Behind The Scenes with WineMasters.tv at Georges Duboeuf Wines

It's sweltering hot in the foothills surrounding the Moulin-à-Vent in Beaujolais. The slopes here are like amphitheaters, naturally trapping the sun's rays and creating some of the richest and most structured wines of all the Beaujolais Cru.

There should be a northerly wind cooling the landscape. But the most famous landmark of Romanèche-Thorin, its iconic windmill, is at a standstill.

In the distance, a vigneron and his partner are tying up the gobelet vines into an umbrella shape. This prepares them for rognage, an act of trimming the tops of the vines, which maximizes the sun exposure to ripen the grape bunches in the summer ahead.

Four men kneel amidst the vines, lifting and examining the pink granite soil. The sweat rolls off their faces, and the director calls, "one more time." Encore une fois.

12:01 AM. THE THIRD THURSDAY IN NOVEMBER.

“Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!”

Beaujolais Nouveau is the most popular vin de primeur in the world. According to wine critic Karen MacNeil, "Drinking it gives you the same kind of silly pleasure as eating cookie dough." Robert Parker has described it as, "delicious, zesty, exuberant, fresh, vibrantly fruity."

Love it or hate it, there is no denying - Beaujolais Nouveau is a logistical magic trick. Each year, 30 million bottles of wine are fermented, bottled, labelled, and shipped around the world to be available on your local wine store shelf within 60 days or less of the grapes being hand harvested from the vines.

This feat stirs up global media attention. According to the Telegraph, over the years means of transport have included elephants, hot air balloons, rickshaws, helicopters, and aircrafts ranging from private jets to 747s to the Concorde.

This race to market began with a literal race. In the 1960s, Georges DeBoeuf saw potential for marketing the local tradition of drinking young Gamay wines to celebrate the end of a successful harvest. He created a contest to see who could be the first to get their bottles of Nouveau wine to Paris. It was a huge success. Georges carried this heritage throughout Europe, then further afield to North America in the 1980s. Today, Japan is one of their largest markets.

Georges is considered the originator of the worldwide phenomenon of Beaujolais Nouveau. He is even known as the "Pape du Beaujolais."

At six years old, in 1939, he was cranking the manual grape press with his uncle and brother. By 18, he was selling his family's wines from his bicycle. In the 1950s, before he was even 30 years old, he created a syndicate of vinegrowers and winemakers, bringing together 45 small producers from his region to establish L'écrin Maconnais-Beaujolais. In 1964, he became a négociant, founding his own company - Les Vins Georges DuBoeuf.

He formed lifelong friendships with the world’s most renowned chefs - including, famously, Paul Bocuse, named Chef of the Century in 2011. These relationships literally brought Beaujolais to the table.

Today, the company produces more than 2.5 million cases of wine annually. Yet the company stays true to young George's farm heritage. When he passed away in early 2020, he left the company to his son and grandson who today work personally with a network of over 300 small, family vignerons throughout Beaujolais and Burgundy.

Adrien Duboeuf-Lacombe is a serious man. He is tall and neatly dressed with round glasses and a thick mane of laissez-faire French hair. He is young, only 33. But his presence is mature, with the calm reserve of a man twice his age. He is almost stoic, even while the boisterous American intern tries to powder his face for the camera. Many say he is a perfect reflection of his Grandfather Georges. Unrufflable.

But talk to him about Beaujolais Nouveau and you can see the pride and passion he holds for what his Grandfather built. "Champagne, Bordeaux, Beaujolais. When I speak to anyone abroad about the wine regions in France, they always name these three. Why is Beaujolais on this list? Because of Beaujolais Nouveau."

"I HATE STOCK MARKET WINE COMPANIES"

"I hate stock market wine companies." Klaas de Jong, founder, producer, and director of WineMasters.tv, said to me. He sees first-hand the changing tides of the wine world, "I could hardly find a company to film in the Loire, so many are multi-national corporations now."

Many of the families that built the world's most iconic wines are selling out and moving on. Yet, some are sticking to it and staying true to their founder’s values. Georges Duboeuf built his company on respect for the work of the small vignerons he partnered with and this remains the beating heart of the business today.

We were together with Adrien from 8am to 8pm every day for 3 days. He had to leave filming only twice. Once, to raise a toast at the retirement party for a 30 year veteran of the Duboeuf company. The second time, he had been invited to a family dinner with one of his vigneron families.

These are the values Klaas, coming from a farm family himself, cares about.

He does not film sponsored advertisements, Klaas refuses to accept paid commissions from wineries. Rather, he creates authentic documentaries, giving viewers a glimpse of life among the world's most famous vines and vignerons. It's not about a wine's tasting notes or sales figures. He shares the stories told around the family dinner table, the sayings passed from one generation to the next.

“What lessons did your grandfather teach you?” Klaas asks. Adrien needs to think, there are far too many, he muses. But then he narrows in on it: wine tasting. Every day, they would taste together. His grandfather taught him to taste as if he were opening the drawers of a desk, each containing a different fruit or spice. What is hidden in the tiroirs of this wine?

To capture these beautiful insights Klaas spends a total of nine days with each family. Three during winter, three in spring, and three at harvest. He records over 10 hours of interviews in dozens of locations, then spends 4 weeks in editing, distilling this footage into a cohesive storyline for a 45 minute documentary.

"A lot of people say you only need good acting, only need a good script, that's wrong, you need everything."

And he has everything. In a black Audi sedan pulling a low-profile black trailer. Behind this everyday fa?ade you'll find hundreds of thousands of Euros of equipment, including 11 cinematic cameras, lenses, drones, gimbals, slides, jips, dozens of tripods and stands, a hundred kilos of weights and sandbags, and one custom-built cart to lug it all through rough vineyard terrain or down into barrel rooms where the trailer can't fit.

The film team is small - just Klaas, Diederik, and Maikel. Three blue-eyed Dutch men who do more in three days than a normal film crew of 8 can do in two weeks.

On my first day we were filming in the barrel room of the Hameau du Vin. They were like a football team in perfect harmony, assembling equipment, running extension cords, switching lenses.

Teamwork finished, they seamlessly shifted gears into their individual tasks. Klaas positioned Adrien in his interview chair and checked the mic. Diederik tweaked the focus and angle on the three cinematic cameras. Suddenly, a light turned on from the barred-off second story, adding the perfect sense of depth to the scene.

Adrien was astounded, "How did you get that there?" Klaas smiled, "Maikel always finds a way."

"DON'T BE POLITE"

“Don’t be polite.” Klaas tells me. “If you’re being polite, you’re not getting work done.” A hard pill to swallow for this all-American girl.

But his track record speaks for itself: in less than twenty years he has produced 33 feature-length films and miniseries in Dutch and English and between 2005-2019 won 14 domestic and international film awards from the Accolade Competition, the Golden Film awards, and the Platin Film awards.

On set, I begin to understand why he shuns politeness. We're shooting Adrien and William, a winemaker, walking through one of the small cellars outside of Fleurie. We've just changed locations, so it takes the crew an hour to set up. While they’re positioning, Adrien and William start chatting to one another to pass the time. They get a deep conversation going and then suddenly the cameras are ready. The crew can’t afford to waste any time, they need to start recording. Klaas has to interrupt a conversation he’s not part of, between two important men, and tell them to stop talking and walk. So, they walk, but they went too fast and now he needs to instruct two high-powered, grown men on the length and speed of their paces.

On the next take, maybe the focus wasn't quite right and the crew needs to reposition the camera adjust the settings. The actors pick up their conversation again, and once again, get interrupted.

It’s not polite.

But, even though he would never admit it, Klaas is kind.

"You should ask something” Maikel told me during one of the interviews between Klaas and Adrien. “No, no," I said, “Klaas won’t like it.” “Yes, he will, sometimes I ask questions, too.” So, I speak up, “Some people say Beaujolais Nouveau is ruining the reputation of Beaujolais.” Klaas turns Adrien, “That’s interesting. What do you say about that?”

Later, I tell him I have an idea about filming the wildflowers- a signature of the DuBoeuf labels. Once again, he says, “That’s interesting.”

That evening, Klaas and his crew arrived 30 minutes late for dinner. They came straight to the restaurant with the film trailer still in tow. "We're sorry for being late."

They had been out filming the flowers.

The film crew are like a swarm of worker bees. They zoom around one another from cameras to monitors, putting this light here and that tripod there - brainstorming, debating, and collaborating. When they are talking to one another they speak in Dutch, and after a while, I start to pick up some vocabulary – “mooi” (beautiful), “erg mooi” (very beautiful), “goed” (good), “niet goed” (not good).

Diederik speaks perfect English with an authentic American accent. “I listen to country music” he confesses with his brilliant, trademark smile. And it becomes revealed that we all love Dolly Parton, of course, but Klaas has a special soft spot for Shania Twain.

Maikel is quiet and clever. He showed me his work from film school, an advertisement for Tony’s Chocolonely, a fair trade chocolatier in the Netherlands. It opens on a child’s bare feet, her ankles bound in handcuffs. The camera pans out and we see the slave child is standing in a clean, modern, commercial kitchen, making chocolates under the direction of an impassive Tony. The moral of the story: Tony only uses fair trade cacao from companies that don’t use slaves or child labor.

It's clear to see how Maikel and Diederik fit with Klaas. They are just as dogged and persistent as he is. They will do anything and everything to capture the perfect shot.

The last day, access to our film site was blocked by a large ditch. It was impossible to get the trailer closer or to use the cart. When you’re carrying a 100,000€ camera and lens, it’s too risky to try to jump the ditch, so the equipment had to be walked 50 meters down the hill to a small land bridge and then 50 meters back uphill before being brought into the vineyard. They lugged the 20-kilo camera, the saddle bag, the lights, and the monitors up without complaint, then asked for more.

“Jip!” Diedrik called. This a seesaw-like device that allows the camera to lift and dip smoothly, capturing a sweeping shot.

But this rig requires 30 kilos of weights (literal weightlifting weights) to balance the camera. and an extra 20 kilos of tripods and slider bars. Without any pressure from the director, they had a vision for an amazing shot and carried an extra 50 kilos of weight across a ditch and up a hill. The result will be no more than 30 seconds in the final cut.

ENCORE UNE FOIS

Three men kneel among the vines, ready to film another take of Adrien's fingers digging into the pink granite stones.

Klaas has finished the drone shots for the day, and now he is analyzing the angle of this macro shot. He’s in his uniform: a self-proclaimed “aggressive” Hawaiian T-shirt, khaki shorts, and flip flops. He is the portrait of a man confident in his craft - he doesn’t need the armor of suits and ties.

His bare knees and toes are flexed in the sharp, rocky earth, but he doesn’t even notice. He’s perfecting the position of the camera on the saddlebag while we all sweat. One more take.

ABOUT WINEMASTERS.TV

"Let's have a Chardonnay," the American man said to Klaas at a Berlin Film Festival dinner.

"I can recommend you a lovely Chablis," the?ma?tre?d' suggested.

"No, no, I want a Chardonnay," the American responded.

This was a turning point for Klaas. After this encounter, he decided to shift his focus from bestselling romantic comedies to wine. Whether you are a wine expert or a passionate novice, you can find something to enjoy on WineMasters.tv. And if you spend enough time watching, you will never confuse Chablis and Chardonnay (or Sancerre and Sauvignon Blanc) again.

Learn more about WineMasters.tv on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn @WineMasters.tv or at www.winemasters.tv

This WineMasters.tv documentary about Beaujolair won't be released until 2022. But, in the meantime, you can preview a documentary about the inspiring Alvaro Palacios for free: https://www.winemasters.tv/programs/wine-masters-spain-preview-priorat