Grape & Grain | Two winemakers helping put France’s Jura region on the map, and doing amazing things with chardonnay

Stéphane Tissot and Jean-François Ganevat were both born into winemaking families in a corner of France that has recently shaken off decades of benign neglect. Tissot’s father, André, created his family estate in 1962, while Ganevat can count generations of winemakers back to 1650, but it was his father who made the choice to concentrate solely on wine.

Long before I tasted their wines I had heard of both men, as leaders of the so-called Jura revolution. Jura is a region sandwiched somewhere between Switzerland and Burgundy, grazing the edges of the Alps, and the childhood home of Louis Pasteur, the spiritual father of modern winemaking.

Over the past decade, Jura has managed to steal a march on many of the better-heeled and better-known regions of France, appearing on fashionable wine lists worldwide as sommeliers fall in love with the unexplored, unusual, and frankly sometimes funky delights of the trousseau, poulsard and savagnin grapes that grow there.

Its isolation and mountainous terrain has meant it has kept an identity of its own – one that has become increasingly sought after. Not just the famous oxidative vin jaune (yellow wine), but its dry styles have moved from counterculture to front and centre, a feat that is even more impressive when you consider that the Jura makes just 0.2 per cent of France’s wine.

I’ve definitely grown to love the gentle charms of a savoury, light-bodied red trousseau over recent years, but it is Tissot and Gavenat’s take on chardonnay, a far more mainstream grape, that has really made me sit up and beg for more Jura.