TWO MINUTES WITH | Jacques Devauges, Domaine des Lambrays

What is your ‘last supper’ wine?
That’s a crazy question. But I would love to taste again a wine that I had the pleasure of tasting when I was a young winemaker. In 2003, I was working at Domaine de la Vougerie, and we had dinner at the home of [owner] Jean-Claude Boisset. At the end of the evening, Monsieur Boisset went down to his cellar and returned with a bottle of 1918 Clos des Lambrays. It was the oldest wine I had ever tasted, and wow… I nearly fell off my chair. It was so alive. Of course back then, I had no idea that I would one day be responsible for the wine of Domaine des Lambrays. But I remember the wine as if I had it last night. Even so, I would love to taste it one more time…

Where is your dream vineyard?
To be honest, I am a very Burgundian winemaker, in love with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. So my first choice would be another vineyard in the Côte d’Or. But if you twist my arm, I could be persuaded to try the hill of Hermitage. I feel a certain connection to wines made from one grape variety. I don’t understand Bordeaux or Châteauneuf-du-Pape or other blends from elsewhere in the world. It’s not in my DNA. But Syrah from Hermitage could work. I did my university wine studies with Laurent Jaboulet and was lucky enough to taste some very old vintages of La Chapelle with him, which were amazing. More recently, I’ve been lucky enough to taste some Hermitage from Jean-Louis Chave, and his idea of blending different parcels of Hermitage to make a single wine struck a chord with me. It’s similar to what we do at Clos des Lambrays. 

Who is your wine hero?
I owe a particular debt to a man called Albert Rodier, who owned some plots of Clos des Lambrays in the 1870s. When phylloxera destroyed all of Burgundy’s vineyards, most people gave up. But Albert trusted in the future of Burgundy and took the opportunity to buy his neighbours' plots and rebuild. By 1880, he had unified the vineyard, and regrafted on to American rootstock. He eventually sold Clos des Lambrays to another family, in the 1930s. But what he did lives on today. 

What’s the next big thing in wine?  
I’m afraid I will not be very original. But we have to adapt to the changing climate. And it’s not just global warming – it is a wider disturbance to weather patterns, through short-term extremes that make the overall climate unpredictable. So we have to be much more reactive than we used to be.

The other imperative for us to is to be in closer contact with the next generation – to open and share bottles with them, and expose them to good wine. The challenge is to spend time together. These days you hear about things like Dry January, which is such a stupid idea. Instead of giving up wine for a month, we should give up social media for a month and spend time with people and connect over wine instead. That would be much healthier for the world than spending all our time on Instagram. 

What’s your favourite wine memory? 
One occasion stands out – a dinner and tasting at the domaine with some importers and journalists, including Charles Curtis MW from Decanter. The idea was to enjoy some old Clos des Lambrays from before the Second World War. We had one bottle of each wine between 12 of us, and the final wine was the 1923 – then exactly a century old. As we drank it, an extra wine was poured – the Clos des Lambrays 2023, which I had made, and was a mere three months old. So I had two wines in front of me, both from the same place, but 100 years apart. It was an emotion that I can’t describe. But it’s what makes wine what it is, something much more than just alcohol. It was a wonderful moment. 

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