the great sweet wines of Bordeaux and elsewhere.
He was appointed to the faculty in 1952, became maître assistant in 1961 and maître de conferences three years later. He was elevated to a chair in 1969. At the time of his death, he had been emeritus and honorary dean for many years.
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His life was also taken up with the more practical vocation of oenology: he was a director of the Station Agronomique and in 1976, he took over the institute founded by his father. Honours from Paris were not slow in coming: he became a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences at the Institut de France in 1980, and eight years later a member of the Académie d’Agriculture. He was president of the Oenological Commission at the Office International de la Vigne et du Vin and was president of the Permanent Committee on Oenology at the Ministry of Agriculture.
Despite having so many fingers in the vat, he also found time to do private consultancy, notably at two great estates in the Graves region of Bordeaux: Domaine de Chevalier and Château Smith Haut-Lafitte. Until two years ago he was present for the assemblages: giving advice at the moment when the grand vin is put together from the various vats.
He wrote several books, being co-author with Denis Dubourdieu, Aline Lonvaud and Bernard Donèche of the standard two-volume Traité d’oenologie (1971-77), as well as compiling the Hachette Atlas of French Wines and Vineyards (1989) and a more light-hearted Le vin in 1991. Ribéreau-Gayon had one simple guiding principle: that good wine starts with healthy grapes. No hocus-pocus that could salvage poor raw materials.
As he told the newspaper Libération in 1995: “The quality of wine is a result of the grape. Our purpose is to express the grandeur of the grape.” The function of the oenologist, he explained, began where that of the vigneron left off.
Ribéreau-Gayon was married to Marie-Christine Rivel in 1955. She and their four children survive him.
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Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon, oenologist, was born on June 4, 1930. He died on May 15, 2011, aged 80