Domaine Dujac Clos Saint-Denis 1970-2004
BY NEAL MARTIN |
Walking back from a dinner last year, a friend asked if I was aware of the current market price for mature bottles of Domaine Dujac. “No,” I replied. All I knew was that they are beyond my budget. He whipped out his smartphone and dug up the price for a 1990 Clos de la Roche. I was gobsmacked – it was a cool £5,000 per bottle. Of course I am inured to the escalation in Burgundy prices in recent years, but even so, I found it staggering how much 750ml of Pinot Noir could cost. Then I remembered a bacchanal in Paris the previous January with a gaggle of high-rolling, wine-loving friends vowing serious damage to Tour d’Argent’s astonishing wine list. Jeremy Seysses joined us for a dinner that ranks among the greatest in my life, one where my already lofty estimation of Dujac went up a few notches. It was not Clos de la Roche that blew my mind but mature vintages of Clos Saint-Denis. I confess to an ardent passion for this vineyard, one shared by a number of winemakers, though it seems to lie unfairly in the shadow of Clos de la Roche within the context of Morey-Saint-Denis. So, when I was invited to a vertical of Dujac’s Clos Saint-Denis in London last April, there was no way I was going to miss it.
This
vertical tasting was organized by collector Jordi Orriols-Gil and took place at
Hide restaurant in central London, with around fifteen Burgundy lovers in
attendance. The bottles were arranged in flights and served from youngest to
oldest. The restaurant provided a menu to accompany the flights, although I
stuck to fish courses that actually matched the wines extremely well.
History
The history of Domaine Dujac is well documented, so I will not dwell upon the backstory. Louis Seysses was head of Biscuits Belin and president of Club des Cent, the latter not unlike the Food & Wine Society in the UK, a collective of oenophiles and gastronomes that foraged Michelin-starred restaurants around the Continent. Seysses’s passion for fine dining exposed his son Jacques to the best producers in both Bordeaux and Burgundy from a young age. A stint following in his father’s footsteps at Belin never clicked; however, it did serendipitously introduce the younger Seysses to Jacques Ferté, a member of the Club des Cent and also a shareholder in Domaine de la Pousse d’Or in Volnay. In 1966 Jacques Seysses began working at the domaine, and it became clear to him exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a winemaker.
These two vintages spent in Volnay played an important part in Seysses’s understanding of winemaking, especially with respect to cleanliness in the winery. Now all he needed was some vines. Seysses began scouting around for vineyards, thankfully at a time when they did not cost the GDP of an equatorial country and one could potentially repay the outlay within three or four vintages. He finally acquired land from Domaine Marcel Graillet in Morey-Saint-Denis, which became the foundation of Domaine Dujac, a twist on his first name (something obvious that I completely overlooked until writing this piece). Graillet’s five hectares of holdings included a 1.1-hectare parcel in Clos Saint-Denis, which formed the centerpiece of Dujac’s holdings from day one, even if the 1968 crop was so bad that Seysses sold off every grape. The following year Seysses constructed a winery to vinify his 1969, his first proper vintage. During this early period he sought the sage advice of Charles Rousseau, as well as Gérard Potel at Domaine de la Pousse-D’Or. One thing I did not know was that Jacques Seysses kept his day job at Belin until 1973, so the earliest vintages included in this tasting come from a period when he was not a full-time vigneron. Over time, in order to sustain a living, Seysses added more parcels to the domaine’s holdings, including an additional 0.45 hectares of Clos Saint-Denis purchased from Domaine Alfred Jacquot in 1977.
Jacques Seysses with his son Alec, pictured in November 2019 when I tasted the 2018s from barrel.
