Award-winning photographer Jon Wyand tells the story behind his portrait of Christophe Roumier.
There are winemaking stars in Burgundy and then there are reluctant stars. The repercussions of making great wine are not always welcome. Take Christophe Roumier; great appellations and stratospheric prices that could lead to a certain expansion of the ego, or at least an increase in girth. Why not? The modern wine world must be coped with, survived, so why not enjoyed when the music around you gets louder and is hard to escape. If you are grounded, it demands greater and greater effort to avoid seductive voices, to maintain your own perspective and not be swept away.
Old values—built on coping with Mother Nature and accepting her whims and occasional bad temper—that have allowed you to focus on your work, no longer seem to offer the certainty they once did. Your roots are what can hold you steady… if you recognize them.
When you see a bottle of Christophe Roumier’s wine, does it carry his name? No. Is his name prominent on the gate post? No. The domaine still bears the name of his father George, and even that in small letters all too easily missed as you approach, keeping an eye open for tractors and expensive cars that constitute most of the traffic in Chambolle-Musigny these days. Since the Côte d’Or achieved recognition as a World Heritage site, you can add dawdling cyclists, whose presence on some vineyard roads is regretted by many a busy tractor driver racing the clouds.
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The stars are mostly stable, if less visible, through the fog of hype. But many are uncomfortable, their own vision disturbed by sudden cloud bursts of adulation and demand.
On my latest encounter with Christophe, we talked, a little nostalgically, about previous visits. The more often you turn up to take photographs, the harder new locations are to find. At the same time, one’s familiarity with the person and the estate, and greater understanding of them, prompts a discarding of the obvious and an interest in the subtler and more easily missed corners. I am tempted to repeat scenarios from a quarter of a century ago to see how little my subject has changed in physique and body language.
On my early visits, Christophe seemed happy enough to pose for the cliché; it revealed nothing and hastened the photographer’s departure. But those poses have run out or are shunned now, and Christophe must cope with an experienced, more selective eye. It’s like a game of “I-Spy” or “Hunt the Thimble,” and Christophe enjoys being shown what he stopped noticing years ago.
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In some boring room filled with shiny metal palettes and their dark cargo I notice a green door that appears to lead outside—would it be an interesting source of soft daylight to transform this neon cavern?
As I approach the door, I see it holds a variety of chalked-on numbers. Christophe explains they are the stock notes made by his father, which explained the figure ’81. How can I have missed that before? Perhaps the most revealing of all the available locations… a small but important shrine, where Christophe’s roots hold him fast. All I have to do now is get my reluctant subject to relax. I can tell he realizes this little spot is a revelation of sorts, but a spot he is fond of and has perhaps been waiting to share in acknowledgement of the father he also honors in so many other ways.
