Madame May-Eliane de Lencquesaing turns 101 years old today, 17 May. Here’s a profile I wrote on her a few years back. Remarkable woman and the Grand Dame of World Wine.

Wine blood does not run much bluer than that flowing through the veins of Madame May-Eliane de Lencquesaing. And although those veins are now 101 years old, the pulse within them remains alert, bright and war

When she was born in Bordeaux in 1925, she entered one of the most respected families in the world’s most famous wine region. Her father, Edouard Miailhe, was the fifth generation of a family that, since 1783, had owned several of Bordeaux’s distinguished châteaux, among them the celebrated Château Palmer and Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, names capable of making any wine lover’s mood transcendental.

Yet even if one is born into the upper reaches of the most renowned region producing some of the most coveted wines on earth, Madame May is quick to remind one that the wine world has always carried its share of hardship, tragedy and difficulty.

“Take Bordeaux,” she says. “Today it is so wealthy and so sought-after, with billionaires trampling over one another to acquire a patch of vineyard there. But it was not always like that, you know. From 1900 to 1960, it was a disaster to be a wine farmer in Bordeaux.”

First came phylloxera, the pestilence that, in the late 1800s, destroyed two-thirds of all vineyards in Europe — and in South Africa too. Just as Bordeaux had replaced its dead vineyards and begun to look once more towards winemaking, the First World War broke out in 1914.

“And then there were no men to work in the vineyards or make the wine,” Madame May says. And perhaps here one begins to understand the origins of the drive and resilience that would make her such a formidable woman of wine. “The men of Bordeaux went to fight in the war. They died. And who had to work the land and make the wines? The women. The children. The old people.”

After the war ended in 1919, there was a brief period of prosperity — during which Madame May was born in 1925 — and then came the worldwide depression of 1929.

She shakes her head slowly.

“And then, for the wine people of Bordeaux, another disaster followed. Between 1930 and 1940, Bordeaux produced only two decent harvests: 1934 and 1937. The wines from the other years were dreadful. The grapes rotted from all the rain, and the wines were little more than vinegar.”

As a teenage girl living on the wine estate Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, Madame May was still listening to her father’s frustration over these sluggish and miserable harvests when, in 1939, the Second World War began. France was invaded by Germany in 1940. For the Germans, the French wine industry was one of the crown jewels in their attempted march towards world domination.

“The Germans naturally thought they were going to win the war,” Madame May recalls, “and so they were determined to protect the wine stocks of Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne, and to ensure that wine production continued during the war.”

Bordeaux was placed under the command of a so-called Weinführer, this a Nazi officer and wine expert whose task was to keep an eye on the activities of the wine farmers and to see that the wine industry continued without interruption.

“I remember this man, the Weinführer Heinz Bömers, a colonel,” she says. “The first time he came to see us on the estate to explain how things would work under the German occupation, he held out his hand to greet my father. But Papa just stood there and refused to take it. Then he said to Bömers: ‘While you are wearing that Nazi uniform, you are the enemy. But if you come back tonight without the uniform, then we can speak as wine friends.’”

What the German officer and the other Nazis in the area did not know, however, was that Madame May and her father were hiding two Jewish families on their other estate, Château Palmer.

“Seven Jewish people in all,” Madame May remembers. “Two couples and three children. They were from Italy. The men were in the wine business and were acquaintances of my father. The families had come to Bordeaux in 1939, when things were becoming dangerous for Jews in Italy, not knowing that the Germans would invade France. So we hid them at Palmer, in a room that had been specially walled up.

“Every day I rode to that house on my bicycle. The Nazis would stop me and search me, but all I had with me were carrots and cabbage and potatoes. When they let me go, I went straight to the estate to give the Jewish families their food. Every day.”

Her days in the vineyards came to an end in 1950 when she married Hervé de Lencquesaing, an officer in the French army who would later attain the rank of general.

“And then I became a soldier’s wife for almost 30 years,” she says with a smile. “We were stationed all over France, and we also lived for a long time at the military base of Fort Riley in Kansas. I had four children. I occupied myself with friends and hobbies, entertaining, that sort of thing.”

But in 1978, Madame May returned to Bordeaux to take the reins at Pichon Longueville. It was here that she made her mark as sole owner and custodian of one of the world’s great wine addresses.

“My wine knowledge was a little rusty, so I had to enrol for a diploma in winemaking,” she says. “But it was a good time, because from 1965 Bordeaux had begun making money from its wines again. After the war, the Americans in particular started taking more notice of French culture and French wine. They began importing and collecting our wines, and Bordeaux was sought-after and in a strong position.”

It is widely accepted in wine circles that Madame May was one of the leaders of the campaign to elevate Bordeaux’s status in the 1980s and bring it to where it stands today. Not only did she ensure that the wines of Pichon Longueville remained of the highest quality, but year after year she travelled the world with her wines, giving lectures and hosting tastings to introduce people to her wines and to the magic of Bordeaux.

It was on this international stage that her connection with South Africa began, thanks to her meeting with Dr Anton Rupert.

“He was one of my best friends,” she says, “a formidable, wonderful person. In the 1990s, Anton began asking me to invest in South Africa. There was, he said, so much hope for the country. He told me I could make a contribution by becoming involved in its wine industry — not only economically, but by helping the country and its people.”

Dr Rupert’s powers of persuasion were matched only by Madame May’s force of will. In 2003, at the age of 78, she bought a neglected 120-hectare fruit farm near Idas Valley outside Stellenbosch. And she began to farm.

“I brought my team from Bordeaux, and together with local experts we created this estate,” says Madame May, who was clearly at the helm. “I wanted the vineyards planted in such a way that they would not take the full blow of the south-easterly winds. And we had to allow the full glory of the sun to fall on the vines — morning sun and afternoon sun. That is one of the wonderful things about South Africa: the sun. In Bordeaux, in some years, we struggle desperately to get the grapes ripe. Here, in Stellenbosch, there is beautiful sun.”

Now, as her own sun slowly lowers, Madame May has handed over the reins of Glenelly. Her grandson, Nicolas Bureau, currently manages the estate, while Madame May divides her time between Bordeaux, Switzerland and Stellenbosch. The link between the crown of Bordeaux and South Africa remains strong.

“That is what wine is,” Madame May says, smiling and looking directly at you. “Wine is a link between people. It brings people together around a table. It brings together people from different nations.”

She pauses, thinking, and looks up towards the ceiling.

“Wine is our connection with culture, our connection with civilisation, and with love.”

Somewhere, a heart is beating.