By Bruce Neyers

Saturday 24th May, 2025

Lunch with a Renaissance Man – A wine with a memorable story

We had an rewarding day last week when we had lunch with a longtime friend visiting from France. Jean-Marc Roulot is a native of Meursault and was in San Francisco to participate in the La Paulée Wine Festival, a traditional celebration of the wine and culture of Burgundy. In alternating years the festival has been staged in New York City and San Francisco as well. Jean-Marc was here representing his family’s domaine, but there’s another side to his life: he’s a movie star. In 1975, I went to work for Joe Phelps. Early on, I met an American woman named Becky Wasserman, who lived in Burgundy with her artist husband. Becky was eager to start a wine business, and began by representing a Burgundian barrel manufacturer. We bought barrels from her – they were very good — and on her first sales trip to Napa she became our house guest. After she returned to France, she wrote to us introducing Jean-Marc, a recent graduate of Beaune Wine School, looking for a winery intern opportunity in California. I liked the idea – I’d been an intern myself — and Joe agreed, but Barbara and I had to provide lodging. Two weeks later, we met Jean-Marc at the San Francisco bus station. It was his first trip outside of France. He was 19 years old.

We had no children at the time, so it was easy to accommodate him in our small cottage. He worked alongside the winery crew, learning our winemaking and farming practices, and at the same time teaching us those he had been taught. He was hard-working and smart, and a pleasure to work with. When the harvest ended, we had a winery send-off for Jean-Marc, but instead of returning to France, he traveled around the US by bus, ending up in Wilmington, Delaware. He stayed there for a few months as the guest of Barbara’s parents. When Jean-Marc finally arrived back in France, his return was a bit subdued. His real love was theater, he announced, and he planned to move to Paris and study acting. As the only son in his family, Jean-Marc’s career path had been clear from the earliest days of his youth, but he held firm and proceeded as he wished, renting living space in a Left Bank loft and joining a group of like-minded actors-to-be. He continued to stay involved in the work of his family’s domaine though, and commuted weekly between Burgundy and Paris. In 1982, his father Guy – then in his early 50’s — died of cancer, and Jean-Marc was tested further. His acting career was taking off, he had several plays to his credit, and was offered an important role in his first film. Somehow, he managed to balance both careers. We stayed in touch, and when Barbara and I visited France, we met with him in either Paris or Burgundy, as he was equally at home in both. When I began working with Kermit Lynch in 1992, we became an importer, so I met with him during my trips to France, and his trips to the US. Over the ensuing years, his success in both careers blossomed.

Spending a few hours over lunch with him last week allowed us to catch up for the first time in several years. We enjoyed a great meal with some old friends at one of our favorite San Francisco restaurants. I brought a couple of bottles of wine – a young Meursault from Domaine Roulot and a Neyers Winery Pinot Noir I was eager to taste with him. Among the many things we talked about, of course, was a recounting of his year in California. One of my best memories of his stay was the evening that Joe Swan – a winemaking hero of mine – invited us to dinner. Joe knew the wines of Domaine Roulot, and wanted to meet the next generation. He prepared a dinner of his cassoulet – a dish for which he was justly famed – and we tasted through a collection of library wines. Jean-Marc still remembered the evening, and still recalled some of the details of Joe’s approach to Burgundian-style winemaking. Lunch ended with the not-unexpected promises of staying in touch, return trips to San Francisco, and a possible visit to Paris for an update on the restaurant and theater scene there. We also gave Jean-Marc our order for the allocation of wines he plans to offer us from his 2024 vintage.

My memories about that wonderful dinner with Joe Swan are still clear today, due to our ongoing relationship with him, through the vines he farmed in Forestville in the Russian River Valley. In 1995, our long-time grower and colleague Chuy Ordaz obtained budwood from the Swan Pinot Noir block, ‘Selection Massale’ budwood that had not been lab treated and cloned. The budwood was taken directly from the Swan parcel, and Chuy planted one-acre of it in that beautiful Gold Ridge Clay-loam soil. The vines are meticulously cared-for, and we buy the entire crop. It produces a Pinot Noir beautifully dark in color, but light, supple and complex on the palate. It’s a striking wine, with all that we look for in this variety – from the powerful aroma, to the long, gratifying finish. Chuy named it Pinot Noir ‘Placida Vineyard’, after his grandmother.

Roast Chicken with Tangerines

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken approximately 4 pounds: I suggest Mary’s Organic Chicken
• 8 slices peeled fresh ginger
• 6 to 8 tangerines: I suggest Page Tangerines from Churchill Farms, Ojai, CA
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 11/2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon cayenne
• Crystal Diamond Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Squeeze into a small bowl ¼ cup of tangerine juice reserving the peels. Whisk together the tangerine juice, brown sugar, soy sauce, vinegar and cayenne until the sugar is dissolved and ingredients are well combined.
3. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Stuff the tangerine peels and half of the ginger slices into the chicken cavity.
4. Place the chicken in a roasting pan and put the tangerine wedges and the remaining ginger around the chicken. Pour the tangerine juice mixture over the chicken and roast for 30 minutes.
5. Baste the chicken and continue roasting until the chicken is browned and cooked through, an additional 30 to 40 minutes. An instant thermometer should register 170 degrees in the deepest part of the thigh.
6. Transfer the chicken to a plate. The sauce should have thickened to a syrup-like consistency. If it needs further thickening, on the stovetop bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally until sauce is syrupy. Remove the ginger slices.
7. Let the chicken rest for 5 minutes before carving. Pour the sauce over the chicken and garnish with the tangerine wedges.