Description

Ouillé, from oeil, French for eye, refers to wines that during élevage are topped off up to the eye of the barrel to be protected from oxidation—standard just about everywhere except in Jura, where the tradition has been to work with oxidative wines. The grape is Jura’s own distinctive Savagnin, commonly used to make the Sherry-like Vin Jaune and the sweet, concentrated Vin de Paille. This version is one of the new wave of wines coming out of these Alpine foothills. Production is limited to a couple hundred cases.

Jean-Luc Mouillard was born in Nevy-sur-Seille at the foot of the oft-photographed Château-Chalon. The château has morphed into a village as well as into Jura’s most respected appellation for vin jaune, and it occupies the top of a huge limestone outcropping. Nevy-sur-Seille, as the name suggests, sits far below on the valley floor along side of the small Seille River. An old stone bridge crosses the Seille at Nevy, and it’s this bridge that graces the labels of Jean-Luc’s wines. Jean-Luc grew up on the family’s dairy farm, which happened to have a few vineyard parcels on the side whose harvest was sold to the local co-op. After enology school, he established Domaine Jean-Luc Mouillard in 1991, renting several parcels and planting several others. Today he farms twenty-five acres of vines in three appellations: Côtes du Jura, L’Etoile, and Château-Chalon. The bulk of the vines are in the AOC of Côtes du Jura for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Poulsard and Trousseau, and all of his vines grow right around 1,000 feet in elevation. The farming ethic is one of lutte raisonnée, or pragmatically sustainable. The use of herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers was abandoned many years ago. More recently, the domaine has embarked on a three-year transition into organic viticulture, and it’s looking forward to being certified in time for the 2023 harvest. In 1997 Jean-Luc moved north from Nevy-sur-Seille to the village of Mantry upon buying a sixteenth-century house that originally served as a stagecoach stop. The motivation was the building’s stone cellar, an arched underground affair that became a place of beauty once Jean-Luc stripped off all of the stucco that had been applied to the stone at a later date. Here is where he ages wine in barrel. In 2005 he constructed a one-story building across the street for his fermentations, and in 2014 he built a facility to house a bottling line and to store bottled wine.