March 20, 2025 - 2 comments
Jura wine: from local consumption to worldwide recognition?
We had the privilege of meeting Pierre Overnoy and his adoptive son, Emmanuel Houillon, and from this meeting, a podcast was born.
Available (only in French) on:
Jura, a wine region that long remained under the radar, is experiencing rapid growth, leading to speculation affecting both wine prices and land values.
Pierre Overnoy and Emmanuel Houillon, leading figures in Jura, have witnessed this transformation firsthand. Pioneers of organic farming and natural winemaking, they have chosen to maintain limited yields, preserving biodiversity and soil balance. Their model, based on sustainability, contrasts with the practices of more industrialized wine regions.
This rapid evolution is primarily a story of vision, one driven by a small group of winemakers who managed to uphold values that, paradoxically, have propelled them to global recognition. Today, the rarity and uniqueness of Jura wines have led to their soaring success. In response, Overnoy and Houillon focus on selective sales to clients who respect their work. Their approach serves as a reminder that wine, above all, should be a means of sharing, not a speculative product.
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Written transcript of the interview
Initially, Jura wine was only sold within the Jura region
Pierre Overnoy. In the past, people would sell their harvest, then later they started vinifying and selling wine in bulk. Very little wine was bottled. Bottling really started after the Second World War, around 1939-1945, with pioneers like Henri Maire, the cooperatives, and so on.
That’s probably one of the reasons why Jura wines weren’t very well known—they simply weren’t selling many bottles. Merchants would distribute the wine elsewhere. And let’s not forget, it’s a very small region. Today, there are about 2,000 hectares, but after the war, it must have dropped to around 150 hectares. There were hardly any vineyards left in Jura. It was a small region, and the wines were mostly consumed locally.
Emmanuel Houillon. A lot of the grapes were sold as fruit. People from the Haut-Doubs region would come down to buy them, then take them back up to their cellars. They would put the grapes in a barrel and drink the wine gradually as it fermented over the winter. In the spring, they would distill what was left. Things have changed a lot since then. I remember when Pierre would receive customers—he would spend hours explaining indigenous yeasts, carbon dioxide, and sediment. In the beginning, it really took a lot of effort to re-educate people about this kind of wine and get them to accept it.
Of course, there were already some people who were aware of the importance of avoiding herbicides, and a few were even close to organic farming back then—but not many. My father spent a lot of time educating customers and helping them understand.
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Organic farming as a shield against industrialization
Pierre Overnoy. People think there was a "before" and an "after," but we’ve always done everything together since 1990—still do today.
Emmanuel Houilon. In the Jura, we’re in eastern France, and we had wines aged under a veil of yeast. So they were quite distinctive wines. Many people say, “Oh, Jura wines, those are oxidized wines.” Because of that, they were mostly sold locally or a bit in Switzerland, mainly in the mountains.
And then there was the Paris connection—when Parisians went on vacation, they headed toward Burgundy or Lyon, not Jura. You had to make a point of coming here; it wasn’t on the way to anywhere. Not so long ago, farmers here practiced mixed agriculture. In the 1970s, many winemakers still kept a few cows. The big turning point was probably how quickly Jura embraced organic farming. That made a big impact, especially on customers. Things really started shifting in the late ’90s. And then, at the same time, the internet arrived...
I remember back in the day, if someone wanted to buy wine, they had to call us. We’d take down their address, send them a letter with the wine prices and possible shipping costs. They’d send their order back, and then, oops—you’d have to call them again because they made a mistake on the check. It all took time. Today, with the internet, it’s crazy. Bank transfers happen in two seconds. It’s just not the same at all. Time moved differently back then.
And Pierre wasn’t standing by the door waiting for customers. We were both out in the vineyard. If someone rang the bell, well, no one was here. Then the answering machine came along... You see, it was a different time. So much has changed, and we don’t always realize it.
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From an overlooked wine to rampant speculation
Emmanuel Houillon. The real problem is that our economic model is based on money. It’s not tied to anything real—it’s all virtual. People cling to things that have no real value. Jules Chauvet used to say, “Wine is a thirst-quenching drink, so it should be accessible.”
Pierre Overnoy A fortified wine that sells for 16 euros might end up on a restaurant table for 1,450 euros. That’s just excess. But it shows how absurd things have become. And then there’s all the fraud. The other day, a guy from Paris called me, saying he found Chardonnays for 200 euros a bottle. He thought it was completely unfair. The bottles had tin capsules—but we’ve never put tin capsules on our bottles!
How can one protect themselves from the speculative market?
Emmanuel Houillon. We’re hearing more and more about this because people tell us. We get a lot of visitors passing through, mostly between November and April. In May, June, and July, I focus on the vineyard. But when we do have visitors, they ask if they can buy bottles. I say no, I can’t sell them. So I give them addresses of resellers. And they come back saying, “Over there, they’re selling them for 160 euros, or even more.” I get why that’s frustrating for them.
At the same time, I wonder—do these people actually want to drink the wine, or are they just trying to flip it for a profit? We have to filter, to decide who, how, and where. That’s why I don’t look at social media—I don’t care.
We’re passionate about wine, passionate about tasting. It’s normal for our wine to have value, but this speculation, these inflated prices—I find it completely wrong. We don’t even know who’s behind it. You’d need detectives, people tracking social media to see what’s going on—but we don’t have time for that.
Pierre Overnoy. Honestly, the proportion of dishonest people isn’t as big as you’d think!
Emmanuel Houillon. Yes, I think it’s like anything—sometimes, it only takes one person. If someone steals a chainsaw from your garage, you start locking the door, even if it only happened once in 30 years. But the fear that it could happen again stays with you. It doesn’t take much to break a chain of trust.
In the next article, Pierre and Emmanuel share how the region resisted the industrialization of winemaking!
Cheers!
