Dijon (AFP)
He was sometimes nicknamed "the Pope of Beaujolais": Georges Duboeuf, famous merchant of this wine region, died Saturday late afternoon, we learned Sunday from his relatives.
The 86-year-old man, one of the fathers of Beaujolais Nouveau, died around 6:00 p.m. following a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in Romanèche-Thorins (Saône-et-Loire), Anne told AFP Duboeuf, the wife of his son Franck, confirming information from the newspaper Le Progrès.
"It saddens me a lot. He will be missed. He was a traveling companion, a faithful friend", told AFP the starred chef Georges Blanc, for whom Georges Duboeuf was a "tireless ambassador of Beaujolais ".
This tireless promoter of Beaujolais Nouveau, with which his name is associated in many foreign countries, had officially passed the hand in 2018 to his son Franck at the head of the wine company Georges Duboeuf and its 30 million bottles per year, based in Romanèche-Thorins.
In the village, the company founded in 1964 had spread, with a winemaking site, a museum called "the Hamlet of wine", a store, offices, a tasting room or a bottling site.
Georges Duboeuf, whose family has been in wine for four centuries, had not known his father, who disappeared when he was a child. He was also known for having organized mythical Beaujolais Nouveau festivals in the 1980s.
Stars, racers, singers, starred restaurateurs and politicians flocked there. "He was a strong figure in the region, whose potential he had realized. He raised the Beaujolais flag worldwide," said Dominique Piron, president of InterBeaujolais.
"He contributed a lot" to the creation of the Beaujolais Nouveau celebrations, he added. Georges Duboeuf "had a nose, an intuition, a step ahead of everyone".
© 2020 AFP