Jérôme Arnoux

Jérôme Arnoux is an Arbois man through and through. Born in Montigny-lès-Arsures, the village just outside town, he started working vines and cellars at 17, self-taught, and spent more than twenty years as an employee of other Arbois domaines before he made wine under his own name.

iDealwine fills in that apprenticeship: ten years with Stéphane Tissot, then seven running Château de Chavannes in biodynamics. In January 2012 he joined Le Cellier des Tiercelines, an Arbois négoce, and by iDealwine's account took it over step by step until he became its sole owner in August 2019.

In 2014 he set up a farming company, Jéroboam, to work vines of his own. By iDealwine's 2022 count it covered 21 hectares, 12 owned and the rest rented, then in its third year of conversion to organic farming. The négoce side carries on alongside, buying grapes on the vine, but the house says most of its fruit comes from its own vines in Arbois and the Côtes du Jura. In Arnoux's own words, most of the wine is made in the vineyard.

In the cellar the rule is native yeasts, no fining, light filtration and a minimum of sulphur. The range covers the whole Jura vocabulary: Crémant du Jura, Poulsard, Trousseau and Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Savagnin both topped up and under the veil, vin jaune, vin de paille and Macvin.

The best cuvées age in the Cave de la Reine Jeanne, a Gothic cellar in the middle of Arbois that the house dates to 1322 and that is listed as a historic monument. The domaine rented it before buying it in 2021, iDealwine reports, and runs four gîtes in the 17th-century house above it.

Twenty years in other people's cellars, then a 14th-century one of his own.