2020 Joseph Dorbon Arbois Vieilles Vignes Les Bernardines

Joseph Dorbon farms three hectares. That is his entire estate. He plows with a horse, works the soil twice a year, ages his wine in a 16th-century cellar dug into the ground beneath his house in Vadans, and has been doing it since 1996. Not only that, he's the only guy in his village left doing it.

Les Bernardines takes its name from the Bernardine order of Cistercian monks who farmed this land in the Middle Ages. Dorbon owns Ploussard and Pinot Noir vines inside the old vineyard, most of them more than sixty years old, planted southeast-facing at 322 meters on yellow limestone and clay marl.

The two grapes are picked together and co-fermented, roughly three quarters Ploussard and one quarter Pinot Noir. Fermentation happens on wild yeast in stainless steel with no temperature control. The wine then spends two full years in old Burgundy barrels before it is released. Nothing is added and nothing is rushed.

Ploussard gives the sappy red cherry fruit and the pale color that fools people into thinking it is a rosé. The Pinot Noir supplies texture. The old vines give it concentration that most Jura reds at this weight do not have.

Serve it at 58 degrees with roast chicken and mushrooms, or with Comté. This is what people mean when they say Jura reds drink like Burgundy from another planet.

Three hectares supply the entire world. Ask any Jura buyer how hard these are to get. You know plenty of those, right? :)