Wine tasting with the eminence grise Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac

In June of 2007 we had the good fortune to visit Domaine Dujac in Morey St. Denis. Somehow I neglected to get the exact street address, so we headed to Morey hoping to find somebody who could provide us with directions. After a couple of U-turns (Morey St. Denis is a small town), we ended up at Domaine Ponsot, where Madame Ponsot(?) told us we needed to head to the other side of town. I was thinking of offering to provide my opinion of the 2005 Ponsot Clos de la Roche Vieilles Vignes, but we were running short of time, so I had to pass…

Our original appointment was with Jeremy Seysses, but he was otherwise occupied, so we were turned over to the Dujac eminence grise Jacques Seysses, who interleaved some background on how the Dujac approach to winemaking had changed over the years with a tasting of a suite of 2006 and 2005 wines. Seysses was celebrating his 40th year of wine making this year. The major change seems to have involved an evolution to a much more environmentally friendly form of grape cultivation and wine making as compared to the practice in the 1970s—their current philosophy is very much one of acting as custodians of the land, interfering as little as possible in the overall wine growing and making process. The other change involves the winemaking team, which now includes Jacques Seysses, his two sons, and his daughter-in-law Diana. Diana is apparently professionally trained at UC Davis in enology and they have built a laboratory for her, which is now used to complement the more subjective weekly sampling of the grapes by the team.

We started with some of the 2006 wines still in the barrel, passing on any that were still undergoing malolactic fermentation. The 2006 wines from Dujac turned out to be quite impressive, perhaps only a half a notch or so below the stellar 2005 wines. First up was the 2006 Dujac Vosne-Romanee Malconsorts, a new vineyard recently added to the lineup—very much dominated at this stage by black fruit, with dark cherry and raspberry on the nose, this struck me as a sort of hypothetical blend of the fatter, lusher Jadot Vosne Romanee Suchots and the darker, leaner Jadot Boudot we had tasted the Friday before. I was perhaps a little surprised not to see more of that lush Vosne character, but perhaps this wine will continue to fatten up in the barrel and bottle.

Next up was the 2006 Dujac Gevrey Chambertin les Combottes, a bright, beautifully delineated wine dominated by red fruit that offered a real contrast with the black fruit of the Malconsorts. The wine was well balanced, with a sappy mouth feel balanced by good acidity and manageable tannins. This Premier Cru was followed by a barrel sample of the 2006 Dujac Clos St. Denis, which came across as even rounder and sweeter in the mouth, although not necessarily longer than the Combottes. We ended our tasting of the 2006 barrel samples with the even firmer, more structured 2006 Dujac Clos de la Roche, which perhaps as expected, offered the most complete wine of the lineup, combining structure, power, and finesse all in a single package.

We then moved on to some of the spectacular 2005 Dujac wines, beginning with the 2005 Dujac Nuits-St-Georges aux Thorey, a Premier Cru vineyard that Dujac sold as part of their recent acquisition of the Malconsorts and additional Beaux Monts vineyards. Jacques Seysses suggested that they might have made a mistake in selling this property, and certainly the 2005 aux Thorey was a great success, with aromas of black raspberry followed by intense black fruit flavors in the mouth. As with all of the successful 2005 Dujac wines, the hallmark of this wine was really the sheer intensity of flavors, which emerge without any suggestion of over-extraction. The wines have a good core of tannin and acidity for aging, but the ripe sweet fruit at the core of the wine is unmistakable. Next up was the spectacular 2005 Dujac Vosne-Romanee les Beaux Monts, a wine for the black fruit lover out there. I suspect this wine would satisfy even a Bordeaux lover like Jeff Leve with its beautiful extraction and flavor intensity, a sort of Burgundian Chateau Angelus. The palate feel on this wine was remarkable, conveying almost a sense of residual solid black fruit lingering on the impressively long finish. This was followed by the 2005 Dujac Chambolle Musigny les Gruenchers, a tiny step down in flavor intensity from the Beaumonts, but perhaps making up for it in the roundness and sweetness of wine on the palate. Here the finish was driven by the sappiness and viscosity of the sweet red and black fruit on the palate, a beautifully balanced wine that I would gladly own if I can find a bottle. Then a bottle of the 2005 Dujac Charmes-Chambertin, which I found a bit less expressive at this stage than the rest of those tested, but still some very classy juice. Last up was the 2005 Dujac Clos de la Roche, which again was the most complete wine in the lineup, here combining all of the essential features of the foregoing wine, with sheer flavor intensity, sappy mouthfeel, and structure presented in beautiful balance. Needless to say, we dispensed with the spitting at this stage and Seysses was gentleman enough to turn down my offer to trade my first born for some bottles of this wine.

As mind-blowing as the 2005 Dujac Clos de la Roche was (and the others in the 2005 lineup were not far behind), it was very nice to be offered the chance to taste a more mature Clos de la Roche for reference. Seysses pulled out a bottle of the 1998 Dujac Clos de la Roche, a lighter wine in appearance, but with that trademark Dujac sappiness and sweet fruit belying the pale color of the wine. Here the red fruit have moved to the forefront on the expressive nose and palate, coming in cascading, intoxicating waves. This bottle is drinking great now and the Dujac lover out there may want to be on the alert for any these floating around on the market right now…

So we had a great tasting at Dujac, where the spectacular 2005 and impressive 2006 wines really demonstrate that this Domaine is at the top of their game. And the winemaking team seems to be positioned to continue to make great wine…