The iconic winemaker Jean-Michel Cazes, co-owner of Château Lynch Bages and other vineyards in France, Portugal and Australia, has died after a lengthy illness. He was 88. Cazes was a larger-than-life figure, a tireless promotor of his vision of great wine in Bordeaux and beyond, and emblematic of the strides his region has made in recent decades.
Cazes was raised in the sleepy Médoc town of Pauillac, where his father André Cazes had an insurance agency and served as the longtime mayor. Jean-Michel’s ambitious dreams led to him earn an engineering degree from France’s prestigious Ecole des Mines in Paris in 1958. After securing a masters degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas, he became a sales manager at IBM France.
He turned his talents to wine in 1973, at the age of 38, when his grandfather died and his father asked him to return to Pauillac to run the family’s insurance brokerage and wine estates. The tasks before him were mammoth—the properties were in sad shape, the cellars out of date and the surrounding hamlet of Bages was semi-abandoned. “I left Bordeaux when I was 18, and I never thought that I would come back,” he told Wine Spectator in 2007, when he won the Distinguished Service Award.
The Cazes family got their start in wine in 1933, when Jean-Michel’s grandfather Jean-Charles Cazes, a baker, became the tenant farmer of the neglected lands of Lynch Bages, then bought the estate in 1939. He purchased Château Ormes de Pez in St-Estèphe the following year. Bordeaux’s wine industry was devastated by the Great Depression and World War II, and it was still struggling in 1975 when Jean-Michel embarked on a 15-year modernization program that would change the fortunes of Lynch Bages.
He one of the first in Bordeaux to combine modern winemaking methods with savvy international marketing to achieve a worldwide reputation for his family’s wineries. An early pioneer in the Asian market, he locked in a deal with Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific where his wine was served in business class, a remarkably effective marketing coup. “I want to make real wine,” Cazes said in 2007. “I don’t want to make wines that only get talked about. You don’t build a customer base with that. I want real drinkers.” In 1988, the Château Lynch Bages 1985 was named Wine of the Year by Wine Spectator.
His success ultimately laid the framework for expanding the family holdings. The Cazes wine group today includes distribution firm JM Cazes Selection, Château Haut-Batailley in Pauillac, Domaine des Sénéchaux in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Domaine de L’Ostal Cazes in Minervois, and the co-ventures Roquette & Cazes in Portugal’s Douro and Tapanappa in Australia.
Cazes added to his reputation as a great vintner with his success as head of the French insurance giant AXA’s wine business. He was hired in 1987 to revamp and run the second-growth estate of Château Pichon-Longueville-Baron, and went on to help AXA acquire such great wine names as Château Suduiraut in Sauternes and the Port house of Quinta do Noval, as well as other properties in Bordeaux, Burgundy and Hungary.
He was also influential in the wider region. When then-mayor Alain Juppé came to power in Bordeaux in the late 1990s, with a vision of connecting the wine country and the city as part of a greater tourism destination, Cazes and his sister Sylvie Cazes were two of a very small group who shared his vision and became locomotives for the transformation that Bordeaux enjoys today.
He led the opening of Cordeillan-Bages, among the Médoc’s most luxurious hotels. One of his proudest projects was the revitalization of the hamlet of Bages, starting in 2003, including opening the popular bistro Café Lavinal, named for his mother’s family, and the upscale boutique Bages’ Bazaar. Cazes became well-remembered for his sense of adventure and charisma, always welcoming people who journeyed to his hometown.
His son Jean-Charles took over the management of the wine estates in 2006, but Jean-Michel was never far from the action, always in his office in Bages. Two of his daughters, Kinou and Marina, have long worked in the family business.
Cazes is survived by his wife Thereza, his children Jean-Charles, Catherine, Kinou and Marina, and several grandchildren.
Stay on top of important wine stories with Wine Spectator’s free Breaking News Alerts.