I meant the Henri Jayer version. I actually had a bottle that was slightly corked. ![[soap.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7ea1fffd3ef237e8f19d17a83270ad8452218ca.gif "soap"){kind=small}
I was offered a half dozen at $1,600 per bottle around 2003 but got only three as I was looking for $100 discount per bottle.
The G and H Echezeaux is actually pretty similar to the Henri (I have had several matching vintages to compare a few times), both in Style and overall appearance. You could argue perhaps not quite as good, but if so, then it is only by a very, very small margin…
Jayer’s '85’s are still amongst the greatest wines I have had (when not corked). A good bottle of this will blow anyone away, I guarantee it…
I guess there’s always the possibility that it actually was California wine inside!
I did not know Henri Jayer, but I believe he may have used 100% new oak because he was simply too clean and paranoid a winemaker to risk anything else. This explanation fits with what I know of him. I’ve tasted half a dozen vintages of Cros Parantoux and nothing else. Every bottle was great.
Dan Kravitz
wonder myself where the truth lies. when one reads Jacky Rigaux’s book on jayer, one falls in love with this man, except the 100% new oak esp that of francois ferrer never sat well with me.
you want to know what jayer was all about ask jean marie fourier (who was a portage of jayer for 2 years?). i am not an expert on jayer but i am baffled by how much difference there seems to be with what he preached and what he practiced.
apparently jean marie’s first task when working for jayer was taking herbicide and spreading it in the vineyard.
100% new oak esp those from francois ferrer (toasty sweet stuff) and non interventionism are paradoxical, no? same with cold soak, always destemming, etc…
Dan - Interesting.
Rasoul - I guess I missed a good opportunity to discuss Jayer with Fourrier - I visited with Jean Marie in October. 
But…you get where I’m going…There is a disconnect here that I would like to understand.
Some things to consider. Reading these words in 2011, as an active participant in a discussion board where a heated debate about interventionism or non-interventionism occurs so frequently that they’ve become -isms, we might find ourselves importing a context to those words that wasn’t originally intended. Thinking of it from the context of the speaker, a Burgundian for whom terrroir is a religion, words like these are probably best understood as an expression of humility–if you like what I do, credit the land, don’t look to any one thing or another that I do; I’m not the important part of this equation. This is a very common way for Burgundian winemakers to talk. When they talk about not intervening in things, this is the idea they’re trying to get at. They are not trying to associate themselves with any particular position in the kinds of interventionism vs. non-interventionism debates as occur on a daily basis here. In my experience, they just don’t think of things that way.
So I don’t think you need to find anything paradoxical or disconnective in Henri Jayer talking like this and using all new oak. If he saw the oak as disruptive to expressing terroir, he probably would have taken a different position on its use. And it makes sense that he would have considered all-new oak as leading to a purer expression of terroir in comparison to the dirty old barrels used by many less conscientious winemakers in his day.
Kim,
Other than Jacky Rigaux’s book (which was translated by James Finkel), your best source is Bourgogne Anjourd’hui. There were articles in the past where he was interviewed. They are all in French.
I am not positive that he ever talked about the oak in those however.
I understand and agree with everyone said about the * incredible texture*.
My main point ( regarding Kim’s comment in her original post ) is : Jayer was 100% destemmed but DRC is the exact opposite : up to 100% stem inclusion which results in also incredible texture. ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
If he saw the oak as disruptive to expressing terroir, he probably would have taken a different position on its use. And it makes sense that he would have considered all-new oak as leading to a purer expression of terroir in comparison to the dirty old barrels used by many less conscientious winemakers in his day.
Regarding the 100% new oak Chez Henri Jayer . My take is : he believed it them. He also believed there were no over-oak wine only under-wine wine.
While wine should always be balance but with definitely 100% new oak, in some particular vintages, they need more than usual time to round out. Caotes talked about his experience with them in page 498 of his 1st Edition of CdOr.
Keith - Thanks for your thoughtful post. 
To those who have tasted the wines…what say uou…was Jayer’s use of oak disruptive to the expression of terroir?
Hi Kim,
I cannot speak to why Monsieur Jayer used one hundred percent new oak, but I would guess that others’ suppositions that it had to do with hygeine in the cellars would be the crux of the issue. Keep in mind that Monsieur Jayer was born in 1922 and came of age in an era of great deprivation in Burgundy, and there must have been a very large percentage of Burgundies during the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s that were ruined by badly maintained barrels when folks did not have the resources or the knowledge necessary to maintain their barrels. Remember that even glass was in very short supply in the period after the second world war, so that often wines had to stay in barrel much longer than would have been ideal, as there were simply not enough bottles to bottle up a vintage. This condition lasted well into the 1950s. One can imagine that once Monsieur Jayer had the opportunity to buy new wood for his wines each year, and move away from potential issues of spoilage, he would have felt like a child on Christmas morning, given the era of relative poverty that he grew up in during his first three decades of life in Burgundy.
In terms of his use of a “cold soak” pre-fermentation maceration, I have an idea of how this may have come around, but never had a chance to ask Monsieur Jayer on the couple of occasions on which I had a chance to spend time with him, about how this practice evolved. In the early days of his career, his wines began to gain a bit of a local following because of their robust and dark colors. In those days, most of his wines were sold off to local restaurants to be served in carafe- with the restaurant hauling their jugs over to be filled out of the barrels- and the Jayer wines were known locally as “Porteguese Blue” for their dark crimson colors. My gut instinct was that this came about accicently- perhaps a cold snap right after harvest one year that slowed the onset of fermentation- and the dark colors of the ensuing wines were so popular that Monsieur Jayer lit upon this as a practical addition to his technique in the cellar. Purely speculation on my part about the origin of this, but it seems likely to me. Once he started doing his cold soak, he would have preferred this to other methods of getting darker colors, as he was not a fan of heavy extraction or high fermentation temperatures (both of which would help set the color). And once his clients feel in love with the darker color of his wines in comparison to some of his neighbors, he would have wanted to keep his customers happy- they were not so easy to find and keep back in those lean days in the region.
As Keith alluded to above, we have to remember that Henri Jayer’s mantra of non-interventioniest winemaking had a very different historical context in his day than the same term has today. On the one afternoon where I had an extended period to chat with him about his career and philosophy, he emphasized repeatedly that it was the viticultural side of the equation that was of paramount importance in producing great Burgundy. His emphasis would be on proper pruning technqiues and constant vigilance in the vineyards to nurther the vines through their entire growing season, so as to produce the finest possible fruit- which in its turn would translate into the finest translation of the unerlying terroir into the finished wines. Much of this philosophy was formalized during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s- an era where scientific breakthroughs in the realm of winemakng techniques changed many practices in other cellars around the globe- and Monsieur Jayer’s approach would have been a rejection of many of these techniques that came into vogue in these decades- filtration, cultured yeasts, high-yielding clones etc. At the same time, he was very much a man of his generation and would have been appalled at the thought of losing a crop to midlew or rot- so Jean-Marie Fourrier’s account of adding treatments to the vineyards for the prevention of crop lose in some vintage is not particularly surprising. Monsieur Jayer grew up in an era of low prices, tepid demand and the need to be constantly frugal to continue to live on the land and produce Burgundy- an age diametrically removed from today’s contemporary Burgundian landscape. We tend to think of the high prices fetched for Monsieur Jayer’s wines at the end of his career (and after his passing) as having signified a certain level of affluence to Monsieur Jayer, and while he was very comfortable at the very end of his career, he certainly did not live the life of a Duc of Burgundy for the first sixty years of his journey here. But, his contribution to today’s Burgundian rennaissance cannot be overstated, as his inspiration to following generations has made a profound impact.
All the Best,
John
Glad you like what Keith so well said message…which I agree whole heartedly.
Back to your question which I do not really want to answer 
because it is not as simple as a yes or no; but let me tell what Jasper Morris said in page 13 of his new book :
The vignerons as hero.
For all the stamp of the vigeron is crucial to the nature of the wine ( a point explored in the chater on stylistic choices), we should resist the temptation of placing the grwoers on pedestials, investing them with hero status. They are human beings like the rest os uf : some are better at the job than others…
merci,…John.
Great discussion John. I have had the pleasure of only having a couple of Henri’s wines. The 89 Echezeaux that I had the opportunity to taste earlier this year was brilliant and drinking spot on. Beautiful secondary aromatics. Rich, ripe dark fruits with great texture…long, long. There’s no doubt about his legendary status.
From someone who has only tasted 3 bottles of Echezeaux from the 1980’s, I didn’t notice any oak influence.
Kim,
Probably the closest example to Jayer’s oak style is Rousseau (same barrels and mostly destemmed) or Rouget (still made in the same style).
I do believe that very oak averse drinkers would notice the contribution when the wines were young but as Don pointed out there is little oak influence remaining when they are mature.
John - Really fantastic info. Thank you!
Peter - I rather like having my wine heroes. Learning about the vignerons is half the fun - for me anyway.
Some thoughts on this thread, if I read things right:
– IMO, as I define the term, all Meo wines through the 1988s and all Rouget wines until Henri died (maybe not the last harvest) are “Jayer” wines. He made them, as I define things. (In fact, it wasn’t even until after the 2004 harvest that Rouget even had a cuverie to actually make all of the wines; before that they were made in Vosne at Jayer’s and trucked to Flagey for the elevage). So…Rouget was and probably is a great insight into the Jayer wine making (and certainly the philosophy). Rouget is modest and frank, and would not change a thing. He feared for the day his uncle wasn’t around…and was honest about it.
Re: “non interventionist”: that, I think was mainly in the vineyard. After the War (II), the use of fertilizers was predominant and it ruined many estates’ produce( like Rousseau’s, among the most notable). Jayer was appalled.
Re: new oak. As many said here, I think that was mainly for hygeine. Wines rested in oak until there was a reason to bottle them (somebody bought them, or they needed the room for a later vingage), so the nature of the oak was all-important.) Old wood imparted off elements…the famous (once thought to be desirable “Burgundy barnyard”) aspects of Burgundy were really from lack of hygeine from old barrels. So, the solution: use new ones, if the appellation (ie, price garnered) is worth it. Making barrels requires heat to bend the staves…inside the “barrel”. Heat can come from direct fire or steam. Steam imparts green and other elements. Wood gets a bit toasted, but people recognized that it also added some appealing elements. No one uses steamed staves to age Burgundy. The new wood element can be controlled in many ways: the toast…and also the length of the elevage. Jayer didn’t do a really long elevage (18 months)…one of the reasons was not to make them “new oak tea”. I doubt he wanted particularly toasty staves either (but I have no idea.) Bottom line: the effect of the new, toasted oak was more pleasant than that of old, stinky wood. (Wood is needed for elevage, so…no wood of any type is not an option.)
RE: cold soak: I have no real idea about how it came about chez Jayer. But, color and other extraction is more desirable in an aqueous soulution (the juice) than an alchoholic solution (post fermentation). Given the choice, most would opt for pre-fermentation soaking. The danger of that, however, is that the must is susceptible to oxidation before the fermentation. So, the temperatures have to be kept very low to keep the yeasts from feasting and creating a fermentation…or the must sulphured (Accad did the same thing for much longer, and used tons of sulphur)…so, the best compromise was what happened chez Jayer: a relatively short cold soak. He liked the result. And, when the wine world (in the early '80s) liked the result nothing would be changed and a “method” was fixed. Jayer’s “luck” was that he had great vineyards to work with and the resources of the Meo family (with whom he sharecropped and co-owned). His best luck was that he was in the forefront of a generation of winemakers who were coming of age well after him and who were interested in new techniques. He became their guru, and that gave him even more of a mystique. (Though he didn’t live like a king, he did have a huge vanity Mercedes and had a very healthy ego…and loved the attention. But, he was down to earth, too, and would handwrite notes back in response to requests to visit.)
Re: destemming. I’d guess that he just felt that the wines were cleaner, more approachable and tasted better without a rigid rule of adding stems. Stems, like grapes, can vary in quality from year to year…and can be green and impart tannins. The tannins from the grape skins are thought to be finer. The stems did add the possibility of controlling the fermentation better…the temperature…and the speed as they could be used to keep the must cooler. But, Jayer, I think , learned that there were better ways of temperature control…maybe just airconditioners or ice…I have no idea. So, he eschewed the stems. Now, they are something different, with such good temperature control: a spice if you will… In Jayer’s creative days…they could be a problem…and create wines that took forever to come around and please.
And, above all, when talking about things like “natural” and “non-interventionist”, keep in mind the historical context and the setting Jayer worked in. It was before most of the stars of today were reading. Jayer never claimed to be “organic” and biodynamie wasn’t something he probably ever heard of early on (he later thought it was lunacy.). In all history, IMHO, keeping that in mind is all-important. Judge it in terms of the world when it was happening, not by today’s world’s criteria. That is maybe his greatest contribution: he was ahead of his time in his thinking. He got “there” first…and had great vineyards to use as his canvas. (He was also one of the first to get an oenology degree at Dijon, so there was certainly an intellectual curiosity and approach to his methods. It wasn’t until the guys coming around in the '80s and later that most winemakers had degrees.)
Just my thoughts…to this very interesting thread…on a snowy Xmas morning in Maine…with a Daniel (Patrice) Rion 1990 on deck. (The Rions were admitted disciples; Patrice admired Henri’s thinking very very much, though he didn’t have the same esteemed holdings for his canvas.)
Stuart - Thank you for making this thread even more interesting. I am ever grateful to our resident experts for their willingness to share what they know.
I will dig a little deeper into Accad too - as the name has been popping up - as I dig around.
Again, sincere thanks to everyone participating in this thread.