Henri Jayer was a métayer for Noirot-Camuzet from 1949 to 1988. Camuzet probably got half the grapes. It’s probable that Henri handed the wines over to Camuzet after vinification but without “full élevage.”
Obviously, Noirot-Camuzet / Méo-Camuzet sold some (or all of its share) of the 1982 to this négociant who misspelled Cros Parantoux. (According to Guillaume and Emmanuel Rouget, it’s spelled Parantoux.)
After the 1988 harvest, Jayer stopped sharecropping Camuzet’s vineyards and handed back the 0.3 ha parcel of Cros Parantoux.
Khiem
This is from my upcoming book (if I can find a U.S. Publisher) :
From 1949 to 1988, Henri also sharecropped parcels of Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Meurgers, Vosne-Romanée Premiers Crus Les Brûlées and Cros Parantoux, and Richebourg for the Domaine Noirot-Camuzet. 1988 was the last vintage in which he produced these wines except for the Cros Parantoux.
The Cros Parantoux regained its acclaimed status thanks to Henri. Its cultivation had been abandoned in the wake of the phylloxera, except for Noirot-Camuzet’s 0.30-hectare plot which had been replanted and rented to Henri. Seduced by this wine, Henri set out to find the dozen owners of the remainder of the vineyard, which either lay fallow or had been given over to the cultivation of vegetables. Between 1951 and 1958, he bought the dozen plots which did not interest anyone and reassembled a 0.71-hectare parcel.
He and Daniel Rion (nearby with Hauts Beaumonts) were blasting in those vineyards in the early '50s…they were not only in disuse…but somewhat unuseable.
Jayer, of course, had his own parcel of Parantoux.
In 1988 Jean Nicolas Meo, fresh from a Wharton business degree came to the estate, which his grandmother ran at the time. That’s why Jayer left; they were trying to bottle their whole production. They did have many sharecroppers including Christian Faurois, who stayed on with JN Meo to make the wines when Jayer “left”.
When I visited , in 1990, JN’s grandmother came out and asked us to be nice to the kid…he was nervous and overwhelmed. He was also a stiff. I wonder if that changed, but not enough to have ever gone back to see.
Ha! Did not know this. My acquaintance with Jean Nicolas is more recent, so I cannot speak to his early days- but I find him a serious and passionate winemaker. And I really love what he has done with Meo-Camuzet. The consistency has improved dramatically over the years IMHO.