Vin Jaune

Vin jaune is the Jura's long wait, and Jérôme Arnoux's comes from Savagnin grown on clay. The wine goes into oak barrels, where a veil of yeast forms naturally on its surface, and it stays under that veil for at least six years and three months, by the house's own account, before it is bottled.

The house ferments on native yeasts, does not fine its wines and uses as little sulphur as it can. The wine is made by Le Cellier des Tiercelines, the Arbois négoce that Arnoux joined in 2012 and, according to iDealwine, has owned outright since 2019. The house raises its best cuvées in the Cave de la Reine Jeanne, a Gothic cellar in the middle of Arbois.

The 2016 season, as iDealwine's vintage review tells it, largely escaped the frost but not the rain. A wet spring from April to June brought a mildew attack that many growers would remember, and it cost the region about a quarter of its crop. A fine end of summer then delivered healthy, balanced grapes, and the review expected the year's Savagnin and Chardonnay whites to be finer and less powerful than the 2015s.

A smaller, healthier harvest, then more than six years under the veil.