Cellier Saint Benoît Ploussard 'Viandris' 2023

After training with some of Burgundy’s elite winemakers, including Nicholas Faure, Charles Lachaux, and Amélie Berthaut, Benjamin Benoît’s roster of site-specific wines have cemented Cellier Saint Benoît as the Jura’s most exciting new domaine.

For three generations the Benoît family sold grapes to the local co-operative until Benjamin’s father Denis built a cellar and began making wine in 2004. Taking over his father’s vineyards in 2019 at the age of 23, Benjamin introduced organic and regenerative farming as well as artisanal winemaking techniques, pushing the quality of the domaine’s wines to new heights.

Benjamin farms 6ha of traditional Jura varieties – Chardonnay, Savagnin, Ploussard, Trousseau, and Pinot Noir – across some of Pupillin’s oldest vineyards. Fermented with ambient yeasts and aged in old oak barrels in his brand-new cellar, production is so tiny that each bottle is numbered individually.

Made in the ouillé (“topped up”) style, Benjamin crafts numerous single-parcel expressions of Chardonnay and Savagnin, which marry beautifully ripe fruit with herbal freshness and racy acidity. While many of the region’s Ploussard bottlings are blends of several lieux-dits, Benjamin is one of the few vignerons to bottle his sites individually, allowing them to express the complex nuances of their terroirs.