Michael Paetzold is an entrepreneur and designer who has a hint of Miele about him – with an aversion to built-in obsolescence. Paetzold is the name, marked incongruously on the corrugated sheet metal of a grey shed in wine country, alongside the A62 motorway. It’s the name of a wine-industry inventor. The man from the Sarre, six feet four and affable in manner, explains why he invents oenological procedures that never distort the wine.
Michael Paetzold was born in Saarbrücken, Germany, very near the French border. His wonderful story, which is so important for the present and future of the French vine & wine industry, began when his brewer parents moved to Fontainebleau in France. He did a French baccalaureate at the international high school, then studied oenology under Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon in Talence. Theoretical oenology did not appeal; given his temperament, he wanted to do more than consulting – but he already loved wine, and dreamed of preserving all its qualities along the perilous path to bottling.
Wine is an amazing world. Every day, its diversity casts a spell. On my most recent trip to the South-West, in Madiran, I didn’t regret my day with winemaker and négociant Lionel Osmin. What a dynamic young man he is! He and his chum Damiens Sartori, an engineer and oenologist, had no vines but were mad about wine. Influenced by the epic tale of Vins de Vienne, the two mates decided to reinvent the South-West – supporting several estates in harvesting, production, bottling, and sometimes even selling their wine.
Imagine an oenologist who’s also an entrepreneurial inventor, with a consulting and custom-manufacturing business using the most advanced winemaking technologies (he has nearly 40 patents to his name), with clients including top grand crus in the Bordeaux area and elsewhere.
Installé près de Perpignan, il ne cesse d’innover et de remettre en cause les certitudes liées à l’élaboration du vin. Il doit sans doute beaucoup à un père ingénieur brasseur à Sarrebruck (Allemagne), une ascendance qui lui donne “une prédisposition pour ce monde de process et de techniques. A 6 ans, je démontais puis je remontais un moteur à explosion. J’ai une grande capacité analytique. Plus le problème est complexe, plus je suis tenté”, expose Michael Paetzold, sans se prendre pour autant au sérieux.
Based since 2016 in La Porte de Beaune business park, the Volnay vigneron, who tends about 20 hectares of vines in the Côte de Beaune, matures 220 litres of Volnay Premier Cru Clos des Angles in a Wineglobe. This glass container, still an uncommon sight, could well develop in the coming years.
After winning the silver medal at the Vinitech-Sifel trade show’s innovation awards, our Wineglobes sparked the curiosity of TV7 Bordeaux. In this report, meet CEO Marie Paetzold, who hosted the channel’s crew to explain how the project originated and give them a preview of the new Glassmaking Workshop.
In the second half of the report, travel to the magnificent ageing cellars of Château Corbin, where 16 of our Wineglobes are sure to capture your attention.
Our founder and Wineglobe designer Michael Paetzold was invited onto French podcast Anthocyanes to talk about his innovations. In this podcast hosted by Yohan Castaing, which gives vignerons a vocie, Michael Paetzold talks about oxygenation and reduction but primarily about the Wineglobe, ”the glass barrel he has invented”.