The place: the Revermont from Arbois to Rotalier#
The Jura is the smallest wine region I tour in France and the one I find hardest to leave. The vines run in a strip about 80 kilometres long along the Revermont, the western foot of the Jura mountains. Beaune is about 100 kilometres west, and the two regions share Chardonnay and very little else. Under 2,000 hectares are planted in the whole region.
Arbois is the wine town, in the north: the Cuisance river through the middle, the tasting room of the Fruitière Vinicole cooperative and Louis Pasteur’s house on the riverbank. His experimental vineyard is at Montigny-lès-Arsures, three kilometres up the road, where the Tissots have their cellar. Pupillin, on the hill above Arbois, is one street with a large share of the region’s good cellars, and the place that spells Poulsard “Ploussard” and means it.
The centre of the region is Château-Chalon, a village on a limestone spur at about 450 metres with a belvedere over the vines, and L’Étoile, named for the star-shaped fossil crinoids in its soil. Further south, past Lons-le-Saunier, the Sud-Revermont around Rotalier is steeper and quieter.
Terroir: marl, limestone scree and a wet, late climate#
The vineyards lie between roughly 250 and 450 metres on slopes tilting west and south-west off the first limestone step of the mountains, over grey, blue and red marls of the Triassic and the Lias mixed with limestone scree.
The colours matter. Blue Lias marl, heavy and cold, is where Savagnin does its best work and where the vin jaune parcels of Château-Chalon sit. Red Triassic marl, rich in iron, is the home of Poulsard. Chardonnay prefers the lighter gravels at the foot of the slopes; Trousseau wants the warmest, stoniest sites, around Montigny-lès-Arsures.
The climate is semi-continental and cold, with about 1,100 millimetres of rain a year, among the wettest in France. Harvest is late, often into October. Frost and hail are part of the arithmetic.
Grapes and styles: Savagnin, Chardonnay and the two schools#
Chardonnay is the most planted grape, around 45 percent of the vineyard, and from the marl it comes leaner and saltier than anything in Burgundy. Savagnin, the region’s own white and a member of the Traminer family, is thick-skinned, high in acid and slow to ripen. Poulsard and Trousseau are the local reds; Pinot Noir completes the five permitted varieties.
Ouillé or sous voile#
Every white cellar here decides at the barrel. Ouillé means topped up: the barrel is refilled as the wine evaporates, air is kept out, and the wine stays fresh. Sous voile means under the veil: the barrel is left alone, the level drops, and a film of yeast forms on the surface and lives on the oxygen coming through the wood. The wine turns gold and takes on walnut, curry spice, dried apple and a saline finish that people love at the first sip or need three visits to understand.
Sous voile is the tradition; ouillé Savagnin has grown over thirty years as growers looked for a wine that shows the marl rather than the yeast. Most serious estates make both, and the best hour in the Jura is one parcel’s Savagnin tasted both ways.
Vin jaune and the clavelin#
Vin jaune is sous voile taken to its conclusion: Savagnin only, at least 60 months in barrel under the veil, released no earlier than six years and three months after the harvest, in the clavelin, a squat 62-centilitre bottle said to hold what remains of a litre after the evaporation. Château-Chalon makes nothing else, about 50 hectares of small parcels under the spur; Arbois, L’Étoile and Côtes du Jura make vin jaune beside everything else. Arbois was among the first six appellations decreed on 15 May 1936 and, the list being alphabetical, has called itself France’s first AOC ever since.
Poulsard and Trousseau#
Poulsard is one of the palest red grapes in France: thin-skinned, a dark rosé even after a long maceration, with redcurrant, smoke and almost no tannin. Trousseau is darker, firmer and peppery, with a sour-cherry core, and it is the grape for Morteau sausage. Both take little or no added sulfur better than most reds, one reason the Jura became a capital of natural wine; what that phrase means, and does not, is in natural wine explained.
Producers to know#
Domaine Tissot in Montigny-lès-Arsures was founded in 1962 by André and Mireille Tissot and has been run since 1990 by their son Stéphane and his wife Bénédicte: about 50 hectares, biodynamic and Demeter-certified since 2004, and more than 30 cuvées that map Arbois parcel by parcel, from single-vineyard Chardonnays to vin jaune by lieu-dit. Classic and natural sit in one cellar, so I begin here.
Domaine Ganevat in Rotalier is the reference of the Sud-Revermont. Jean-François Ganevat came home in 1998 after about ten years in Chassagne-Montrachet and, with his sister Anne, gave a holding dating from 1650 the discipline of a Burgundy cellar: Chardonnay two to four years in old barrels, whole-bunch reds, indigenous yeasts, little or no sulfur, and rescued old varieties in field blends bottled as Vin de France. I do not promise this door; on tour I pour the wines instead.
Maison Pierre Overnoy in Pupillin is the founding cellar of the natural Jura: Pierre Overnoy took over three hectares in 1968 and stopped adding sulfur in 1984; Emmanuel Houillon joined in 1990 and has run the domaine since 2001. Nothing is sold at the door. Domaine Macle in Château-Chalon is the reference for the appellation’s vin jaune, and Domaine de la Pinte, founded in 1953 by Roger Martin as a Savagnin and vin jaune specialist, Demeter since 2009, receives visitors: the classic cellar I can promise.
What a day here looks like on tour#
We sleep in Arbois, so the day begins on foot: up the marl above Pupillin, where the soil is blue in one row and red in the next, then down into a cellar with voile barrels. The smell is the lesson, bread, walnut, damp oak. I pour an ouillé Savagnin and a sous voile from the same grower and the room goes quiet for a minute.
Lunch is poulet au vin jaune et aux morilles, or in cold months a Mont d’Or heated in its box with Morteau sausage. In the afternoon a fruitière, one of the cooperative dairies that made Comté long before its protection in 1958; then 30 minutes to Château-Chalon and the belvedere before the light goes.
Dinner ends with that Comté, eighteen months or older, and a glass of vin jaune, the best pairing of cheese and wine I know. From Arbois my Jura and Beaujolais natural wine tour turns south, about two hours, to Beaujolais and Lapierre in Morgon.
Practical#
Lyon Saint-Exupéry is the airport, about 190 kilometres and 2 h 15 from Arbois. From Brno I fly to Lyon from Vienna or Prague. The TGV stops at Mouchard, about 10 kilometres from Arbois.
The best months are May and June, when the cellars are open, and September into October, though small estates refuse visitors while picking, which here runs late. Two off-season dates are worth a detour: the Percée du Vin Jaune, the public opening of the new vin jaune on the first weekend of February, and Le Nez dans le Vert, the organic growers’ fair in late March.
Almost every tasting is by appointment, several famous cellars take no visitors, and a few sell nothing at the door. Bring cash for the fruitière and a jumper for the cellars. For the Jura at its own pace, a week here on a private tour is the version I would book for myself.
