WHAT I’VE LEARNED | Jay Boberg, Nicolas Jay, Oregon
Jay Boberg is a former music executive who, as founder of indie record label IRS and then president of MCA/Universal Records, nurtured and signed the likes of REM, Mary J Blige, Alanis Morissette, BB King, Black Sabbath, Belinda Carlisle and Gary Numan. A long-time wine lover, in 2013 he founded Oregon winery Nicolas Jay with Jean-Nicolas Méo of Burgundy’s renowned Domaine Méo-Camuzet
‘I went to university at UCLA, and one of my roommates there worked for a wine distributor in the summer. One day I went with him to Napa, and ended up meeting Robert Mondavi. That was my light bulb moment. I was totally captivated by his passion for wine – not just as something to drink, but as a lifestyle. I stopped drinking whiskey and beer like every other student, and started searching out wines.’
‘I met [US wine importer and merchant] Kermit Lynch in 1985 and we struck up a friendship. Kermit is a big music guy, and in a way, was doing in wine exactly what I was doing in music – scouring the world to find extraordinary winemakers making extraordinary wines, and trying to sign them up to be their agent. He ended up being a big influence on me. I would come to Europe for music, and he’d set me up with visits to Coche-Dury or Chave or Didier Dageneau.’
‘I was quite fastidious about reading the Wine Advocate or Wine Spectator or Decanter. I subscribed to Clive Coates and read those little Burgundy booklets that he did, which I thought were great. Then I went to a few dinners that he hosted, and I found him to be slightly arrogant and full of himself. That's the part I don't like about wine. Wine is not something you should be holding over people's heads. It's something to share.’
'In music, the real nerds who have discovered a scene or a band before everybody else have an attitude of ‘We were here first – you're not in the club.’ With some of our more edgy bands, their first audience would abandon them when they had success, like they’d sold out. But they hadn't sold out. It's just that what they first discovered turned out to be really good. Grower Champagne is a bit that way – a relatively new category with a kind of cool-kids circle around it.'
'67 is based around the magic of sharing wine, which is one of the best things about wine. That’s where the parallels come in with music – they’re things with which you have an emotional connection, and that you want to share with friends. How many times have you had a friend come up and say, ‘I’ve just found this new band, and you’ve got to hear this song.’ It's the same with wine.'
'There are two kinds of people in the world. Those for whom music is nice in the background, and who might occasionally buy a CD or a record or whatever. And then there's people for whom music is the soundtrack to their life, with songs that have meaning to them. It's just part of who they are. Wine is exactly the same. In most rooms, you go around, and people just say, ‘Sure, I'll have the red’. Then there's people like you and me.’
'In 1987 I was in Philadelphia, visiting my sister Jill. I invited her to come and see REM, but she had a bunch of students coming over to the house, so I went over to her place instead, and there's this French guy there. Jill says to me, ‘His family's something to do with wine. You're into wine, go talk to him.’ It turned out to be Jean-Nicolas Méo.'
'I knew of Méo-Camuzet, but I hadn’t had their wine. I didn't have any money back then. But Jean-Nicolas and I struck up a friendship, and then I visited him in Burgundy, and he came to California. The most important thing about our relationship is that we drank a lot of wine together over the years, and his idea of a great Pinot Noir and a great Chardonnay is pretty much exactly the same as mine.'
'I approached Jean-Nicolas about starting Nicolas Jay in 2012. He’d tried some Oregon wines, and had heard a lot about Oregon from Véronique Drouhin, who’s a good friend of his. But he still wasn’t all in. He said to me, ‘Listen, we’re not doing this unless we can make a world-class wine.’ So he made around 10 trips to Oregon and we would spend a week going from winery to winery, tasting in their cellars. And because virtually every winery in Oregon buys fruit, we were able to taste 200 different vineyards. It wasn't that far in that Jean-Nicolas turned to me and said, ‘We can make world-class wine here.’
'We started with Pinot, and then began making Chardonnay in 2018. Then we ended up buying a vineyard, Bishops Creek, which hadn’t been in our plan. There were a couple acres of Pinot Gris at the top of the hill, and Jean-Nicolas said he wanted to make a Pinot Gris. I told him that you don't have a guy who makes Corton Charlemagne make $25 Pinot Gris. So we grafted it to Chardonnay.'
'After the third vintage sold out, we bought a 52-acre piece of land that was a longhorn cattle farm on the cooler, north side of the Dundee Hills. We'll harvest our first grapes from it this year, but the vineyard probably won't really come into its own until the 2030s. Things move slowly in wine, especially in the vineyard, and I realise that many of the steps Jean-Nicolas and I are taking now will come to fruition when I am either very old or not here anymore.'
'One of the biggest things that I was wrong about was the assumption that nobody in France would buy our wine. Why would anybody in France buy wine from Oregon? But Jean-Nicolas started offering tastings to his customers, and we now sell a good chunk of wine in France, including in Paris restaurants.'
'People say I’m some music guy who lives in LA and Jean-Nicolas is a big shot in Burgundy, but he’s very hands-on. All the major decisions – and even the minor ones – are made by him, and he comes out four or five times a year. Basically, I just do what I'm told. Though if Jean-Nicolas was sitting here, he would say that's not true.'
'I always ask why we’re doing things a certain way, and it does sometimes make him question things. And that’s what makes him so special. Even though he's one of the top winemakers of Burgundy, he'll put up with a schmuck like me asking him questions. And he’ll say himself that he makes better wine in Burgundy now as a result of Oregon, because it's made him think about everything that he does.'
'Our flagship cuvée, Ensemble, is a blend of the best barrels from the best vineyards. There are 156 barrels, and Jean-Nicolas and I taste all of them. It’s the same with harvest – I've been at every pick that we’ve ever done, overseeing what's going on, doing the sorting. This is not a gentleman farmer type of situation, even though some people still assume that I just send cheques.'
'You have this romantic idea of owning a winery or a vineyard, and I still have friends who say, ‘Wow, that must be fantastic. You travel around the world and do dinners.’ If they knew what it was really like, they’d be like, ‘Dude, why are you doing that at your age?’ My partner Lynn asks me how long I’m going to keep doing it. She says I’m working as many hours as I did when I was in the music business. But I'm not doing it to get rich. I'm doing it because I love it, and I believe in it. We're creating something – just like creating art or music. It gives me such joy.'
Look out for a Member event in London with the wines of Nicolas Jay later in the year. Details will follow shortly
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