葡萄酒是酵母将葡萄汁中的糖转化为酒精和二氧化碳的发酵结果，人类以这种方式酿酒的历史已超过 8,000 年。文章指出，在漫长历史中，尽管有诺亚、耶稣和奥马·哈亚姆（Omar Khayyam）几近一千年的文化叙事，许多酒仍“可能”品质一般，原因在于气候、储藏、土壤和大量其他变量持续引入波动。

米歇尔·罗兰（Michel Rolland）在波美侯（Pomerol）酿酒家庭长大，认为葡萄酒是可由人力改善的农业产品；他在1970年代中期进入波尔多地区低迷阶段（连年坏年份、掺假传闻与财务压力）后，于多尔多涅河岸的利布恩（Libourne）与妻子成立实验室。此后他建议种植者等果实成熟再采收，并与纳帕和索诺玛崛起、罗伯特·帕克（Robert Parker）同期100分评分体系同步发展，带动市场偏好转向成熟、柔和、果香更重、酒精更高且酸度更低、由新橡木桶赋予圆润甜润感的红葡萄酒。

纪录片《蒙多维诺》（Mondovino，2004）把罗兰描绘为“飞行酿酒师”，他则强调“只要有效就行”——即便葡萄园主不懂微氧化也会执行。到后来他在《纽约时报》回忆“当时一小时能尝完纳帕所有好酒，现在一周也不够”，这在时序上意味着接近 168 倍的增长，并显示若市场偏好某种风味，酿酒者会按需生产，行业逻辑被他概括为“葡萄酒是给公众的，而葡萄酒本质上是生意”。

Wine is made when yeast ferments sugar in grape juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and human-scale wine production spans more than 8,000 years. The context states that for most of history, despite biblical and literary references stretching over nearly a millennium, much wine was inconsistent in quality because climate, storage, soil, and many other factors dominated the process.

Michel Rolland, raised in a Pomerol vintner family, treated wine as an agricultural product that could be improved by human hands, and in the mid-1970s—during a weak Bordeaux period of bad vintages, adulteration rumors, and cash stress—he opened a lab in Libourne with his wife to study wine chemistry. He pushed growers to wait for full ripeness, and the simultaneous rise of Napa/Sonoma and Robert Parker’s 100-point scale (the two men born just months apart) shifted demand toward ripe, plush, fruit-forward reds with higher alcohol, lower acidity, and a sweet, rounded profile from new oak aging.

The 2004 documentary *Mondovino* portrayed Rolland as a “flying winemaker,” while he argued pragmatically: if micro-oxygenation worked, that was what mattered even when clients did not fully understand it. In a later New York Times interview, he contrasted tasting all good Napa wines in one hour with not being able to do so in a week, implying roughly a 168-fold expansion in time-equivalent scope, and concluded that if the market wants a style, winemakers will produce it—wine is for the public, and wine is ultimately a business.

Source: Michel Rolland was the world’s first flying winemaker

Subtitle: The controversial oenologist died on March 20th, aged 78

Dateline: 4月 01, 2026 06:04 上午