Andre et Mireille Tissot

Domaine André et Mireille Tissot was founded in 1962 by André and Mireille Tissot in Montigny-lès-Arsures, a small commune just north of Arbois in the Jura. Their son Stéphane Tissot, together with his wife Bénédicte, took over management in 1990 - and over the following three decades turned the estate into the most widely recognised modern producer in the Jura, often bracketed with Jean-François Ganevat as a defining figure of the region's contemporary renaissance. Tissot reaches more markets than Ganevat and is more systematically organised around single parcels.

Around fifty hectares today, which makes it one of the larger quality estates in Jura. Organic from 1999, biodynamic from 2004, Demeter-certified. Home-made compost, herbal preparations, the "cleanest possible viticulture" as the domaine puts it. Not strict natural wine - small doses of sulphur are used when needed - but low intervention throughout.

Close to forty cuvées a vintage, across ouillé whites, oxidative Savagnin, Vin Jaune, Château-Chalon, reds, Crémant and Macvin. All five Jura varieties: Chardonnay, Savagnin, Poulsard, Trousseau, Pinot Noir. Stéphane is celebrated for his single-parcel Chardonnays, each expressing a different corner of Jura's limestone-clay patchwork:

• Les Bruyères
• Les Graviers
• La Mailloche - old vines on clay (planted 1976-77, with the oldest individual vines reaching seventy via massale replanting)
• En Barberon
• Clos de la Tour de Curon - the Chardonnay flagship, planted at extreme density (12,000 vines/ha) in 2002, often compared to grand cru Burgundy

He also makes Vin Jaune from multiple sites (En Spois among them) plus a Château-Chalon, the straw-dried Spirale, and pioneering amphora work with Savagnin (four to six months of skin maceration in clay, depending on vintage). La Revue du Vin de France awards three stars.

Bénédicte Tissot is co-winemaker at the domaine. Stéphane has mentored a generation of Jura vignerons, including Jean-Baptiste Ménigoz of Les Bottes Rouges. If the Overnoy-Houillon lineage is Jura's natural-wine spine, the Tissot domaine is its serious-biodynamic axis - the two have coexisted in Arbois and Pupillin for long enough that you can no longer draw a clean line between them.