Pioneer in bringing burgundies to America

WHEN Martine Saunier began importing French wine to the US nearly half a century ago, she helped create a market. Americans were discovering their love of wine and food, and California's wine industry was embarking on a renaissance. We were ready for something new. It was 1969.

Ms Saunier, born and raised in Paris, had moved to California five years earlier. She longed for her favourite wines of Burgundy, having spent her youthful summers at her aunt's property in the Macon area helping in the vineyards and with harvest. The burgundies available in California were disappointing. "They were all from the negociants in Burgundy," she recalled during a recent visit to Washington, referring to the large brokers who used to dominate the market. "It was mostly bad wine."

A San Francisco importer hired Ms Saunier and sent her to France to search out small, family owned wineries. Over the next decade she combed through Burgundy and the Rhone Valley. With a mailing list she called "Martine's Wine Cellar", she introduced American oenophiles to the burgundies of Henri Jayer and Lalou Bize-Leroy and the Chateauneuf-du-Pape of Chateau Rayas. Those are iconic wines now, in part because Ms Saunier discovered them.