My first experience with the Jura had nothing to do with wine nor stories nor travel. It had everything to do with an AOP Comté designed apron that hung from a hook inside the pantry of my childhood home in Berkeley. The apron was given to my mother while she was working at the Cheeseboard; probably as a part of some ‘swag bag’ given away on a whirlwind cheese marketing tour of the US. Regardless of origin, I adored the row of cows seemingly walking in single-file along the bottom hem. And, of course, the Comté insignia; a green bell proudly sitting in the middle of the apron flamboyantly declaring Comté ‘The King of Gruyére’ (a phrase the Swiss most certainly took umbrage with and have banned the use of).

It wasn’t until many years later, which included many a drunken Comté grilled cheese, that I discovered that the region made wine. It was in a Savoyard restaurant cellar, located beneath the floorboards of the kitchen, scrambling from cubby hole to cubby hole doing stock take that I saw my first clavelin; the traditional squat 620ml bottle reserved for the Jura’s golden wine, Vin Jaune. I was 19, my French was terrible (and even worse now), my pay was bleak (400 euros a month + room and board), and I’m pretty sure the Sommeliére to my position as commis-sommeliére hated me at the time. In spite all this, I endeavored to figure out what in the world the wine was. I asked, and I got an answer I understood about 15% of. None of what she said had shown up in any of the wine texts that I read. It all just sounded kinda, well…. odd. Not fortified, and just left to sit in a barrel for 6 years without any topping up. (In California, I’m pretty sure I heard people call that type of winemaking vinegar production)

Fast forward a couple months, and my French is good enough to present wine at the table, and Magali, the Sommelière might even like me (though my pay is unchanged), and she places that very same, squat 620ml bottle down on a table post service alongside odds and ends pilfered from the ever glorious chariot des fromages (that’s right, a cheese chariot). It was a bottle of 1992 Jaques Puffeney Vin Jaune (only remembered because I managed to snap a picture of it on my Motorolla flip phone). It was confounding. Any of the rigid wine language I had learned to date, simply did not apply. It was like trying wine warped through a kaleidoscopic lens.

The Jura, at this point, was a full flung obsession. And, fortunately for me, the upstarting San Francisco natural wine scene seemed to be bit by the same bug. It was a collision of timing that made me better off having had worked in the Savoie and visited the Jura than knowing Napa Valley trends. The wines of the Jura were cool. Making me cool? Not actually, but at least, for the first time in my life, I was ahead of the curve. I could talk sub-regions, producers, vineyards, grape varieties and which wines were ouillé and which were oxydatif. (Notably absent from my wine lingo at the time were any of the California AVAs).

Maybe when things you love become cool, the initial luster erodes a little. Or maybe imposter syndrome sunk in hard. Whatever it was, standing behind a bar (the natural wine pulpit), I became disconnected from what I was initially drawn to. Instead of being tenders of people’s stories while pouring the wines, it mostly became a contest to know more than others, presaging the inevitable exclusivity of the wines.

So, with what I now know was not even close to enough money (even after selling all my belongings), I plotted my path to New Zealand for the 2014 vintage. The route? By way of the Jura, naturally.

Timing made it so attending the Percée du Vin Jaune, scheduled each year for the first Saturday of February, was possible. Just to backtrack a little; the Percée is the annual festival that heralds in the ‘new’ vintage of Vin Jaune. Vin Jaune is the Jura’s most singular wine made of the Savagnin grape and left to age in 228L barrels under voile for a minimum of 6 years. The actual tradition of the accompanying festival eluded, and continues to elude me, but it involves barrels transported on the shoulders of monastic looking individuals, vinous blessings, drunkeness, and lots of cheese. And, of course, Vin Jaune.

Visiting the Jura, technically a départment within the greater region of the Franche-Comté, feels like going back in time. I mean, sure, there are automatic sliding doors into the grocery store, but even those most minute moments of current technology were enough to wake me from my bucolic fantasy. I look back at my photos from that time, and it looks like I was using a generic sepia filter, but the light in Winter there, just does that. The feelings of tradition, and the weight of history felt omnipresent; in the color of the skies and the roads; in the cadence of daily life.

Well, I should say, right up until I actually made it to the Percée. Each year, the location of the festival changes location; each village along the Reveremont (the winemaking stretch within the Jura) shoulder the burden of hosting. In 2014, it was split between two villages Perrigny and Conliège.

On the Thursday, a garage. On Saturday, a cellar door

If prompted to visualize a wine event or festival, most would see a large arena or park filled with stalls and vendors. Something relatively contained and structured. But the Percée balks at any such structure. Instead, the festival occupies the host town. Decorations made by a local committee of retirees line the streets, light poles, and peoples houses. The wineries, all at the time realeasing their 2007 Vin Jaunes, literally set up shop in the street level of peoples homes. Comté stalls speckled every street you turned town. A mobile distillery making marc had to employ what looked like a pre-teen to swat away those looking for something with a higher alcohol content. And there was bad horn playing drifting from every direction.

This is all before finding myself in a muddy field watching men in capes and scepters blessing a barrel carried on the shoulders of his peers. A blessing that concluded in the ceremonial tapping into a barrel of 2007 Vin Jaune that would proclaim the vintage now available for market.

In short: the whole event was heart-warming and blurry and so incredibly uncool. There was nowhere that felt off limits to only a select few ‘in the know’. It was wine, simply for the love of it. And this crazy wine, Vin Jaune, this thing I had started to learn to see as belonging to wine insiders, was flowing through the streets, wafting from doorways and from breathless conversations of old and young alike.

After considering the Jura as a region whose every secret I had to absorb in order to justify my place in the natural wine hierarchy, I got to see the wines for what they are. The wines of the Jura, since that first taste in the Savoie, have been a pillar for me. But in my want to dissect them, and often over extrapolate them, I missed so much. The wines I loved were not cool in a modern sense; not glossy, technical, nor actually iconoclastic. They were wines that kowtowed to tradition - unflinchingly linked to the generations prior. A somberness that mimics the color of the Jura Winter skies, coupled with energy that evokes the light-heartedness in which people in the region treat the wines - mirthful and joyous.

Drinking wines from the Jura is seemingly getting harder and harder. The minuscule region can hardly keep up with demands - all too apparent in dwindling allocations and rising prices. To heIp assuage some of my personal frustration, I just have to remind myself that there is the Percée du Vin Jaune. That in the face of increased demand and Instagram posts, there is still a place that can simply celebrate the wines of their region and their enduring links to the past in such a gleeful and unpretentious environment. A place that could solely be responsible for an apron adorned with patient, broad necked cows running the length of the hem.

Here’s to the wines of the Jura: May we enjoy them, may we respect the traditions they preserve, and may we not take them to seriously

Wine Sentience: Blog

Vin Jaune Wishes and Comté Dreams