Jacques Recht, Eastern Winemaster and Brother
By Hudson Cattell  2009-3-11 16:23:26
He made wine in Europe and Virginia, and wrote 123 columns for Wine East.
He was the Brother who with Jacques Arial, created the first roster. 
Montross, Virginia — Dr. Jacques A. Recht, one of the best known winemakers in the East, died here on Sunday, March 8. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, on March 30, 1930, he had a long career in wine in Europe and North Africa before becoming the winemaster at Ingleside Plantation in 1980. He dies at 78 in Oak Grove, Virginia
By Hudson Cattell  2009-3-11 16:23:26
Before and after his retirement in 1995, he consulted for many wineries in Virginia, New York and Texas. He was also known for writing 123 winemaking columns in Wine East magazine over a 25-year period from 1983 to 2008. His column, “From Enopion’s Scrolls,” always began with a vignette attributed to the mythological Greek winemaker Enopion that became very popular with readers.Â
In 1952, Recht graduated as ing¨¦nieur with honors at the Brussels Fermentation Institute, a subsidiary of Brussels University. After serving as a commissioned officer in the Belgian army, he studied with noted French enologists Jean Ribereau-Gayon and Emile Peynaud and spent several months as a trainee at the Maison des Vins Nicholas in Paris.
Recht opened his own wine lab in Brussels in 1959, lectured at the Fermentation Institute and consulted in Belgium, France and Greece. Ten years later, Booz Allen & Hamilton Management Consultants asked him to head a vine rejuvenation project in Algeria. When the first phase was completed in 1972, Recht, now a vice-president of Booz Allen & Hamilton International, became responsible for programming other wine and food projects throughout the Mediterranean area.
Sailing was another passion, one which he shared with his wife Liliane, whom he married in 1954. He was the skipper of the syndicate boat of the Belgium Ocean Racing Club and the navigation instructor in the Belgian Ministry of Education and Sports, which included being responsible for training at five yacht clubs in Belgium. In the l960s he authored a book on navigation and celestial navigation that became a standard textbook for yachting.
In 1979, Recht decided to take an early retirement, sell his lab and embark on a cruise around the world with Liliane in their Polynesian 36-foot catamaran. In July, 1980, they sailed up the Potomac and met Carl Flemer and his son Doug at Ingleside. They asked Recht for his help in making wine for them for three weeks. Those three weeks, as Recht once put it, “shackled a very heavy anchor to their boat” and led to their settling in Virginia and starting a new winemaking career.
Recht had a long list of professional memberships in the United States and abroad. In November, 2007, he was honored by the American Wine Society for influencing the development of wine production throughout the eastern United States.