Here’s a confession for you. I might have spent close to the last 20 years writing about the ins and outs of the global wine and spirits industry, but that’s not where my real passion lies. In fact, things would have been very different if I had succeeded, back in the late 1990s, in getting my dream job as editor of Screen International, the trade bible of the UK film industry, having got down to the final two to be interviewed.
A sliding doors moment that came back to me when the opportunity came up at Wine Paris to spend some time with one of Hollywood’s most respected and prolific film directors - Sir Ridley Scott. The man behind some of the most important and influential films of all time - Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Thelma & Louise, amongst many others.
Having had the opportunity to talk to a fair few senior folk and chief executives in my time it has been a while since the butterflies have come calling when sitting down for a face-to-face interview. But they were certainly alive and flapping away when the time came to visit Le Mas des Infermières' stand at Wine Paris.
It seems everyone wants to be at Wine Paris these days - including Sir Ridley Scott doing his bit to promote Le Mas des Infermières
Was that really Sir Ridley Scott sitting quietly, unnoticed, at a table on just one of the hundreds of stands in the middle of the hustle and bustle of one of the busiest halls of the show?
The time for “action” had come…
“Do you want some chocolate?” he asked as he sat down offering part of a bar he was munching on between meetings. As first questions go it did wonders to settle the nerves.
This was Scott’s second visit to Wine Paris having been introduced to the intricacies of the international wine world at the show last year.
“I am starting a film in Italy so I thought I would pop by,” he says.
Starting out
Although Scott and his family have been in the Luberon region since 1992, Le Mas des Infermières as it is today really started 15 years later when it took control of its own production. Then the big breakthrough came in in 2019 when, as Scott says, he “broke ground with a digger in June 2019” to start building what he describes as its “cave” - or as he puts it “a pretentious name for a factory”.
“But the factory has to be beautiful,” he says, as he goes on to explain the work that went into building the winery “from scratch” and in particular the “forensic” detail that went into constructing its cellars and tank room.
The immacatuley designed cellars and cave at Le Mas des Infermières
“It might be the best one in the area. I based it on the abbey where I was shooting The Last Duel near Marseille. In a way starting from scratch is an advantage as you can make things perfect and a cave should be perfect.”
As a trained graphic designer building what is effectively his own permanent film set came naturally to Scott who is well versed in taking on major building projects for his films.
“The following year I built Rome, literally, for Gladiator Two,” he says using part of the same set he had built 15 years earlier for the film King and Heaven. That was down to the fact the local Moroccans, where the film had been shot, had agreed to buy the set for $10 - rather than spend $300,000 taking it down - and keep it for safe keeping.
“So when I went back to the King and Heaven set I had to rent my own set back from the Moroccans for half a million dollars. But that was a $8 million dollar saving on having to build a new one,” he says.
Movement and control
Building, organising and orchestrating major projects seems to be very much a family trait. His father, he proudly recalls, ended up being an acting brigadier general in the Second World War and helped devise the D-Day landings and worked alongside Sir Winston Churchill in the war office. Not bad, he adds for a “working class lad” from South Shields.
He says his dad would tell stories of being down in the war office’s bunker when London was being bombed and “they could smell the cigar through the AC” before Churchill arrived “having just enjoyed a jolly good dinner”. “They were all exhausted and he was ready to work,” he recalls. “I have a letter from Sir Winston Churchill in my office thanking my dad for his contribution.”
Here’s Scott some 70 years later recreating Rome, the Napoleonic wars - and running his own 30-plus hectare winery in the south of France.
“What my dad did was movement and control on a massive level and I think I am good with movement and control too,” he says. That and “just getting on with the job” in hand - another trait he learned from his dad.
Le Mas des Infermières in the heart of the Luberon was Sir Ridley Scott's "farm in the sunshine". Picture Serge Chapuis
Building and managing a winery might seem a bit more straight forward by comparison. But Scott says his initial idea was not to have a winery at all, but to “have a country house in the sunshine”. He ended up buying a 30 acre small farm, dating back to the 16th century, in the Cotswolds where he and his family had six horses, 50 sheep and countless chickens. But that did not work out as it “constantly rained” and his children “gradually hated it”.
So he went off “looking for a farm in the sunshine” instead and eventually ended up in the Luberon with what has become Le Mas des Infermières - Mas being the Provençal term for a Mediterranean-style farmhouse and the Infermières after a former owner - a health officer and general in Napoleon’s army, General Baron Robert - and translates “as a place to get well”. It seems Napoleon is never too far away in Scott’s life.
Taking control
Having spent the first 10 plus years selling his grapes to a local producer, he realised they were “making money and I was losing money” and decided to take back control. The grapes were also now coming into maturity, and picking up awards, from what were now 10-year-old plus vines.
Christophe Barraud has helped make and develop the range of premium wines that has made Le Mas des Infermières one of the most premium estates in the Luberon
Christophe Barraud and Sir Ridley Scott work closely together on the final blends
If a film needs a good director, producer and actors to be a success, then a winery needs an owner with a vision and a good winemaker to help achieve it - which is where Scott turned to Christophe Barraud as estate director, who made his name making wines in Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Provence. Any good film, or wine, also needs a good sales and marketing team to promote and sell it and Melanie de Rudder joined Scott as Le Mas des Infermières’ sales director in 2022.
In film terms Scott sees himself as very much the producer of what you might call the Le Mas des Infermières production.
“I am a producer and that is all I want to be. I want to stay in the background. What I enjoy is watching the process and engaging with it. But I can be doing a film and designing a cave at the same time.”
Over the years Le Mas des Infermières has built up a wide and varied range under different labels and brands from different soils and terroir.
It has a red, white and rosé under: the Source label - named after the abundance of water in the region; Chevalier named after the history of Luberon with knights on the label to illustrate the first winemaking in the Middle Ages; and Ombre de Lune made up of the estate’s oldest Syrah grapes picked at night under the shadow of the moon - also depicted on the label.
Sir Ridley Scott designs and draws all the labels in the Le Mas des Infermières range - each one features his beloved dogs
The Chevalier range named after the history of Luberon with knights on the label to illustrate the first winemaking in the Middle Ages in the area
Other grapes grown on the estate include Carignan, Clairette, Roussane, Rolle (Vermentino) and Grenache Noir and Blanc.
As well as its premium range of wines, Le Mas des Infermieres is also looking to offer potential customers a new Vin de France range, at around €10 RRP,which it is making from the new vineyards it has bought outside the designated Luberon region which allows it to plant, grow and use different varieties.
But they still have the look and feel of the main range with more of Scott’s much loved Jack Russell dogs featured on the personally designed labels - named after Scott’s own dogs Jojo and Jack. “I adore dogs. There are dogs on every label,” he says. “In LA I can have as many as 20 dogs in the office during the day with all the staff.”
The winery has now expanded to 32 hectares which Scott believes is the right size for a premium producer of its scale. “Naively I bought very good terroir. I did not know what I was doing at the time.”
He says he is particularly drawn to the farming aspect of making wine, as farming is “very much in my blood and in my system”.
“I’m from a fundamentally farming family,” he says. “My grandfather used to be a blacksmith and shoed horses for the Duke of Northumberland.”
When it comes to the property and the estate he says he is particularly fascinated by the idea of introducing new vines to land which has been kept fallow for a few years to help prepare the soils.
“You are standing staring at seven hectares of empty land for two and a half years, but you have to do it. You have to fallow it. I love that word.”
He talks about the “cycles” of vines and how at one end of the estate you might have 37 year old vines that are “coming into great maturity” and then at the other end you have a new vineyard to nurture. “You are in a constant state of change,” he adds.
Sir Ridley Scott has brought many of the costumes and props from his films to be part of Le Mas des Infermières winery
Le Mas des Infermieres is also very much a family affair with Scott’s home alongside the winery. Even if Scott’s children are now in their mid-fifties he says he stills calls them every day to see how they are. “They need to know you care,” he says.
On the move
Constant change is very much what still drives Scott today. Even at the age of 87 he is one of the most prolific directors working in Hollywood. Change is what he is used to and grown up with.
After the Second World War his father was involved in the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Germany and Scott and his family lived in Germany from 1947 to 1952 before returning home to a council estate in Stockton-on-Tees. All of which meant he had an education that saw him go to 10 schools and end up with just one qualification - in art.
A qualification, however, that has helped steer his life ever since thanks, first, to an inspiring art teacher who helped him get into the West Hartlepool College of Art - which then lead him to the Royal College of Art where he spent six invaluable years. A crucial time, he says, in giving him the grounding and the core skills that have helped him throughout his career. Both in films and now in producing wine.
“Thank god for art school,” he stresses. “I believe everyone is creative. It is about digging it out. I went to art school and it was like the sun rose up. I hated school as I did not know what I was doing. I was bottom of the class for five years - 32 out of 32. I got lucky with art.”
He says he gets frustrated with the younger generation who might give up art school after a year “because they get bored”. “I think kids don’t understand that if you want to be in a rock n’ roll band you’ve got to practice for years. It does not happen over night. It drives me crazy. If you want it, you’ve got to work for it.”
Armed with his art degree he was able to start a career initially in graphic design that lead him to the BBC as a set designer where he first married his artistic skills to being behind a camera. One of his first director’s jobs was making an episode of the police drama Z Cars which went out live around the country.
Fast and efficient
Scott says he is fortunate to be able to look back on such an illustrious career, but is quick to point out there was no cunning plan.
“If you ask me how I got here, I have no idea. But if I saw an opportunity I was like a rat up a drainpipe.”
He was, for example, one of the first who “caught the wave of British advertising” and benefited hugely from the “beginning of commercial TV”. He says he was part of a small group of English directors who cut their teeth in advertising who would then go on to have big careers in the movies - himself, his brother Tony Scott (Top Gun, Enemy of the State), Alan Parker (The Commitments, Mississippi Burning), Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Flashdance) and Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire, Revolution).
Scott personally made over 2,000 adverts including some iconic commercials like the boy walking up the hill in the famous Hovis advert. He says he did not need to go film school as working in the fast paced, cut throat world of advertising taught him all he needed to know about working under pressure, to budget and most of all the ability to tell a story, well and fast.
“I learnt that when making adverts I was more efficient if I was both the (camera) operator and the director. I was personally doing about 150 adverts a year when other people thought they were busy doing 12. I was bit of a monster. I could do them like lightening. When I did movies, I was also the camera operator on all my movies - Alien, Blade Runner etc,” he explains.
He realised by working as an operator he was always looking at a scene like a story board and always “knew what the actors were going to do” as it had been drawn out.
(This short film explains in detail how Sir Ridley Scott uses storyboards to plot his films and help bring the whole process of film making together)
He still storyboards and draws every scene he films, from medium to long shot - in order to get the “geometry” of a scene right. Again using those core skills learnt at art school.
He also realised if he switched to using multiple cameras then he could effectively have multiple storyboards taking place in the same take.
He explains: “Gradually I got to Thelma & Louise and thought I am going to start using four cameras. Now I am working with 11 cameras so you can get all the possible angles in one take.”
It means actors who are used to having multiple takes of one scene will find Scott is happy with what he has shot in just one or two takes.
“They will ask ‘do you want to go again?’ -and I will invariably say - ‘no I think you’ve got it,’” he explains. “Even Al Pacino agrees with me. It’s their choice. If they want to, let’s go again. You are the virtuoso of your own body and mind and I can watch you and say I think you’ve got it, what do you think?”
But not if a particular movie star wanted to “go again” and do 20 or 30 takes. “Then I would put my foot down,” he adds.
It means he and his production team can work at breakneck speed. Napoleon, for example, was shot in just 51 days, compared to the average 130 days. The same with Gladiator 2. Also filmed in 51 days versus 140 days when using single cameras for shooting.
Again it all goes back to his art school training where he can “preconceive the scene on paper”.
It’s why he is excited by the possibilities of AI within film making. But with one important caveat: “I embrace AI and think I can have a good time with it. But AI can only be as good as what you feed in. AI currently has a hard time creating from scratch and gets repetitious within a minute or two.”
Not that he thinks it will be replacing actors any time soon.“I do love actors. They are fresh and I could never dare do what they do in front of the camera. My hat goes off to them. A great actor will reveal themselves.”
And finally
A memorable moment for someone who always wanted to be a film director...
As my time came to leave I shared one last exchange with Scott when I admitted I had started out my career wanting to be a film director, but failed at the very first step by not having the right experience to get into film school. So instead switched direction and trained to be a journalist instead.
To which he kindly patted me on the back and said: “You’ve not done too badly, then.”
* You can find out more about Le Mas des Infermières at its website here.
