Master of Margaux

PAUL Pontallier, who helped restore the celebrated Bordeaux producer Chateau Margaux to pre-eminence and served as its passionate embodiment around the world, died on Sunday. He was 59.

The estate announced his death but did not provide a cause or say where he had died. However, it was known that he had recently been battling cancer.

Pontallier was just 27 in 1983, barely out of viticultural school, when he applied for a job as the technical director at Margaux, an important position for someone so inexperienced. The equally inexperienced young owner of Margaux, Corinne Mentzelopoulos, hired him.