Jean Ribéreau-Gayon

Origins and family

Ribéreau-Gayon came from a Bordeaux family of researchers. His maternal grandfather, the chemist Ulysse Gayon, was a pupil and assistant of Louis Pasteur, a co-developer of the Bordeaux mixture against downy mildew and for many years director of the Station agronomique et œnologique. From the marriage of Gayon's daughter Madeleine to Daniel Ribéreau came four sons — Jean became a professor and oenologist. As Ulysse Gayon had no male descendants, the family name was officially changed to “Ribéreau-Gayon” in 1931 to preserve the name Gayon. Jean's son Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon (1930–2011) later carried the work forward.

Education

In 1925/26 Ribéreau-Gayon qualified as a chemical engineer of the École de Chimie de Bordeaux — the school his grandfather had helped found in 1891 — and as licencié ès sciences. In 1931 he earned his doctorate with a thesis on the oxidation and reduction processes in wine. How precise his methods were became clear decades later: a re-measurement at the University of Bordeaux (1989) arrived, with modern technology, at virtually the same values he had obtained in 1931.

Maison Calvet (1927–1947)

His career began in 1927 as head of the laboratory of the great Bordeaux trading house Calvet. The company's head, Jean Calvet, was far-sighted enough to place a scientifically trained chemist alongside the experienced cellar masters. Ribéreau-Gayon clarified the causes of the dreaded wine hazes and laid the foundations for preventing them — his work contributed to the approval of the treatment against iron casse and to the introduction of bentonite fining. The wines became so stable that the house shipped its casks with the note that nothing further should be added to the wine.

To free himself for research, he brought a fifteen-year-old laboratory assistant into the house: Émile Peynaud, who learned from him everything the school had not been able to offer him, and who later became one of the most famous oenologists in the world. From that meeting grew a collaboration spanning more than fifty years.

Station and Institut d'Œnologie

In 1949 Ribéreau-Gayon took over the direction of the Station agronomique et œnologique — the institution his grandfather had once brought to full flourish, and which he found in a deplorable state. He rebuilt it with determination, raised funds and formed capable teams; he entrusted the research department to Émile Peynaud.

In parallel he pursued an academic career: in 1958 he was appointed to a chair that was the first at a French university to carry the word “œnologie” in its title. In 1957 he founded the École supérieure d'œnologie, from which the Institut d'Œnologie of the University of Bordeaux emerged in 1963. After the university reform of 1968–1970 he deliberately brought the Institut into the Université Bordeaux 2, securing its independent status.

Scientific work

His research ranged from the physical chemistry of wine to the microbiology of fermentations. As a pioneer he contributed decisively — together with Émile Peynaud — to distinguishing alcoholic fermentation from malolactic fermentation and to opening up its significance for red-wine making. His work comprises more than three hundred publications; the Traité d'œnologie associated with Peynaud (first published 1947) became an international standard work, translated into several languages. With the Cours et exercices pratiques d'œnologie and his part in the Diplôme national d'œnologue (1955), he also shaped the training of entire generations.

Les Conseillans

In 1938 Ribéreau-Gayon acquired the Domaine aux Conseillans in Saint-Caprais-de-Bordeaux and made it his experimental estate: wine was made in the fermentation cellar, with the laboratory in the passage behind it; Émile Peynaud, too, worked here. In 1975 the estate was placed under protection as a “Site classé” at his own initiative — the late-18th-century chartreuse and the park with its old stands of trees. He remained bound to the place until his death; the estate stayed in the family until 1996. How this legacy still lives on in the wines is told on the page The legacy of the oenologists.