The French oenologist and scientist Émile Peynaud (1912-2004) was one of the most important wine critics in the field. He entered the service of the wine trading house Calvet at the age of 15 and collaborated under the guidance of the chemist and "father of wine science" Jean Ribérau-Gayon (1930-2011) on analytical methods to determine the quality of purchased wine. After the Second World War, Peynaud completed a doctorate at the University of Bordeaux and was awarded a chair there. From 1949, he directed agricultural and oenological research. From 1968 to 1977, he was director of the Institute of Enology. The selection of only healthy and above all physiologically ripe grapes was an important concern for him and he made a special effort to give Bordeaux wines more balance and longevity. From the late 1940s onwards, he acted as a consultant for many châteaux in Bordeaux.
The list reads like a "who's who" of the most famous Bordeaux châteaux: Château Beychevelle, Château Lafite-Rothschild, Château Léoville-Las-Cases, Château Margaux, Château Cheval Blanc, Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, Château Haut-Brion, Château Pape-Clément and Château Pichon-Longueville Comtesse. This later led him to many wineries around the world, including being involved as a consultant in the founding of the famous Carras (Meliton-Greece, 1960s) and Ca' del Bosco (Lombardy-Italy, 1970s) wineries. He always strove to leave as little as possible to chance in vinification and, as early as the early 1950s, shaped practices that are now taken for granted. These include the mastery of malolactic fermentation achieved through scientific research and the maceration of red wines.
Peynaud wrote around 300 treatises on the subject of winemaking as well as numerous books. He passed on his knowledge in an understandable and captivating manner. He considered the ability to taste correctly to be equally important and became an absolute specialist. Subjectivity and objectivity in a wine evaluation are always the subject of heated debates, the latter often being doubted. He remarked on this in his book "Die hohe Schule für Weinkenner" (The High School for Wine Connoisseurs), which was first published in 1985: "The paradox of tasting is the fact that it wants to be an objective procedure, but works with subjective means in the sense that these have a relationship to the object being examined.
The wine is the object, the taster the subject. The human senses are used as measuring instruments. Rules can be laid down for their proper functioning, their precision increased, sources of error eliminated, but the taster is not only the executor, but also the interpreter and judge. The taster must be cool and precise in his taste analysis, rigorous in his conclusions but committed in his judgement." Peynaud considered proper wine tasting skills as essential to optimal winemaking as a thorough knowledge of oenology. Incidentally, Émile Peynaud was a strict opponent of decanting for the purpose of oxygen contact (aeration), which he even found negative due to what he considered to be the resulting loss of aromas. See also under wine speech.
