Jean-Michel Cazes

IN MEMORIAM

- SUZANNE MUSTACICH

Iconic winemaker Jean-Michel Cazes, co-owner of Bordeaux's Château Lynch-Bages and other vineyards in France, Portugal and Australia, died June 28 after a lengthy illness. He was 88. Cazes was a larger-than-life figure, a tireless promoter of his vision of great wine in Bordeaux and beyond, and emblematic of the strides his region has made in recent decades.

"The world of wine has lost a great and unique personality, who will be fondly remembered and sadly missed," said Christian Seely, managing director of AXA Millésimes, where Cazes was his mentor.

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 earning an engineering degree from the prestigious École des Mines in Paris in 1958. After securing a master's 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 age 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 The tasks before him were mammoth the properties were in sad shape, the cellars out of date and the surrounding hamlet of Bages was semi-abandoned.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 I would come back," Jean-Michel told Wine Spectator in 2007, when he won its Distinguished Service Award.