Henri Jayer and his nephew
Henri Jayer, who died in 2006, did not set out to be a grower. He began by caring for the vines of the Camuzet family during the Second World War. He then planted vines of his own and farmed those of his brothers Georges and Lucien. He worked without chemicals, with his hands and a horse. He also destemmed all his grapes, even when others made great wines with the stems. Bottles under his own name are among the most counterfeited in Burgundy, so their provenance matters. Emmanuel Rouget, his nephew, learned the trade at his side. When Jayer officially retired, Rouget began to take over his vines. Jayer kept part of the Cros Parantoux to make his own wine until the 2001 vintage. From 2002 all of his vines passed to Rouget. Rouget's sons Guillaume and Nicolas later joined him at the domaine.
The Cros Parantoux
The Cros Parantoux is a premier cru of 1.01 hectares high on the slope of Vosne-Romanée. It lies just above the original part of Richebourg, beside Les Petits Monts, and faces east. Its reputation is recent. In the Lavalle classification of 1855 it ranked only among the third growths of Vosne. After phylloxera it went unplanted for decades, and vegetables were grown there during the Second World War. Jayer took it on, cleared the rock with explosives and replanted it from the 1950s. Over time he came to own about 0.72 hectare of it. For years its wine went into his village Vosne-Romanée. Jayer first sold it under its own name with the 1978 vintage. Rouget's own label has carried a Cros Parantoux since the 1989 vintage. From 2002 Rouget's wine has come from all of Jayer's 0.7177 hectare. The rest, about 0.3 hectare, belongs to Domaine Méo-Camuzet, and since then these two estates have been the only ones to bottle it.
Échezeaux and the other climats
The grand cru of the domaine is Échezeaux, on the commune of Flagey where the estate is based. This grand cru covers some 36 hectares, divided into about a dozen climats. Rouget also makes an Échezeaux sold under the label of his uncle Georges Jayer, Henri's brother, with Rouget's own name on it. In Vosne-Romanée the domaine makes the premier cru Les Beaux Monts and a village wine. Its Nuits-Saint-Georges comes from Aux Lavières, a plot on the border with Vosne. In the Côte de Beaune it makes Savigny-lès-Beaune and Chorey-lès-Beaune. The range also includes a Côte de Nuits-Villages from Comblanchien, a Hautes-Côtes de Nuits, a Bourgogne rouge, a Bourgogne Passe-tout-grains and, in white, an Aligoté and a Hautes-Côtes de Beaune.
In the vines and the cellar
The work follows what Jayer taught. Most of the effort goes into the vineyard during the season, so that healthy, thick-skinned Pinot Noir can be picked in September. The grapes are destemmed, as Jayer always did. In the cellar the domaine keeps intervention to a minimum. The wines rest in oak barriques for about a year and a half. They are then bottled without filtration. Several coopers supply the barrels, and tasting from barrel shows how each one marks the wine. The Bourgogne rouge is not pushed with heavy extraction, and it ages in barrels that are no longer new.
Style and keeping
The style changes little from one year to the next. The fruit is deep and pure, the texture fine, and the wines rely on balance rather than weight. The Bourgogne rouge is made for easy drinking. The village wines from Nuits and Vosne show the character of their place, with a touch of iron in the Nuits. Tasting one vintage from barrel, the critic Neal Martin found the Cros Parantoux deeper and more reserved than the Échezeaux, and slow to open. Of the domaine's three top wines, it is the slowest to evolve and the one to give the most time. The bottles above are the Rouget wines in our cellar. For the other grands crus of the Côte, see the grands crus of Burgundy, or explore all our Burgundy wines.
