Law is so much about absolute precision... when I'm talking about wine and writing about wine, I do like to be precise, but nonetheless, it's much more about outgoing exuberance, if you like. Enthusiasm for things is more my character.

– Jasper Morris MW, on why he did not follow his family tradition to enter the legal profession. 

(Source: Berry Bros. & Rudd)

 

Growing up in the charming county of Hampshire overlooking the English Channel, Jasper Morris MW seemed destined for a life in courtrooms. His family background practically ensured it – his uncle even famously authored a seminal and notoriously complex legal tome Dicey & Morris on the Conflict of Laws. The text was akin to Shakespeare for aspiring lawyers, complete with the occasional tragedy for students (like myself) grappling with the subject before an exam. 

However, Jasper cheerfully sidestepped a dusty existence poring over statutes, instead following a much tastier, livelier calling: the wine business. Rather than arguing obscure points of law today, Jasper Morris is widely regarded as the most important living authority on Burgundy wines.

 

 (Source: Jasper Morris at The Dynasty Club, Hong Kong)

 

Jasper’s early decision to specialise in wine proved extraordinarily timely. Burgundy was on the cusp of a seismic transformation, driven by a movement towards improved vineyard and cellar practices, a fresh generation of ambitious producers, and domaines beginning to bottle their own wines. Finding himself in the right place at the perfect moment, Jasper’s wine import business, Morris & Verdin (later integrated into Berry Bros. & Rudd) became pivotal in cultivating Britain’s taste for fine Burgundy.

Jasper subsequently authored Inside Burgundy, an acclaimed reference that became the definitive English-language resource on the subject — approachable yet deeply respected among sommeliers and collectors. More impressive still is Jasper’s standing within Burgundy itself. Local producers recognise Jasper’s genuine passion and trust him, opening doors that remain closed to most outsiders. This rapport allows Jasper to uncover rare behind-the-scenes insights, bridging Burgundy’s artisans with Burgundy lovers around the world. 

 

 

Thanks to our friends at 67 Pall Mall, we connected with Jasper for an interview just when he flew to Singapore to conduct an illuminating masterclass on the wines of Morey-Saint-Denis in Singapore.

| Click to read more about our exploration with Jasper of Morey-Saint-Denis with Domaines Roumier, Dujac, Lambrays and more

During our chat, Jasper took us back to his formative years at Oxford, recounting how his sister Arabella inadvertently sparked his lifelong passion for wine by regularly borrowing his college room to host blind tasting sessions. He reflected on the magic of Burgundy: why he chose to dedicate a lifetime to this one singularly enchanting region, and how it continues to captivate wine enthusiasts today even amid soaring global demand and spiralling prices.

We also seized the opportunity to move beyond Burgundy and picked Jasper’s brain on Europe's most exciting up-and-coming wine regions before venturing eastward to the fascinating yet uncertain future of China's wine regions, a topic he has followed for decades.

Throughout our exchange, we found Jasper to be exceptionally warm, intellectually curious and brimming with an infectious enthusiasm. Here’s our conversation with Burgundy's preeminent voice!

Follow Jasper Morris MW: Instagram | Facebook

Jasper's wine tasting reports and essential guide to Burgundy wines: Official Website | Inside Burgundy (2nd Ed)

If I could go back in time, would I choose somewhere else [to focus on]? No, I wouldn't — absolutely not. Because Burgundy was the place in need of a fresh approach, and I was just so fortunate, through meeting the amazing Becky Wasserman, to get in at the ground floor and be able to do things that nobody else was doing in the UK with Burgundy.

[88 Bamboo]: First, we’re curious if you recall, considering that you came from a long line of lawyers, what were your parents’ reaction when you had told them that that you’d like to go off and work at an upstart of a wine retailer, Birley and Goedhuis, after completing your degree at Oxford? Were they puzzled?

[Jasper]: They were actually really happy for me to do something that I wanted to do. My father had never really enjoyed the law and it wasn't the right career really for him, for his style of mind. And I don't think it would have been for me because the law is so much about absolute precision. And though, of course, when I'm talking about wine and writing about wine, I do like to be precise, but nonetheless, it's much more about outgoing exuberance, if you like. Enthusiasm for things is more my character.

So I was clear that law wasn't going to be the right thing. I did toy with staying on and doing a further degree and perhaps an academic career. But when you've been taught by great academics, you know what it really takes. So I played with it, but it was really just a temporizing move. And then a friend rang up and said, this is wine shop opening up in London: Birley and Goedhuis.

 

Charming fine wine merchant Jonathan Goedhuis (left) and Mark Birley – a prominent entrepreneur and restaurateur, best known for founding exclusive London clubs (right) (Source: Tatler)

 

“Goedhuis” is a man called Johnny Goedhuis, whose company continues today. While Mark Birley had a nightclub called Annabel's. He wanted to start a retail business. The shop was originally called Birley & Goedhuis and then changed its name later on to Annabelle's Wine Cellars.

Anyway, that's what I wanted to do. My parents were happy with it. There was never really any question.

[88 Bamboo]: We’ve read that it was in fact your sister, Arabella, who introduced you to wines – do you recall what your early impressions of wines were? What ultimately convinced you that perhaps you’d give working in a wine shop a go?

[Jasper]: Yes, my sister was both running the Oxford University Wine Circle and was captain of the [varsity] wine tasting team.

 

Oxford and Cambridge universities continue to organise varsity blind tasting competitions today. (Source: Drinks Business)

 

And her college was rather out of the centre of Oxford. I also had rooms nearby which were spacious enough to do the tastings there. So, she asked me if that might be possible and I said “yes”. I thought, I might as well join in! And so that's really what got me motivated. And just the fascination – when you're practicing for a blind tasting competition, then you're obviously trying lots of different wines and you can really see the difference that a terroir or producer can make. So I got quite a strong early baptism.

 

Jasper's sister, Dr Arabella Woodrow MW, similarly joined the wine trade and became responsible for buying wines at large retailers. (Source: Jancis Robinson)

 

[88 Bamboo]: We’re curious, if it wasn’t wines, what is a profession you’d have pursued alternatively?

[Jasper]: Don’t know! *Laughs* I’m just happy that the wine turned out well. The only other one I was thinking about at the time was perhaps publishing, but I didn’t really pursue that very much. I’m completely happy with what I did.

It also looks as though the vines themselves may be learning [to respond to climate change]. The growing season of 2022 was very, very similar to 2020. And yet the Pinot vines in particular have produced far more interesting wines in ’22.

[88 Bamboo]: The wine world is vast, and you’ve chosen to delve deep into a particular region — into the realm of Burgundy. We’re curious: if you could go back in time, would you consider focusing on someplace else? We know you’ve teased being a big fan of wines from California, New Zealand, Spain, among other lands! 

[Jasper]: If I could go back in time, would I choose somewhere else? No, I wouldn't. Absolutely not, because Burgundy was the place in need of a fresh approach, and I was just so fortunate, through meeting the amazing Becky Wasserman, to get in at the ground floor and be able to do things that nobody else was doing in the UK with Burgundy. And then, as you well know, for quite a while now, Burgundy has been the place that everybody is very keen on.

 

A great friend and colleague of Jasper's, Rebecca Wasserman-Hone was an influential American wine expert and promoter, instrumental in introducing fine Burgundy to the American market. (Source: New York Times)

 

Sure, I’ve stayed very much in touch with New Zealand in particular, and there are lots of other parts of the world that interest me — but Burgundy? I wouldn't change that choice.

[88 Bamboo]: And then of course over the past decades, we’ve got numerous New World and rediscovered Old World regions that have tossed their name in the hat. So if you were in your 20’s today, where would you choose to focus your efforts on?

[Jasper]: For a 20-year-old now, it’s a different story, I think, because Burgundy has been the special success story for such a long time. There’s now much more already written about it.

If you’re a youngster in your early 20s, I think it’s more fun to go somewhere where you can make a difference, where you can be the person who really discovers it. So I would probably want to follow an emerging area. There’s still a lot going on in the New World countries, but ultimately I think it’s going to depend on what part of the world you come from.

 

The mountain ranges near the high-profile LVMH-established Ao Yun winery. (Source: LVMH)

 

There’s a fascination around whether things will really take off in China, or whether it will remain more of a niche idea, with a few big players in terms of volume and financial backing. But what we haven’t yet seen from China is an area that suddenly develops something really special of its own, in the way that Marlborough did with Sauvignon Blanc, or Barossa with Shiraz, or California with Napa Valley Cabernets.

Most of the countries that have really developed excitingly have had a particular thing to take to the marketplace. In Japan, everybody is desperate to make the best possible Pinot Noir but it's difficult with the humidity there. And I think it's going to remain niche. 

If I were a 20-year-old European, then you have got some places which are changing in reputation and developing. Austria, I think, is a very interesting country at the moment. Maybe it's not enough for a full career, but the English sparkling wines are really going well. So maybe Champagne plus English sparkling wines, because Champagne only quite recently has really got into the individual producer side of things, where Burgundy was there a generation before.

 

(Source: Everflyht Vineyard)

 

And of course, there's a fascination in some ancient areas like Georgia and Armenia. Again, [it’s uncertain] whether that's enough for a full career, but I think it'd be really interesting to explore those a bit more.

[Burgundy producers] can make very good money selling [their] wine for under 100 euros a bottle. But if you see it being resold at fifteen hundred or two thousand five hundred or whatever figure it might be – the secondary market has got so extreme – then you start to wonder what it's all about… Why is it that other people are speculating and making huge amounts of money on the back of our skills and hard work? 

[88 Bamboo]: Certainly as we guessed – even as you run through these regions, Burgundy probably remains resolutely amongst your top choices, if not the top choice.

What is it about the Burgundian magic that you personally find so captivating – that resonates so strongly with you that you’d love nothing more than to dedicate your entire career to it? 

[Jasper]: While you say "dedicate your entire career," it’s just that it began as a minority interest — and then there was really something we could do. And as time went by, it became the full thing. But I mean, that took quite a while. I mean, even when I sold my business to Berry Brothers in 2003, I was still regularly visiting California, New Zealand, Spain, Germany, Austria, and the rest of France — even though Burgundy was clearly our number one area.

So, what’s fascinating about Burgundy? I mean, the place on its own is fascinating. And I’ve occasionally made the point that some of my interest might come from the fact that where I grew up in England, in Hampshire where the soil is a sort of clay-limestone mix, and the local accent is actually quite similar in English from Hampshire as the Burgundian one in French. You get a very long "A" sound — like château would become “shaa-tow”. And there's also a tendency to roll the letter "R" — a bit exaggerated in Burrrr-gundy, but still *Laughs*. So, plenty of similarities. And certainly, the landscape here isn’t that different.

 

(Source: Visit Hampshire UK)

 

Secondly, even on my first visit, the people I met were completely in love with the place themselves — so fascinated by it. They weren’t just agricultural farmers who happened to be dealing in vines, which is typically what you would have found in those days in the Loire or the Rhône. They also weren’t the strongly commercial types, which Bordeaux understandably is. Instead, they really had a passion for what they were doing, what they were making, how they described it, and for the individual differences between one plot and another.

So it wasn’t complicated to fall in love with Burgundy. 

 

There’s a fascination around whether things will really take off in China, or whether it will remain more of a niche idea, with a few big players in terms of volume and financial backing.

 

[88 Bamboo]: It would seem like you picked absolutely the best time to be in Burgundy as the region was just on the verge of aligning the stars for a serious breakout moment – and of course you happened to be neighbours with the highly respected Becky Wasserman who you shared provided much guidance.

And yet, you’ve mentioned that many Burgundian producers (including your friend, Christophe Roumier) do not particularly appreciate this type of “success” where it comes to the intense secondary market prices we’re seeing today that are making them luxury status symbols.

Could you elaborate – why this stark difference in attitude between Burgundian producers and Bordeaux producers, even if to an extent Burgundian producers benefitted from it?

[Jasper]: The city of Bordeaux is a great seaport, and so it’s been founded on commerce in the first place. Most of the producers, particularly on the Médoc side, are outsiders — or they might be Bordeaux trade people. But you don’t get the same sense of properties being handed down from generation to generation the way you do in Burgundy — at least, not to the same extent.

 

 (Source: Sotheby’s)

 

Sure, there are a few families in Bordeaux who’ve been around for a while. But Burgundy is a fundamentally agricultural region, made up originally of farming communities. Some of the people there might be what we’d call in England "gentleman farmers" — moderately aristocratic. So, you’ll find a prince, a few counts (comtes), a marquis or two, and so on. But you also have people who are much more at the labouring end of farming.

And if you have a tradition with your family existing in the village for many, many generations, then you tend to see yourself just as somebody who is the tenant on what you own for your lifetime, which you had inherited from your parents and you're hoping to pass it on to your children. The modern world makes that a little bit different, but this still remains the fundamental basis.

Now, when I started, producing wine from grape vineyards wasn't going to cost you a vast amount more than producing wines from ordinary parts of Burgundy in terms of potential. Now that is different. Now you can really see that for some producers, the care and attention they take and the challenges of global warming, for example, mean that your costs are really significantly more if you're going to make the best wine in the region than somebody who's prepared just to make sound wine.

You can make very good money selling your wine for under 100 euros a bottle. But if you see it being resold at fifteen hundred or two thousand five hundred or whatever figure it might be – the secondary market has got so extreme (even if it's coming back down now) – then you start to wonder what it's all about. And it's not that you necessarily want to take all that money for yourself. Most of them don't because they have what they want in their lives, nothing they could enjoy more than being wine producers! But at the same time, you do start to ask the question: why is it that other people are speculating and making huge amounts of money on the back of our skills and hard work?

Wherever you’re growing your Pinot — Japan, New Zealand, Oregon, etc. — you should be trying to make the best Japanese Pinot, the best New Zealand Pinot, the best Oregon Pinot, rather than trying actively to challenge Burgundy… It’s really important that you establish your own voice in your own place!

[88 Bamboo]: Having been a keen observer of Burgundy for decades, you’ve also been vocal about how climate change has affected Burgundy, and as it happens, you’ve been nuanced in speaking on how it’s both hurt some traditionally esteemed appellations whilst at the same time opened up new opportunities in areas that were once not considered to be prime locations, which may now prove themselves as new appellations altogether.

Having seen how various producers are dealing with both the intense challenges and alluring opportunities, could you take us into the heart of Burgundy and give us a sense of the mood in the region? What are their attitudes towards climate change? 

[Jasper]: Yes, it's such a big subject. And of course, we don't know how far it's going to go. And it's meant quite a few different things. To begin with, it meant more turbulent weather — and that showed through a lot more vintages with major hailstorms in the first decade of this century.

 

As temperatures fall below 0°C, anti-frost candles burn through sunrise in Chablis, Burgundy (Source: AFP)

 

To begin with, you were getting warming temperatures. So through the '90s already, you were getting many more ripe vintages than in the past. Now, of course, the question is — have they got too ripe? Then you had the turbulent period. Then you get a real change, I think, in weather patterns, starting really in 2018. You can bring in a few other vintages before — when you were getting much hotter, much drier conditions.

And now we’ve just had a particularly wet year. This might be a little bit tied to the phenomenon of El Niño and La Niña, which have affected other areas. It originates in the Pacific Ocean, and it’s been a big North and South America aspect before, and also Australasia. But maybe as that's becoming more marked, we're now seeing the effect of that in Europe — that we may have periods which are wetter again, but warm, and then periods which are really hot and dry.

I think a lot of people were panicking – 2018 and 2020 in particular were so out of the norm that people were really worried. They've also gone through a time in which the preferred rootstock in Burgundy — 161/49 C — started to let everybody down.

 

Diagram of rootstocks for grape production (Source: Oklahoma State University)

 

If you have a bad vintage and you have a hailstorm or something like that, you've lost your crop for a year. [However,] if you lose your rootstock, you've got to pull the vines out and start again, you've lost your whole working equipment — your vines are your working equipment. And that has really frightened people. So there was a period in which a number of people were clearly panicking. It may be that that is tied to global warming; it could be for a totally different reason. I don't think anybody's come up with a definitive answer, but it's probably at least made worse by global warming.

I think now they've got back more into equilibrium. I'm really impressed with the efforts being made to try to understand what's going on and try to combat it. You can do some things in the cellar which are sort of remedial, but the really hard work has got to come in the viticulture side of things. And all that is costing quite a lot more money — and it's still guesswork. Because if you're replanting your vineyard, [the challenge is] you know what doesn't work – the previous rootstocks – but you're having to make a guess at what rootstock will work.

So if you decide that you want to change your clone or even the colour of your grape, you can do that by top-grafting the vineyard. You leave the rootstock in the ground and the main part of the vine, but you insert instead the particular variety and clone or  massal selection that you want. You just lose a year. But if your rootstock fails you, you've got to rip it out and start again from scratch.

So a lot of questions are being asked. But people are sharing advice. People are really working together in a way that's quite impressive.

 

 

It also looks as though the vines themselves may be learning what the new conditions are doing. The growing season of 2022 was very, very similar to 2020. And yet the Pinot vines in particular have produced far more interesting wines in ’22. It’s as if they learned how to manage the extra heat and the drought rather better. That may just be hope, that may be just wishful thinking – because it’s what we need – but there's a possibility that that’s happening.

[88 Bamboo]: Through your time in Burgundy, you must’ve also seen the shifting attitudes and perception of biodynamics, from a practice that was once completely non-existent, to one that has been increasingly gaining ground, and yet remains somewhat contentious. What are your thoughts on the practice and how it translates to the quality of these producers’ wines?

[Jasper]: Well, I believe it does work. I won't go so far as to say that I believe in it throughout, because I find a lot of the more… cosmic elements of it, and the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, very, very hard to swallow *Laughs*. I'm looking at the practical point of view, and I'm finding that when people have switched to biodynamics, their wines have changed for the better, and consistently in the same way from one producer to another.

So, for example, there is more precision, there is more sort of vineyard specificity, the wines seem fresher. All those things that some people just say, "Well, it's because of the extra care and attention," but I think it feels to me more than that.

And the other thing is, I have been able to tell sometimes, going to a tasting in a room somewhere, and I’ve said, "This wine and this wine are quite different from the rest of the wines in the group. You must be doing something different in the vineyard."

 

(Source: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

 

Initially, I didn’t know that’s what it was going to be, but they’d say, "Yes, those are the two where we have been practicing biodynamics, and the others — we’re now following on with the others, but for that vintage or tasting, it was just those two." And it really was absolutely clear.

So there’s enough evidence where I have seen a difference without knowing in advance that biodynamics was involved.

I also find that in the hot, dry years, the biodynamic producers seem to be getting better yields than the conventional ones. And my guess is, it’s something to do with the rhizomes at the end of the root systems, which I think are better able to work — having enjoyed the benefits, whatever they may be, of biodynamics.

 Scientists and lawyers may struggle with biodynamics because so little is provable. But nonetheless, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve seen, that there is a reality there. And it may just be that we haven’t yet learned the science which exists behind it. 

[88 Bamboo]: On that note, what are some interesting things or practices happening in Burgundy today that would surprise most wine lovers themselves?

[Jasper]: On the viticulture side, when I started out, not that many people were ploughing their vineyards — they were using weed killers instead. And then the whole mantra changed to “the only way to make good grapes was to plough your vineyards”.

Now, suddenly, ploughing has become a bad thing because it opens up the soil and allows evaporation of water more readily — there are one or two other reasons as well. Some people think it may be bad for the microbial life. On the other hand, it does cut the surface roots, forcing the roots to go further down. So it's not all good or all bad. This no-till idea — which could involve natural cover crops or possibly putting a layer of hay or straw in the vineyards, or seeding particular grasses or leguminous crops.

So none of these things are all wins or all losses. The risk here is you're going to have too much competition. In a hot, dry year, the more you’ve got of other forms of crop growing in your vineyard, the more chance you have of competition for the water being a problem.

It’s an area that’s still being experimented with, but there seems to be a good suggestion that we should be looking at planting some other cover crops, not right under the rows, not right around the vine plants themselves, but between the rows – instead of ploughing. That could be a good solution.

 

(Source: Domaine Trapet)

 

One other thing: People are changing their management of the canopies. Many are growing taller — which is a little bit hard to understand to begin with, because we’re used to seeing grapevines in the south of France, where it’s hot, very low to the ground, and in the northeast of France, where it’s cooler, much higher. So it’s a little bit odd that as Burgundy gets hotter, you should go higher — but you can explain it.

Also the idea of no longer hedging your vines, but what they call tressing — i.e., rolling up the shoots so that they don’t get in the way and don’t grow everywhere, but so that you actually keep all the shoots going. It changes the hormone balance, apparently, of the vines if you do start cutting those shoots off.

So, all sorts of different bits of experimenting.

All these things are a lot of work, and work costs money. In some cases, you actually need to change the trellisingsystem, which can be quite expensive, particularly if you want to put all your vineyards — all your vines — on single échalas, they call them. You need two posts per vine, rather than having them on a wire system. That really does cost a lot.

So, yeah, experimentations, but interesting.

[88 Bamboo]: In your M&V and BBR days where you’d go out in search of domaines that you could represent, particularly as many of these producers might not have the track record as they do now, and in fact the entire concept of domaine-bottled wines was still incredibly nascent.

Could you share with us what it is that you’d look out for in a producer? And perhaps could you also tell us about a particularly memorable encounter you had in search for great producers?

[Jasper]: Okay, well, first of all, I think it’s important to say it wasn’t just a question of the producers not having the track record — I didn’t have the track record either. I mean, my palate was — I sort of trained myself as I went along. But in any case, what you have to have to make decisions about how wine is going to age is you’ve got to have the back catalogue. You’ve got to have seen other young vintages, and then you’ve got to have the back catalogue, and then seeing how they have changed.

 

 

It’s not a question of saying, "Oh, I like those fruit flavours," so obviously, you know — that’s a work that’s probably 10 or 15 years into your career before you can really start saying, "We taste the new vintage and say, okay, the [insert vintage], it reminds me a little bit of 1985, and that’s developing well. But on the other hand, it’s a bit richer, so it might go more in this way," and then the 1999 comes along, and so on and so forth. You’re always looking back and saying it’s a combination of that vintage and that vintage, and that’s how they develop.

That’s got more difficult since the onset of major global warming, because vintages today don’t resemble vintages in the past.

Yeah. So — memorable encounter. I suppose the first two encounters with Lafon and Coche-Dury — my first two tastings — were both absolutely memorable. And, as you know, I decided to work with [Domaine des Comtes] Lafon and not with [Domaine] Coche-Dury, which he never forgave me for *Laughs*.

 

 

Just occasionally — there was another one very early on — Domaine Daniel Rion, run by Patrice Rion. And it was just an amazing tasting of 1980, which is not a vintage that had a good reputation to begin with. His wines were superb. He’d never actually exported anywhere in the world at that point. He’d only just taken over running the domaine from his father, and he was the first person who bottled everything, whereas his father might just bottle a little bit for friends and family in a good vintage, but didn’t do it regularly.

 

 

I just remember being so struck by those wines. And all the time I was in the commercial side of the business — so I would have been tasting those in 1982 probably — and I stopped commerce in 2017. All that time, we went on buying the Domaine Rion wines, buying as big an allocation as we could get. It was a real struggle to sell them! Nobody out there, the critics, were giving them high scores, but the customers we had for them were really loyal and really liked them.

I just go back to them and taste those wines, which are now older bottles, and they’re just aging so well. As soon as I stopped being involved in commerce, they started to get good write-ups! *Laughs* Poured my time on that one.

[88 Bamboo]: We’re curious, apart from tasting the wines and your understanding of the back vintages, you’ve mentioned that the “human considerations” also take precedence. How do human considerations factor into your assessment of whether this producer may potentially one day be a great one?

[Jasper]: Right, yes. In that sense, it’s a question of: how does this producer explain their wines? Is it just sort of obvious, very simple marketing? Are they just saying, "Oh, this is amazing, we did so well this year, and everything's great"? That’s not interesting — particularly if the producer is telling you that while you’re trying to taste the wine, so it doesn’t leave you in peace.

What I want is to taste, and then ask questions — to say, now, what about this and that flavour? Where does it come from? Tell me about the structure here — and to get a really interesting, thoughtful answer. Not necessarily trying to say what makes the wine so good, but to talk about the challenges they had and how they overcame them.

 

Jean-Nicolas Méo (right) of Domaine Méo-Camuzet, with Jay Boberg, the CEO of Domaine Nicolas Jay. (Source: Berry Bros. & Rudd Wine Blog)

 

One producer — a very famous producer in Vosne-Romanée who I tasted with every year — Jean-Nicolas Méo of Domaine Méo-Camuzet. He sits down with me and we taste the wines together, and he takes notes as comprehensive as mine. He discusses — and if there’s something where I think that wine is showing slightly less well than another wine — I mean, his wines tend to always be very good, but you can have some doing better, some doing less well — he absolutely says, "Yes, I see that too. It wasn’t like that last week, so I’m not quite sure why it’s gone quiet," or, "Yes, that’s been the case with this wine all along. I think it’s because this happened in the vineyard."

He’s analysing the wines in amazing depth. So I really appreciate that sort of approach, and the fact that you can have a discussion with somebody, rather than feeling that they only want to hear praise.

[88 Bamboo]: Going back to this theme of coping with this commercial success that Burgundy has now been facing for some time, you’ve also touched on how higher land prices has a bearing on the Burgundian landscape in that established domaines may be broken up (to foot the inheritance tax).

If you’re someone just stepping into making Burgundy wines today, how would you go about doing so given the current landscape? And if you could snap your fingers and change something about Burgundy, what would it be?

[Jasper]: If you are starting out, you’ve arrived from outside, or you could be local but not from a wine family, normally the way you start is by buying some grapes or some juice and turning it into wine and bottling it. And then, if you do that well, you get a reputation, and somebody might offer you the chance to rent their vineyard. Eventually, you might be able to buy something, but at the bottom end of the scale.

That’s a pattern which somebody like Camille Thiriet has been going through, and various others — Mark Haisma, and so on.

 

(Source: Domaine Camille Thiriet, Mark Haisma)

 

But the real issue is that when you are buying those grapes to begin with at the time of harvest, when you do the deal in probably September – you don’t know how much you’re paying for them. It typically takes till the following March, by which time you’re completely committed, you’ve done all the work, you’ve pretty much made the wine, and only now do you discover what the price range is going to be for that year. Maybe it’s gone up a lot, and you may struggle to have the cash flow to pay for it. And you may also think: where I am, if it were last year’s prices, I know I can find a market for that. But if it’s 30 or 40 percent more, that’s really going to be a problem.

 

In Burgundy, grape prices are not fixed at time of harvest when the deal is made. Instead, prices are based on the going market rate only determined several months later. (Source: Owen Franken/Getty Images)

 

Equally, I’m probably not going to be selling that wine for another year — so, 18 months at the earliest after I took the grapes on board. And it could well be that the time I took the grapes on board and the time the prices were fixed, the market was really in an upswing, and so my prices are much more than I expected — but by the time I want to sell them, the market’s in a downswing.

So, for example, you probably had to pay an absolute premium for 2023, but you’re going to be selling those wines at a time when prices are falling a bit.

The authorities for the Burgundy wine region — the main local commission, called the BIVB — are actually looking into this. It should be possible that a price can be fixed at the time of harvest. It’s the only fair way to do it. But how they’re going to resolve that, I haven’t yet heard. They know that they need to.

If you’re too close to the eastern seaboard, as with Japan, it’s too humid. [But] if you’re too far inland, you get minus 40° C temperatures in the winter, and you’ve got to bury your vines underground [as you would in Ningxia]. And in that case, it doesn’t work for old vines… they’re too brittle.

– Jasper, on the challenge of finding an ideal winegrowing region in China

[88 Bamboo]: Whilst at Berry Bros, you had helped pen a particularly important report called “The Future of Wine Report”, which gave a glimpse of what several wine experts saw the wine industry to be in 50 years’ time (i.e. 2058). Of the several trends mentioned in the report, you’ve opined on how consumers would in the future likely ask for wines by brand or flavour (instead of where it came from), and how China would likely produce some world class wines.

We’re now close to 2 decades in– have any of these predictions already panned out, and are there that you’d consider amending? And if you were given the chance to write the report again, what are some trends you believe we should pay closer attention to?

[Jasper]: Well, let me look at the two main ones you mentioned. [On the first one,] yes. I think it hasn’t really happened yet. It should have happened by now I would have thought, and I still think it’s very likely to happen well before 2058.

It seems to me that we have to differentiate between wines where the sense of place matters, and wines which are just a product made from grapes, that is what you ask for in a bar just to enjoy yourself out with your friends, and all you want is a flavour or style that works for you.

 

(Source: Gilberto Salazar)

 

Why tie up valuable land to grow it? Do it in some more or less artificial way, I suggested, hydroponics. I even suggested you could do it offshore. Have these sort of rafts covered in grapevines, and you just bring them into port when you want to manufacture the wine out of them. At which point, your marketing department says, "This year, everybody wants strawberry flavours. Everybody wants something else,” and you can have an artificially flavoured wine. I mean, why not if it doesn’t have a real sense of grape variety or place that it comes from?

That’s one end, and you can do that cheaply. What I think of as the Australian model, because they were the first country that tried to do this. They said to themselves, "How can we get our wines into London?" So they found wines they could sell at this price and made the best wine they could that would sell at that price. The Australians actually came with a business plan, and I think most New World countries have really followed that.

[On the other hand,] the European model has been, "I come from this area, I’ll make the best wine I can — typically wines from my area sell at this price — let’s hope it all works out."

So that hasn’t happened as much as I thought it would, but we are already seeing that minor areas in Europe — where there was never enough interest for people to pay high prices — a lot of those vineyards have had to go out of production, including in less famous parts of Bordeaux. In Australia, I think in the Riverina, with some drought issues, they’ve had to decide whether or not grapes can be a viable product. That was a trend I found very easy to spot back then, and it’s very slowly happening.

 

 

The other one might seem obvious today, but in 2008 [when we prepared the report], nobody was talking about China in terms of production. What we came up with in that report was that China is a deal-breaker in one direction or the other: if the Chinese really get into drinking wine, it’s going to distort demand over supply — or if it becomes a real major producing country, it’s going to distort supply over demand.

Now, I think the statistics are quite hard to understand. When you look at the statistics for grape production in China, the majority of that goes into table grapes. If you look at statistics for wine production, I believe I’m right in saying that includes wines shipped in bulk and bottled in China, which will then be included as Chinese wine. So it’s very hard to know how much wine is actually being produced in China from Chinese vineyards.

One simple problem is that if you’re too close to the eastern seaboard, as with Japan, it’s too humid. [But] if you’re too far inland, you get minus 40° C temperatures in the winter, and you’ve got to bury your vines underground. And in that case, it doesn’t work for old vines, because as soon as the vines reach more than 15 or 20 years old, they’re too brittle. You can’t just lay them flat and cover them in Yellow River sand, as you would in Ningxia at the moment.

 

(Source: Helan Qingxue Winery)

 

So those are two things which make it a bit difficult. There’s maybe a happy medium in between the two, and we’re beginning to see some high-profile things like the Lafite property Domaine de Long Dai, and of course, there’s the famous Ao Yun, which avoids any of the problems already mentioned. But it’s a pretty inaccessible place, and it’s hard to see that you’d get massive volumes produced there.

 

(Source: LVMH)

 

But if you go South and go high, then you’ve got a chance to find the right climate. I think, let’s watch Yunnan — and there may well be other parts of China that could do a similar thing. So, it happened very soon after our report in 2008 that we began to see some reasonably exciting wines coming out of China, and that trend is continuing.

I do remember something I suggested: that we might use bees to test for TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole), because they are so sensitive. It is a ludicrously tiny amount of a molecule that a bee can detect, if trained to do so.

And I was suggesting that sommeliers would have their little bee kit with them and let the bee sniff the wine in advance and say, "No, sorry, that’s corked" – or at least agree with the consumer. But no, that probably isn’t going to happen. That was just a fun thing to throw in to get the report talked about.

The people I met [in Burgundy] were completely in love with the place themselves — so fascinated by it… they really had a passion for what they were doing, what they were making, how they described it, and for the individual differences between one plot and another. So it wasn’t complicated to fall in love with Burgundy.

[88 Bamboo]: Given the very varied terroirs of the wine producers in China, do you foresee there being any difficulty for Chinese wine to show its distinctive quality?

[Jasper]: Look, China is almost the size of the whole of Europe in landmass — and we don’t talk about some “European wines,” it’s down to what Burgundy does. So it does break down into small areas.

What we’ve discovered in most countries that have only recently started planting grapes for wine consumption is that there is a great inner climate, with a soil type where suddenly there is something distinctive. And this can be one of the established grapes of European origin, or it can actually be something which is either indigenous — Koshu in Japan — or at least only a minor grape elsewhere that suddenly finds its place, in the way that Malbec has been much more interesting in South America than it ever has been in Europe, and so on.

 

Koshu grapes which are native to Japan. (Source: Koshu Chamber of Commerce)

 

So, this will happen. But where and when it will happen? I haven’t been close enough to Chinese mainland wine production to see if there are any other new areas really being developed, or if more people are trying to do things in Yunnan.

At the moment we’ve got areas like Ningxia and Shandong and so on — let’s see what we can do with them. Ningxia is a pretty big area. It may well be that there are parts there. But it’s not easy when you’ve got that macroclimate that they have there. It won’t be easy.

[88 Bamboo]: Going beyond Burgundy, you’ve also talked about how you’re deeply intrigued as to how Pinot Noir manifests differently outside of France, and whether the rules of Pinot in Burgundy would hold up elsewhere. Have you come to any conclusions or cursory thoughts on that thus far?

[Jasper]: Yes, I think the answer is that when you're planting Pinot Noir somewhere else in the world, particularly if it’s a new place, you would consider the rules in Burgundy as your starting point, and then you would discover what works.

For example, in New Zealand, I think the close planting which is typical in Burgundy hasn’t really worked. In Australia, particularly in Victoria, there are some people really going hard in that direction. One of the difficulties is that you struggle to get a commercial-sized crop if you do that. But I visited a couple of producers in Victoria — one in the Macedon Ranges and one in Mornington — and they are both going towards close planting: one to slightly more than the Burgundy 10,000 (vines per hectare), and the other to much more. He’s gone to over 30,000 plants per hectare for one of his plots. So we’ll see — that’s just one thing.

 

(Source: Domaine Trapet)

 

It also doesn’t seem to be absolutely mandatory that Pinot should be planted on limestone elsewhere. I suspect it’s still a bonus, but there have been some lovely Pinots from Martinborough, New Zealand, for example, which are on gravel rather than on limestone. There’s not a lot of limestone in California, but there have been some great Pinots from there, and so on.

So I think it is absolutely fair to challenge those rules and see what you can do differently. But most people will start that way.

What’s important is that wherever you’re growing your Pinot — Japan, New Zealand, Oregon, etc. — you should be trying to make the best Japanese Pinot, the best New Zealand Pinot, the best Oregon Pinot, rather than trying actively to challenge Burgundy. Because you’ll miss the point of your region if you get too caught up with what’s going on in Burgundy.

 

(Source: Rippon Vineyards)

 

And to their credit, I think producers almost everywhere have taken this on board. When I first started going to New Zealand and attending a few Pinot conferences there, it wasn’t the case. Everybody was saying things like, “I make my wine in the Burgundy style.” Well, it isn’t a Burgundy style — there are so many different ones according to different producers. It’s really important that you establish your own voice in your own place!

The real legacy is the importance of enthusiasm and the continuing desire to learn. I still absolutely have that, and that’s what drives me forward in a positive way. So that’s what I’d like to pass on.

[88 Bamboo]: Lastly, you’ve been quick to name the numerous folks who’ve helped to shape and influence you along the way, many of these are names that have, like yours, become highly esteemed in the wine world, from Becky Wasserman, to both Mark Birley and Jonathan Goedhuis, as well as Harry Waugh, and many more.

Could you share with us what’s the best advice you’ve received? With a career and life such as yours, that has been an inspiration to so many in the wine world, what is it that you’d like your work to be remembered for?

[Jasper]: I do remember something that Harry said to me right at the start. Harry was an amazing man — he was born in 1904 and died in 2001— so pretty much his life spanned the whole of the 20th century, right from the very start.

And his idea was that you needed to be proud of any wine that you're going to sell to somebody. You really wanted, if you bumped into them in the street a few years later, to see their face light up and for them to be really happy that you had sold them that wine, rather than selling it just to do the business deal, and then needing to avoid somebody because you knew it wasn't as good as it should be. That was a great bit of advice.

 

Harry Waugh was a towering figure in the British wine trade whose opinions influenced UK wine merchants and collectors and was among the first major wine experts to champion the quality of Californian wines. (Source: Joel Peterson)

 

Another bit of advice, which Robert Joseph gave me — and I think it’s very sound although I don’t always stick to it — he said: look, when somebody asks you to do something, you work out whether you're happy to do it for free or whether you think you should charge for it. If you do something halfway in between — "Well, I’d like to help these people, but I still ought to earn some money" — then you won't be happy with the amount of money you’ve got, and they won't be happy with paying you anything. So it’s really either: "Sure, I’ll do that for you, I’m happy to," or "Yes, that's interesting, I’d be happy to do it, but this is my fee." Not to do something in between. I think that was a good bit of advice too.

 

Robert Joseph is another prominent and influential figure in wine journalism, known for co-founding Wine International magazine and the International Wine Challenge (IWC). (Source: Drinks Trade)

 

On legacy... I’m delighted that people have enjoyed my input on Burgundy. I think my book and website Inside Burgundy really have been of value, and I think that’s something that could last. My legal uncle, who is an academic and a very distinguished one, was co-author of a book called Dicey & Morris on the Conflict of Laws — so it’s Professor Dicey and Professor Morris. That continues to be — and it’s gone on now through probably 15 editions. And I quite like Inside Burgundy the book. So maybe that will go forwards, and after I retire, maybe I might do an edition with somebody else and they carry it forward — that would excite me.

 

(Source: Berry Bros & Rudd)

 

Otherwise, the real legacy is the importance of enthusiasm and the continuing desire to learn. I still absolutely have that, and that’s what drives me forward in a positive way. So that’s what I’d like to pass on.

[88 Bamboo]: This has been incredibly entertaining and illuminating, Jasper. Thank you for your time!

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@CharsiuCharlie