On August 16, 2022, actor Pierre Richard will celebrate his 88th birthday. We imagine that, for the occasion, the hero of the films The goat and The tall blond with a black shoe will toast with his wife Ceyla Lacerda as well as the rest of his family. With the help of a good bottle of wine? For years, he has owned Château Bel Évêque, in Gruissan (Aude), and operates vines. He recently confided in this adventure to our colleagues from The Dispatch.
Since 1986, Pierre Richard has been the proud owner of this estate and yet it is clear that he was not very excited the very first time he saw it…”I had not come to buy a wine estate. Not even a domain of anything at all. Nothing. It was a walk I took when I arrived from Paris because I didn’t know what to do with my secretary. When I got here it was pretty spooky, there were no flowers, nothing“, he remembered. But the actor, recovered from his recent health problems, really appreciated the pond of the domain and a manager then took the trouble to detail the assets of the domain, which also had vines. .
Finally, Pierre Richard came back a month later! “The manager had transmitted the virus to me, we went back there. And since I’m not completely crazy, I asked who was the best oenologist in the region. I was sent to Mr. Dubernet. I called him and said, ‘If I buy the domain, will you follow me?’ If he had told me no, I would never have bought. Of the 20 hectares of vines, there were 12 to replant. To tell you how ignorant I was, I wanted to do it right away to have wine the following year. I was told it needed at least 3 years, more like 4“, adds the actor, who shares the taste of wine with his friend Gérard Depardieu.
It was good for him since Pierre Richard, who had once threatened to leave France to go live in Brazil, has transformed his wine estate into a real success! “Lately, we’ve had a kind of explosion. We do not expect it, but we are happy when we have this recognition. But it is not because we have these medals this year that we will have them next year. It depends on the circumstances, which are more and more problematic“, he specifies, worrying about the upset climate.