If the archetypal château owner of Bordeaux was a polished man of the world in English tweeds and Lobb shoes, the stereotypical Burgundian vigneron was a taciturn peasant in a beret and gum boots who hadn’t ranged any farther than his great-grandfather, who’d occupied the same house and land. Seysses, by contrast, was a handsome, well-traveled, multilingual gourmet with a sophisticated palate developed under the tutelage of his father, Louis, who owned a biscuit company and was the president of the Club des Cent, a fraternity of oenophiles and gastronomes. Young Jacques visited all of France’s three-star restaurants and wineries like Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Ramonet while he was still a kid. After sojourns at Morgan Guaranty and at the family biscuit company, Seysses followed his heart to Burgundy, where he apprenticed at the Domaine de la Pousse d’Or under Gérard Potel. In 1967 he and his father bought a small domaine in Morey St. Denis, a sleepy village between the much more famous towns of Gevrey-Chambertin and Chambolle-Musigny.
