Jurassic Wine

Dear,

in the cellar at Domaine Grand someone goes from cask to cask every three or four days and tops the wine up. Some always evaporates through the wood, and where there is air in the cask the wine suffers. Every good cellar does this, just rarely this often. A few metres further along are casks that nobody has topped up for six years, and that is on purpose.

In these casks the wine slowly dwindles, and a thin layer of yeast grows on its surface. In the Jura they call it “voile”, meaning veil. It keeps the air off, and at the same time it changes the wine. After a few years it smells of walnut and fenugreek. That is how Vin Jaune comes about, the most famous wine of the Jura.

The village is called Passenans and has a good three hundred inhabitants. The same family has made wine there since 1692, and Nathalie and Emmanuel Grand are the tenth generation. In 2015 they took around ten hectares out of his parents’ estate and started again from scratch. They have farmed organically since 2018, and the seal came three years later. The Guide Hachette made the two of them its winemakers of the year for 2020. They make both kinds, topped-up wines and wines under the veil. It is the same two grape varieties and the same cellar.

Chardonnay 2025 · Savagnin 2025 · Tradition 2022 · Savagnin 2019 · Château-Chalon 2015 · Vin de Paille 2015

One click adds all six to your basket.
You can remove or swap individual bottles there.

We have put six wines together as a case. Two of them are topped up, one has both in it, and two lay under the veil, for four years and for six. The sixth is a straw wine, and that is the third way in the Jura.

Topped up: the Chardonnay

The vines grow in Passenans on red marl and are twenty-five to forty years old. The wine spends a year in old Burgundy casks. The youngest of them is five years old, and you will not taste new wood anywhere here. Every three days someone tops them up. The house makes around five thousand bottles of it a year.

Nathalie’s vineyard

Nathalie Grand comes from Montigny-lès-Arsures, a wine village near Arbois. At twenty she planted a hectare of Savagnin there with her parents. The slope faces south, and the soil is grey marl. Today she makes the wine from it together with her husband. It is named after the parcel, En Guille Bouton, and there are around fifteen hundred bottles of it a year. Savagnin is the variety Vin Jaune is made from. These casks they do top up. This is how Savagnin tastes with no yeast on it.

Two styles in one bottle

The Cuvée Tradition is two thirds Chardonnay, and the rest is Savagnin. They leave the Chardonnay three years in tank and top it up. The Savagnin lies the same three years in old cask under the veil. The two come together only a month before bottling. If you have never drunk a wine from under the veil, this is the best place to start.

Four years under the veil

This is pure Savagnin, and it lay four years in cask with nobody topping it up. The grapes come from Saint-Lothain, from half a hectare on a south-west slope. With us it goes by Vin de Voile, wine under the veil. For a Vin Jaune it would have had to lie longer. It is made in exactly the same way. You bought us out of the 2018 over the summer, with no newsletter at all.

Château-Chalon

Château-Chalon is a village and at the same time the most respected appellation of the Jura. Only Vin Jaune may be sold under this name, and only from Savagnin. Every year before the harvest a commission walks through the vines. In four vintages since the seventies there was no Château-Chalon at all.

The Grands have seventy ares in this appellation, about the size of a football pitch. The vineyard lies in the neighbouring village of Ménétru-le-Vignoble. The soil is grey marl from the Jurassic. The period takes its name from these mountains. The vines are over forty-five years old and face south. They plough there with a horse. The wine spends a year in tank and then six years in old casks. Nobody tops it up. The estate reckons on forty per cent evaporating in that time. Around two thousand bottles are left at the end. The bottle is called a Clavelin and holds 62 centilitres. The oldest Clavelin anyone knows of dates from 1774.

The third way: straw wine

For the Vin de Paille the Grands lay the grapes out to dry after the harvest, for three to four months. Six weeks are prescribed, and no heating is allowed. The shrivelled berries give little juice, and that juice is very sweet. The wine then matures at least three more years, at the Grands in small oak casks. It comes in a half bottle, and that is enough for six after dinner.

Where do you start?

Put the six on the table in the order they appear above. The Chardonnay goes into the glass cool, the wines under the veil a good deal warmer. For the Château-Chalon sixteen degrees is right, which is almost room temperature. Straight from the fridge it tastes of very little. Take your largest white wine glass. The straw wine comes last, and cold. And you do not have to get through it all in one evening. An opened Château-Chalon keeps several days in the fridge.

1× Chardonnay 2025 → topped up, the way in
1× Savagnin En Guille Bouton 2025 → Nathalie’s vineyard
1× Cuvée Tradition 2022 → two styles in one bottle
1× Savagnin Vin de Voile 2019 → four years under the veil
1× Château-Chalon 2015 → six years never topped up
1× Vin de Paille 2015 → the straw wine at the end

One click adds all six to your basket. You can remove or swap individual bottles there.

We have nine wines from Domaine Grand at the moment. The Savagnin En Guille Bouton also comes as a 2023, with two more years in the bottle, likewise for approx. €34.

Warm regards from Berlin,

Lisa and the team at
Living Wines
Lebendige Weine

P.S.: A Château-Chalon keeps for decades. If you are looking for one to lay down, we also have the 2017 and the 2018, both for approx. €85.

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