Living

Henri Jayer

By Catherine Fallis, Master Sommelier

www.planetgrape.com

Like Mr. Cohen, the motto of legendary wine producer Henri Jayer is "quality before everything else." And like Mr. Cohen, Henri Jayer is a man with a vision who is not interested in the spotlight, but works with a passion bordering on madness towards his dream. Mr. Jayer does whatever it takes to produce the best possible raw material, in this case, grapes, and his efforts pay off. He crafts Red Burgundies, wines made of the Pinot Noir grape variety, that take one's breath away and that tend to haunt one for days, months, even years afterwards.

Always seeking the finest level of craftsmanship and intellect in his wines, and, naturally, favoring the supremely elegant wines of Burgundy, Mr. Cohen discovered the tiny village of Vosne-Romanee, located in the heart of Burgundy's Cote de Nuits. Vosne-Romanee is world-renowned for wines such as Domaine de la Romanee Conti's Echezeaux, Grands-Echezeaux, La Tache, Richebourg, and Romanee Conti. While these wines certainly have finesse, perfume, silk, elegance, and breed, anyone with plenty of cash can experience them. But only those in the know seek with a fevered, cult-like edge the elusive bottles of Jayer Echezeaux, Vosne-Romanee Cros Parantoux, and Vosne-Romanee Les Beaumonts.

Henri Jayer, with only 7.5 acres of vineyards, crafts his wines "for pleasure", and thus "one seeks as perfect an equilibrium as possible." In contrast, many new world Pinot Noirs, those produced with grapes grown in much warmer climates such as California and New Zealand, tend to focus on ripeness, on brash, vibrant fruit quality, and, unfortunately, to please the old school wine press, on heavy extraction, high alcohol, and heavy-handed oak barrel treatment. These wines are amazing, powerful, impressive, and will take home the gold medals and high scores but their attraction is all up front, obvious, and one-dimensional. Their very impressiveness also tends to make them overpowering at the table, the very place wine is meant to be consumed.

Mr. Jayer believes in letting the fruit speak for itself. His winemaking approach is non-interventionist, though he does value an extended pre-fermentative maceration in which the grape pulp is cooled to 15i C for 5 to 7 days, encouraging the release of fine aromas and color, uses only indigenous yeast during fermentation, fines with egg whites, and bottles by hand with no filtration. The resulting wines are profound, mysterious, elusive, and immensely pleasurable to both the senses and the intellect. In particular, Mr. Cohen favors Jayer's silky, seductive, and velvety Vosne Romanee Cros Parantoux, though with only 80 cases produced per year and fans all over the planet, this is quite challenging to obtain. While Jayer, a youthful 80-year old, has turned over the day-to-day winemaking to his nephew, Emmanuel Rouget, he continues to oversee things at his estate while also consulting for another famous estate, Domaine Meo Camuzet.