For François Rousset-Martin, terroir doesn’t end in the vineyard. Descend a rickety ladder into his 300 year old Jura cellar and you enter a living, thriving world - one in which countless bacteria, yeasts and fungi have been invited to pull up a chair, pour themselves a glass of Macvin, and generally make themselves at home. There are mould-covered barrels, thick cobwebs, and walls black with years of evaporated alcohol. This environment, in which the character and quality of Rousset-Martin’s wines are shaped, is as important to him as the vineyards above.
Rousset-Martin’s enthusiasm for this subterranean world comes from his father, who was a micro-biologist in Dijon. Growing up in Burgundy also helps explain why most of his wines are topped-up, and why he is one of a pack of new-school Jura producers making carefully-defined single vineyard cuvées. Farming is organic, and the winemaking is low intervention. No sulphur is used, and sometimes a veil of flor is allowed to develop in barrel before topping up begins. The wines all speak with a distinct Jura accent, but in their detail, each has something different to say.
Complex, engaging and critically acclaimed, Rousset-Martin’s wines are among the very best in Jura.
