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A Personal Note
Dear Artisans,
This is the first time I have written to you about Domaine Dujac, and it may be the shortest-lived offer I send all year. Every release, we are allocated a few bottles of each wine, and that is all we get. There are no reorders. When a wine below sells out, it is gone until the next vintage.
Every bottle comes directly from the official importer, so the provenance is pristine: straight from the domaine’s cellar to ours, with no auctions and no gray market in between.
One Of The Great Burgundy Domaines
Clive Coates MW, writing in Decanter, put it plainly: “This is one of the great Burgundy domaines.” Jacques Seysses founded Dujac in Morey-Saint-Denis on 5 hectares in 1968. It is nearly 16 today, with seven grands crus: Clos de la Roche, Clos Saint-Denis, Charmes-Chambertin, Échézeaux, Bonnes-Mares, Chambertin and Romanée-Saint-Vivant.
The signature is whole-cluster fermentation, and Dujac folds the stems in like almost no one else. Bill Nanson of Burgundy Report, comparing the great whole-cluster houses: “I think only DRC and Leroy regularly achieve this level of ‘integration’.”
The Company Dujac Keeps
Asked who shaped him, Jacques named Gérard Potel of the Pousse d’Or, “certainly Aubert de Villaine of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti” and “most importantly Charles Rousseau of Domaine Armand Rousseau.” He later bought Domaine de Triennes in Provence along with his friend de Villaine.
In 2005 Dujac and Étienne de Montille divided the great vineyards of Thomas-Moillard. Dujac’s share was chiefly Romanée-Saint-Vivant, Chambertin, Vosne-Romanée Les Beaux Monts and a large slice of Les Malconsorts. That Beaux Monts is in the table below.
And when Wine Spectator’s Burgundy critic named the ten best wines of the 2005 vintage, two of them were Dujac: the Clos Saint-Denis and the Romanée-Saint-Vivant, on a list with DRC’s Romanée-Conti and La Tâche, Roumier’s Musigny and Rouget’s Cros Parantoux.
The Dujac School
A generation of great Pinot Noir makers learned in Jacques’s cellar: Ted Lemon of Littorai, Josh Jensen of Calera, and Jean-Pierre de Smet of Domaine de l’Arlot, “a long-time friend and protégé of Jacques Seysses” in Jasper Morris’s words. As Ken Gargett wrote in Quill & Pad, “at one stage if you couldn’t include a stint at Dujac on your resume, then you were not going to be taken seriously as a Pinot Noir winemaker.”
Why Collectors Fight For It
Dujac rarely comes up at auction. iDealwine places it in “an exclusive circle of producers whose wines are sought after by enthusiasts worldwide.” When Jeremy Seysses hand-picked a consignment from the domaine for Acker in Hong Kong in 2013, “60 new World Records were set for wines from Dujac out of 70 unique lots offered.”
And the wines grow in the cellar. Neal Martin of Vinous was gobsmacked by the price of a 1990 Clos de la Roche: “a cool £5,000 per bottle.” A US merchant last listed the 2005 Clos de la Roche at $1,795.00 a bottle. Retasting the 1999 Clos de la Roche in 2024, Coates wrote: “I am struck by how much it is opening up.” And Martin, after a dinner of old Dujac: “my already lofty estimation of Dujac went up a few notches.”
The Family Today
Today Jacques’s sons Alec and Jeremy run the domaine, certified organic since 2011, with Jeremy’s wife Diana Snowden, a UC Davis-trained enologist whose family owns Snowden Vineyards in Napa. Jeremy and Jacques also launched Dujac Fils & Père, made with the same care from partner growers’ old vines; that is the label on the two Nuits-Saint-Georges “Aux Cras” below.
James Tran
Artisan Wine & Spirits
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